At the 2021 Census, six in ten Templestowe homes had four or more bedrooms, and seven in ten households had two or more registered vehicles, with a quarter of all households running three or more. Add the fact that over a quarter of the suburb’s land is zoned Low Density Residential, and you have the shape of a typical EV charger installation Templestowe job: a long run from the switchboard to the garage, more than one car to charge, and a supply that has to be checked for both.
Behind DUKE EV is DUKE Electrical Group, and our A-grade electricians carry out every job under REC 35838. For Templestowe they come from South Yarra, where our premises at 128 Toorak Rd sit about 17 km to the south-west. As well as supplying chargers, we fit ones you already own and look after the supply side: switchboards, three-phase upgrades, load management, solar-aware charging and repairs.
EV charger installation Templestowe on bigger blocks
The same Census adds detail: 77.6% separate houses, an average of 3.7 bedrooms, a median age of 46, and 47.0% of homes owned outright. Manningham’s planning scheme says the topography of its significant low density residential landscape areas “ranges from undulating land to steep slopes, prominent ridgelines and deep gullies”.
A typical hypothetical layout looks like this: the meter box on the front wall of the house, a double garage or a separate shed at the end of a long, sloping driveway, and a stand of eucalypts somewhere in between. The charger choice is the easy part. The planning goes into the route, the load and the trees.
For a standard single-car install, our home EV charger installation service covers the basics. Templestowe properties often need a little more thought than that, so the rest of this page covers the extra layers.
Long runs to the garage
When the garage stands apart from the house, the cable distance can easily reach 30 or 40 metres, and length changes everything downstream. A longer run needs heavier cable to carry full charging current (the sizing follows AS/NZS 3008.1.1), and often a trench, a conduit and pull pits rather than a few clips along a wall.
Sometimes there is a smarter path. If the detached garage already has its own sub-board fed from the house, we check whether that sub-main has the capacity to carry a charger as well. If it does, the new circuit can start in the garage and the long trench is avoided. If it does not, upgrading the sub-main once is usually better than running a second cable alongside it.
These are the real cost drivers on a Templestowe block: distance, digging, what sits in the way, and the state of the switchboard at each end. We measure all four on the site visit and show them in the quote, so you can see why the number is what it is.
Two and three EVs on one supply
With 44.5% of Templestowe households running two vehicles and 25.6% three or more, the second charger is worth planning for early. The answer depends on the supply. A single-phase home can often run two chargers that share capacity, slowing down when the house is busy and speeding up overnight. A three-phase home has more headroom, and on United Energy’s figures a typical 22 kW home charger needs a three-phase supply.
Above a certain size, the rules change. Under the Victorian Service and Installation Rules, once a home’s calculated maximum demand passes 100 amps on any phase (or the distributor asks for it), limiting devices have to keep that demand in check. United Energy’s page on supply upgrades and new connections adds that negotiated connections typically cover premises needing 170 amps or more. Big houses with a pool, ducted systems and two EVs are where those numbers start to matter, and where a three-phase supply upgrade earns its place.
A new main switchboard or new consumer mains would make that part of the job prescribed work, which Victorian rules say cannot be energised until an independent Licensed Electrical Inspector has checked it. Arranging that inspection is built into our switchboard upgrade for EV charging, and you finish with a Certificate of Electrical Safety.
Here is our slightly unfashionable view: for most two-EV households, two 7 kW chargers with good load management will do more for daily life than one 22 kW unit. A 22 kW unit only charges faster if the car’s onboard charger accepts that much AC, and some models top out lower (the Polestar 2, for example, lists 11 kW), while overnight charging rarely needs the speed.
Solar on big Templestowe roofs
Large homes tend to mean large roofs. The Victorian Government’s advice on preparing a home for an EV, published by Solar Victoria, makes three points worth repeating: rooftop solar can cut or even remove the running cost and emissions of charging; a smart charger can be scheduled to soak up the panels’ output during the day; and a home battery can hold daytime solar for an overnight top-up. The catch it also names is that every kilowatt-hour of solar the car takes is one the house cannot use that evening.
For households with someone at home during the day, or a second car that sits in the garage, solar-aware charging is one of the better upgrades on a Templestowe property. With solar EV charger installation, we configure the charger to track your generation and draw from the grid only when it has to.
