“I already had the car, I just needed the plug, but we had to wait”: like Gérard, who recently had his own charging station in Levallois, they increasingly want to equip their car park, but the deployment of charging solutions in buildings residential continues to decline.
2% furnished condominiums
Gérard’s condominium is one of the 2% equipped in France, for about 10,000 beds. These figures are still low, despite the fact that in 2011 the law came into force that allows each co-owner to install, at his own expense, a plug for his vehicle.
This lack of private terminals in collective housing continues to be a major obstacle to the electrification of the automobile fleet, a brick considered fundamental in the fight against climate change.
“From the first discussions in the condo to the first installation, we waited 18 months. But other neighbors did the same and soon we will have 17 terminals!”, qualifies the retiree, while two workers from a private installer work to equip neighboring squares.
The installation does not cost the condominium anything: the owners pay for their own terminal and the subsidies cover the rest.
Because, in addition to the individual terminal, it is necessary to finance collective infrastructures, such as cables and sometimes common meters. The financing of this equipment has long been a point of contention for condominiums that, until recently, had to pay for it.
“There is always the fear of some co-owners of having to pay for others, which slows down installation requests,” explains Mathias Laffont, director of studies at the Union Française de l’Electricité (UFE). Now, there are techniques to make users only pay, for a few hundred euros for the purchase of the plug, in addition to the monthly subscription contracted with the operator.
Accelerate this development
There is aid for owners, condominiums and operators: Logivolt Territoires, launched by the Banque des Territoires, the window of the Caisse des dépôts, finances all collective expenses; the Advenir system, financed by an annual allocation of public funds and piloted by the National Association for the Development of Electric Mobility (Avere-France), covers half of this.
The numerous start-ups in the sector, Bornes Solutions, Zeplug or Park’n Plug at the forefront, confirm it: the demand for equipment in collective housing is on the rise. They calculate that a million seats could be quickly equipped. The rest in charge of the individual, after the help, is, according to them, between 700 and 900 euros.
But things still aren’t moving fast enough. 44% of the French live in collective housing but “70% of private terminals are in individual housing”, according to Clément Molizon, general delegate of Avere-France.
To speed up this development, a long-awaited decree should allow Enedis, the electricity grid administrator, to equip condominiums with charging equipment, without making them pay a single euro, by integrating the costs into the electricity transmission rate ( cloudy). An “unfair competition”, the private installers denounce in passing, gathered behind the French Association of Electric Vehicle Recharging Operators (Afor).
Staff shortage
Enedis anticipates “thousands, then tens of thousands of new requests, once the decree has been validated,” says Olivier Huet, director of infrastructure projects for recharging electric vehicles in collective residential buildings at Enedis. “All solutions are necessary, the market is too big.”
Another challenge for operators is the deployment of charging sockets in private outdoor car parks, which require heavier work. “Today it is too expensive for operators and condominiums to bear the cost,” explains Lara Dupont, from Zeplug.
Finally, there is the lack of trained personnel, estimated at “several thousand people” by the operators.
The sector is growing strongly, but we are short on staff”, laments Jérôme Princet, CEO of Bornes Solutions and Vice President of Afor.
Source: BFM TV
