A Planning Order for Multifamily EV Charging

What to take away

Most multifamily charging projects go wrong in the same place. Somebody gets a quote for eight chargers, the board approves it, and then an electrician points out that the service panel has no room left. The quote was never the problem. The order of operations was.

So start with the building. Where do people park, who is allowed to park there, how much electrical capacity is genuinely spare, and who pays for the power? Those four answers shape everything that follows, and not one of them appears on a vendor's spec sheet.

What follows is a planning order, not an electrical design. You will still need a licensed contractor, a permit review, and in a condo, a careful read of your own governing documents.

Write down what the project is for

A rental owner and a condo board want different things, and they should not be working from the same brief.

An owner usually buys an amenity and wants it to run without generating work.

A board usually solves a fairness problem: two residents already own EVs and want chargers at their assigned spaces, and three more will ask next spring.

A third building wants a small installation now, holding conduit and panel room for a phase two that may never come.

Survey residents before you guess at a port count. Ask who owns an EV today, who expects to within three years, how far they drive on an ordinary day, whether their space is assigned, and whether overnight charging would cover them.

Then treat the answers as a picture of demand, not an order form. Stated interest always runs ahead of purchases.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC) has a page on charging at apartments and condominiums. It covers shared-building issues such as parking, electrical access, billing and legal questions that need answers before procurement.

Map the parking and the panel

Draw the site: parking spaces, accessible routes, electrical rooms, panels and meters. Then add walls, planting beds and the paths conduit could follow, along with the intake facts that make a parking plan worth drawing.

Pace out distances for a rough number, but let a designer measure. Trenching, cutting pavement and upgrading a service will move a budget far more than choosing between two charger brands.

Ask a licensed electrical contractor or engineer to write down:

Then call the utility, before the drawings are finished rather than after. Ask whether the utility has a make-ready program, what it calls the program, which project costs it covers, and what eligibility rules and application steps apply; those details vary by service territory. The utility can also explain feeder capacity, rates and work on its side of the meter.

Pick an access model first

There are three, and the choice drives cost more than anything else you decide.

Dedicated charging is easiest to explain to a resident but often most expensive to build. The spaces needing power are rarely near the panel.

Shared charging uses infrastructure hard, which is efficient. It works only if you decide in advance who may charge, how they identify themselves, what it costs, whether guests count, and what happens when somebody leaves a full car plugged in for two days.

Write those policies before you buy. They decide whether you need a network, a payment system, new signage, or a change to the resident agreement.

Match the output to how long cars actually sit

Residential cars park for ten or twelve hours. That changes the arithmetic completely.

Level 1 can be enough for a low-mileage driver, or for a small pilot where existing outlets allow a safe, code-compliant setup. Level 2 puts back far more overnight and is what most new multifamily installations use. Above that, you are mostly paying for speed nobody is awake to use.

The number that matters is not the sticker kilowatts on one unit. It is the power available to the whole system, divided by how many cars plug in at once.

A designer can use power sharing so eight ports draw from a circuit that could never feed eight cars at full tilt. For overnight parking, that trade costs residents almost nothing; ask for both figures: total system power, and the minimum guaranteed to each connected car.

Decide whether you need a network

Unnetworked equipment charges cars. That is the entire feature list, and for a small building where the association absorbs the electricity cost, it can be exactly right.

Networked stations authenticate users, meter sessions, apply prices, allow remote diagnosis, and often manage load. They also bring a subscription, a payment processor, and a long relationship with a software company.

Before signing, ask four things. Who owns the session data, and who at the property gets to read it? Can you export it in a format you could actually use? What does the charger do when the internet drops?

And can this hardware move to a different network if the vendor's terms change? Equipment speaking Open Charge Point Protocol 1.6 or later is likelier to survive that last question, but "OCPP compatible" on a brochure is not a certification. Ask which functions are implemented and whether the specific model and protocol version have been certified through the Open Charge Alliance's OCPP Certification Program.