Driplines, the Yarra corridor and Templestowe’s trees
Mapping the overlays against the suburb boundary, we found about half of Templestowe under a Significant Landscape Overlay. Schedule 1 covers the low density residential landscape areas, and Schedule 2 covers the Yarra (Birrarung) River corridor environs across the north of the suburb.
Schedule 1 is precise about trees. Removing, destroying or lopping Victorian native vegetation needs a permit, and so does the same work on any exotic or Australian native tree with a trunk circumference over 0.35 metres at 1.3 metres above ground, or a height over 6 metres. Even its exemptions for works associated with a dwelling fall away inside the dripline of any vegetation that needs a permit to remove, which shows how seriously the schedule treats root zones. Schedule 2 brings vegetation near the river under permit control too, with limited exemptions.
One Schedule 1 exemption is worth knowing: a tree whose trunk is within two metres of the roof, eaves included, of an existing building used for accommodation does not need a permit. That helps when the charger goes on the house. It does nothing for a tree beside a detached garage, because a garage is not accommodation.
The charger itself is generally exempt under Clause 62.02-2, which covers EV charging stations unless a control specifically requires a permit. The trench is where we are careful. We plot the route outside driplines wherever the block allows, and where it cannot, we talk to Manningham before digging.
United Energy, with AusNet towards the river
Most of Templestowe falls inside United Energy’s network in the state’s published distribution boundaries, and we lodge the myEnergy registration that network requires as part of the install. The exception is the northern fringe towards the Yarra and Warrandyte, where AusNet’s published area reaches into the suburb and overlaps United Energy’s in places. For addresses up that way we confirm the network before lodging anything, and AusNet’s home charging advice applies if it turns out to be theirs.
Merchant Builders houses and other heritage places
Templestowe’s heritage list includes the Merchant Builders Former Display Houses precinct on Porter Street and Beverley Hills Drive, where external paint and solar energy system controls apply, as well as Pontville on Websters Road, which is on the Victorian Heritage Register, Westerfolds Manor and Park on Fitzsimons Lane, and the Petty and Austins Orchards heritage place on Monckton and Homestead Roads. Under Clause 43.01-1, a charger that the street or a park can see on any of these properties needs a VicSmart permit; tucked inside a garage, it needs none. In the display houses precinct, visible solar panels need a permit too, so we plan both together.
Templestowe Village is also on Manningham Council’s list of sites being explored for public fast chargers with two operators, with the specific locations depending on access to power supply, and the council’s public EV charging update ties the network to Manningham’s net zero emissions target for 2035.
Frequently asked questions on big-block, two-EV charging in Templestowe
How do we know if our Templestowe house can carry two chargers?
We calculate maximum demand with both chargers included. Load management can share spare capacity on a single-phase supply, but on a big house with a pool and ducted systems the total can pass 100 amps per phase, where the Victorian Service and Installation Rules call for demand-limiting devices.
When is three-phase power worth it for a Templestowe home?
When the household load is high and growing: two or three EVs, a pool, ducted systems, or a car that can accept 11 kW or more of AC. One car charging overnight rarely needs more than a single-phase supply.
Our detached garage already has its own sub-board. Can the charger run from it?
Sometimes. If the sub-main feeding that board has spare capacity for the charger on top of what the garage already draws, the new circuit can start there and the long trench is avoided. If not, upgrading that sub-main once usually beats laying a second cable beside it.
Do the landscape overlays affect the cable trench?
They can. The charger is generally exempt from planning permits, but Schedule 1 treats the dripline of protected vegetation as a no-go zone for exempt works, so we route trenches outside driplines or check with council first.
Which network supplies homes in northern Templestowe near the Yarra?
Most of the suburb is United Energy, but AusNet’s area reaches into the northern fringe towards the river and Warrandyte. For those addresses the network gets confirmed before any application.
If you are planning for one EV now and two later, it is worth designing for both from the start. Get in touch with DUKE EV online or call 1300 003 853 between 7am and 7pm, Monday to Saturday. Our base is listed on the South Yarra EV charging page. Next door, our page on EV charger installation in Doncaster covers the apartment side of Manningham.