At the 2021 Census, 27.3% of Doncaster’s occupied homes were flats or apartments, more than double Ringwood’s share and far above Vermont’s. Manningham’s planning scheme shows where much of that growth is meant to go: its local policy for Doncaster Hill calls the activity centre the municipality’s “prime growth location” and sets “a focus on high density residential development” around the crossroads of Doncaster, Williamsons and Tram Roads. So EV charger installation Doncaster work runs on two tracks for our team. On the hill, it is basement car parks and owners corporations. Off it, it is houses and townhouses with their own switchboards.
DUKE EV is the EV charging side of DUKE Electrical Group, and the A-grade electricians we send to Doncaster work under REC 35838, travelling about 13 km from 128 Toorak Rd, our South Yarra base. Alongside supplying chargers, we install owner-supplied units and do the supporting work: switchboards, supply upgrades, load management and repairs.
EV charger installation Doncaster, on the hill and off it
The two tracks look very different on site. On the hill, an apartment owner may have an allocated bay in a basement, a meter in a switchroom several floors away, and an owners corporation that controls everything in between. A house owner elsewhere in the suburb has a garage, a switchboard, and a decision that is theirs alone. Townhouses sit somewhere in the middle.
Separate houses made up 53.1% of Doncaster’s homes at the 2021 Census, and 34.9% had four or more bedrooms, so the suburb has plenty of large family houses too. Those jobs run like any of our home EV charger installation work. This page spends more time on the apartments, because that is where Doncaster differs most from its neighbours.
Charging in a Doncaster Hill basement
The schedule to the Activity Centre Zone for Doncaster Hill encourages car parking to be built into the buildings and the sloping landform, “including providing under-croft and basement as opposed to open-lot parking”. The Parking Overlay for the centre sets the residential rate at one space for each one or two bedroom dwelling and two for three or more bedrooms, plus visitor spaces. For buildings approved under those controls, that points to allocated bays, typically in a basement or under-croft.
Picture a hypothetical eight-storey building near the Westfield. Your bay is on basement level two. Your apartment’s meter is in a main switchroom on the ground floor. Running your own circuit from your meter to your bay means a long cable along car park ceilings that belong to the owners corporation, and the next owner who asks will need another one alongside it. That is why we usually recommend that buildings plan a shared EV supply first and connect individual bays to it as owners sign up.
The National Construction Code points new buildings the same way: under J9D4, as the Australian Building Codes Board’s guide explains, a new apartment car park needs EV-only distribution boards tied to a charging control system, designed so 7 kW chargers can be added later.
Getting the owners corporation on board
Most of the effort in an apartment charger project is agreement, not wiring. The sequence we follow keeps the committee informed and the decision clean.
In order, it runs like this: a written request to the committee or manager; a capacity study of the building’s main switchboard and supply, which shows how many chargers the building can carry before an upgrade; a proposal comparing a shared EV supply with individual circuits; the vote; staged installation as owners sign up; and finally the billing set-up. In our view, skipping the capacity study is a false economy, because the building’s limit tends to surface just as the third or fourth owner asks for a charger.
The resolution needed depends on the change. Under section 52 of the Owners Corporations Act 2006, the question is whether the works are a significant alteration to the car park’s use or appearance; if so, a special resolution is generally needed. The threshold is set out in Consumer Affairs Victoria’s voting and ballot guidelines: owners or proxies representing 75% of lots, or 75% of lot entitlements where a ballot or poll is used.
Every individual cable run through a car park also sets a precedent, and by the fifth one the ceiling looks like a switchboard turned inside out. One proposal, one capacity study and one resolution is less work for the committee and a tidier result for the building.
Paying for the power
In our view, billing is the question most likely to stall a committee. Section 12 of the Owners Corporations Act allows an owners corporation, by special resolution, to provide a service to lot owners or occupiers and to recover the cost from those who use it. On the energy side, the Essential Services Commission’s 2022 exemption order has a category for selling metered or unmetered electricity used to charge an electric vehicle, so the owners corporation needs no retail licence, though it reports to the Commission each year and must follow the relevant parts of the energy codes.
We set up the electrical side to match whichever model the building chooses, with metering on each charger or bay where the owners want usage recorded. Our EV charging service for apartment buildings covers the capacity study, the proposal for the committee and the installation.