Budget the whole thing, not the boxes

Split the budget into equipment, design, utility work, permits, construction, networking, operations and contingency. Construction is the line that surprises people: conduit, conductors, panels, switchgear, protection, pedestals, bollards, signs, pavement repair, communications cabling and accessible routes. There is no useful national per-port figure for this work: site conditions, utility requirements and construction scope vary. Request an itemized, site-specific estimate rather than treating a hardware price as the project budget.

Budget the running costs separately, because somebody pays them every month. Electricity, any demand charges, network fees, payment processing, cellular service, inspections, repairs, snow clearing, resident support. Name who pays each one, and write down what happens to prices if the utility rate moves.

Incentives may be available, but programs and eligibility depend on the project location and applicant. Use the U.S. Department of Energy Alternative Fuels Data Center's Laws and Incentives database to check federal and state options, then ask the serving utility and city about local programs. Do not include an incentive in an approved budget until eligibility and the application requirements are confirmed in writing.

Buy a system, not a box

A useful request for proposals describes the site, the users, the service level you want, the access rules, whatever electrical information you have, the future port count, your data needs and the support you expect. Ask bidders to separate what they are assuming from what they are committing to.

Insist on a responsibility table naming who handles design, permits, utility coordination, installation, commissioning, network setup, resident support, preventive maintenance, spare parts, security updates, and data export when the contract ends. Every blank in that table turns into an argument later.

Compare on total cost and on how the thing will actually be run. A cheap unit attached to proprietary networking, a two-year warranty and an expensive service agreement is not cheap.

Get accessibility right on the first drawing

Permit forms, plan-review requirements and inspections depend on the local authority having jurisdiction (AHJ). Ask the local building department or electrical inspector which electrical permit application, drawings and calculations to submit, and what inspections and final sign-off the installation requires. A licensed electrical contractor should confirm the requirements for the project address before work begins.

Accessibility is the part people retrofit and regret. The U.S. Access Board publishes design recommendations for accessible charging stations covering space dimensions, access aisles, slopes, reach ranges, cable management and the route back to the building. Read it before the layout is fixed. Moving a bollard on paper is free; moving it after it is set in concrete is not.

Commission it, then pilot it

Commissioning proves the installed system matches the approved design. Test every connector, credential, price rule, network link, load-management response and support path. Record serial numbers, circuit IDs, breaker locations, firmware versions, warranty terms and contractor contacts in one place, while the installer is still on site.

Open a handful of ports to real residents for a week or two before full launch. Pilots surface what drawings cannot: unreadable signs, dead cellular coverage in a basement garage, a payment flow that fails on one carrier, cars parked across an access aisle.

Fix those, write a one-page guide, then open the rest. Walk the installation sequence itself before you commit to a date.

Keep records so phase two is easier

Track uptime, sessions, energy delivered, failed starts, support tickets, repair time, electricity cost and parking complaints. Review them on a schedule. Those numbers tell you whether to add ports, change prices, tighten the rules, or reserve more capacity.

Keep the drawings, permits, inspection sign-offs, warranties, network contract, utility correspondence and invoices together. The next expansion should start from verified facts about your building rather than a fresh investigation of the same questions. If you are still shaping the numbers, where the money actually goes is the place to start.

One meeting decides whether you are ready

Close the discovery stage with a short meeting: whoever can approve spending, the property manager, the electrical lead, and whoever controls parking and talks to residents. Review the verified site facts, the open utility questions, the expected users, the accessibility requirements, the ownership options and the budget range.

Do not use that meeting to pick a charger off a slide. Assign every unknown to a named person with a date. The output is a written decision to investigate, design, pilot, phase, or stop.

Here is the test. If nobody in the room can say who authorizes electrical work, who controls the parking, who signs a utility agreement and who operates the service afterward, the project is not ready to go out to bid.

Common questions