Townhouses along Doncaster’s main roads
Away from the hill, Design and Development Overlay Schedule 8 covers residential areas around activity centres and along main roads, about a fifth of the suburb when measured against the state’s planning maps. It supports three-storey, apartment-style buildings in its main road sub-precinct and two-storey townhouses with a higher yield in sub-precinct B, and a Residential Growth Zone covers about a tenth of Doncaster’s land.
In a typical newer townhouse with its own garage and switchboard, the quick wins are spare space on the switchboard and a clear path to the garage wall. The slow ones are shared driveways and meter banks on common property, where the same owners corporation rules apply on a smaller scale.
Bigger houses, bigger loads
An older Doncaster house may have collected load over the decades: a spa, a home office, a second fridge in the garage. Add an EV and the switchboard can become the bottleneck. The Victorian Service and Installation Rules give EV chargers, air conditioning and induction cooktops as examples of new equipment that can need a supply capacity upgrade, and United Energy’s EV guidance for homes warns that some homes may need their power supply upgraded to manage the extra load. The Victorian Government’s distribution-area data puts the whole of Doncaster on United Energy’s network, and lodging the myEnergy registration United Energy asks for is part of our job.
Where the numbers are tight, we start with a switchboard upgrade for EV chargers and, for houses running two EVs or a large pool and spa load, look at moving the house to three-phase supply.
Heritage addresses and the Koonung Creek corridor
Doncaster’s heritage list is short but distinctive. Winter Park, the cluster housing at High Street and Timber Ridge, is on the Victorian Heritage Register as well as in the local Heritage Overlay. The former Eastern Golf Club building, Tullamore, and its stables at 463 Doncaster Road, Holy Trinity Anglican Church on Church Road and Doncaster Primary School No. 197 are also listed. Clause 43.01-1 asks for a permit wherever a charger on one of these properties would sit in public view from a street or park, though views from a lane are excluded, and for Winter Park we check what other approvals apply before fixing anything to a building.
On the southern side, the Koonung Creek corridor along the Eastern Freeway gained its own Significant Landscape Overlay, Schedule 9, in January 2026. It controls removing or lopping larger vegetation near the creek, so if your block backs onto it, we plan the cable route before anyone picks up a shovel.
Public fast chargers are coming, the basement bay still matters
Manningham Council is working with two charging operators on a network of nine public fast-charging stations, and its September 2025 update listed Lawford Road near Westfield and MC Square among the Doncaster sites being explored. The council’s public EV charging information says the network is meant to give residents in apartments, rental properties and homes without dedicated parking access to charging, and that transport makes up nearly a quarter of Manningham’s emissions.
We welcome every one of those chargers. Still, for anyone who parks in a Doncaster Hill basement every night, a charger in their own bay will remain an easier daily habit than queuing at a fast charger, which is exactly why the building-wide plan is worth the effort.
Frequently asked questions on Doncaster Hill buildings and family homes
Our Doncaster Hill building’s switchroom is floors away from the car park. Is that a problem?
It makes each individual cable run long, which is why we usually suggest a shared EV supply in the car park rather than a separate circuit from every apartment’s meter. Either way the route crosses common property, so it needs the owners corporation’s approval.
Is our owners corporation allowed to recover charging costs from users?
Yes. Section 12 of the Owners Corporations Act lets it provide a service by special resolution and recover the cost from the owners or occupiers who use it, and the Essential Services Commission’s 2022 exemption order covers selling electricity for EV charging, subject to yearly reporting and the relevant code obligations.
Could part of Doncaster be on another network?
Not on the state’s figures: the Victorian Government’s distribution-area data puts every part of Doncaster in United Energy’s area. CitiPower’s postcode tool also lists CitiPower against 3108, so we still check each address.
Will Manningham’s public fast chargers replace home charging?
They will help, especially for residents without a parking space. For anyone with a garage or a basement bay, charging overnight at home is still the simpler routine.
Do heritage controls apply at Winter Park or Tullamore?
Yes, both are heritage-listed, and Winter Park is also on the Victorian Heritage Register. A charger out of street view avoids the Heritage Overlay permit trigger, and we check the extra approvals for Winter Park before quoting.
If you live on the hill, start with a note to your committee; if you live off it, start with us. Either way, the contact page for DUKE EV and 1300 003 853 reach our team Monday to Saturday, 7am to 7pm. Nearby, our page on EV charger installation in Templestowe covers the larger blocks to the north.