Strata GovernanceJuly 9, 2026 · 7 min read

EV Charging in BC Stratas: Planning Infrastructure the Right Way

EV charger requests are landing in BC strata inboxes now. A plain-English guide to planning electrical capacity, approvals, and fair cost-sharing for small buildings.

Electric vehicles have quietly become ordinary in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. Two or three years ago, an EV in the parkade was a talking point. Now the first charging request usually arrives as a friendly email to council: "Can I put a charger in my stall?" It sounds like a simple yes-or-no. For a small strata, it almost never is.

The real trap is handling those requests one at a time. The first owner runs a circuit to their stall. The second does the same. By the time the fifth or sixth owner asks, an electrician tells your council the building's electrical service is nearly maxed out. Suddenly you're not approving a charger, you're funding an infrastructure upgrade under pressure, with owners already annoyed about being told "no" for reasons that have nothing to do with them.

This guide walks BC councils through planning EV charging in your strata the right way: assessing capacity before you say yes, understanding who approves what, and choosing a cost-sharing model that is fair and defensible. It is written for the kind of building we manage every day: boutique, under 150 units, where there is no spare cash lying around for surprises.

This is general information, not legal or electrical advice. Confirm the specifics for your building with a strata lawyer and a qualified electrician.

Why "first come, first served" backfires

Every Level 2 charger draws real, sustained electrical load, often for hours overnight. Your building's electrical service was sized for the suites and common areas as originally designed, not for a parkade full of cars charging at once. When you approve chargers one by one, you consume that spare capacity invisibly until it is gone.

The owner who happens to ask ninth then gets refused, not because of anything they did, but because the first eight quietly used up the headroom. That is exactly the kind of arbitrary-feeling outcome that turns into a Civil Resolution Tribunal complaint or a bruising AGM. It also tends to reward whoever moved fastest rather than whoever the building can best accommodate.

Planning building-wide flips the question. Instead of asking "can we squeeze in one more?" you ask "what does widespread EV adoption look like in our building, and how do we get there affordably and fairly?" That is a governance question, and it belongs on council's agenda now, not after the capacity is spent.

Start with an electrical capacity assessment

Before council votes on anything, bring in a qualified electrical engineer or electrical contractor to assess your building's spare capacity and model what adding chargers would actually do. This is the single most important step, and skipping it is how stratas end up with expensive surprises.

The concept that changes everything here is load management (sometimes called an energy management system). Instead of giving every stall its own full-power dedicated circuit, which most older buildings simply cannot support without a costly service upgrade, a load-management system shares the available power intelligently across all the chargers. Cars charge a bit more slowly at peak times, but everyone still gets a full charge overnight. In practice, this often lets a building support many more chargers on its existing electrical service than a stall-by-stall approach ever could.

An assessment typically produces an "EV-ready" plan: how many chargers the building can support now, what infrastructure (panel capacity, conduit, load management) is needed to scale up, and roughly what it costs. Rebate and incentive programs for stratas do exist in BC to help offset the cost of both the planning study and the shared infrastructure. Programs and amounts change often, so confirm what is currently available before you budget around any number.

Who approves what: common property, bylaws, and votes

Here is the part councils most often get wrong. In most BC stratas, parking stalls are either common property or limited common property assigned to a unit, not something the owner privately owns. Installing a charger almost always means altering common property, running conduit, mounting equipment, tapping into shared electrical, which triggers the Strata Property Act's rules on alterations and usually a vote at a general meeting. If you are fuzzy on the difference, our guide on common property versus limited common property is a good primer.

The province has amended the rules in recent years specifically to make EV charging easier to approve, including a duty on stratas to consider owner requests reasonably rather than reflexively refusing them. The exact voting threshold and process have shifted and may keep shifting, so do not rely on an old bylaw or an old memory here. Confirm the current requirements with a strata lawyer before you set your approval process, and understand the mechanics of changing your bylaws through the proper vote if you need a new EV policy.

Whatever the current threshold, adopt a clear EV charging bylaw or policy. A good one covers installation standards (licensed electrician, permits), who carries insurance and liability, how electricity use is metered and billed, and who is responsible for maintaining and eventually replacing the equipment. Getting this in writing up front prevents the disputes that vague, case-by-case approvals invariably create.

Who pays: cost-sharing that holds up

Cost is where EV projects live or die politically. There are three broad models, and the right one depends on your building.

User-pay, stall by stall. The individual owner funds their own charger and pays for their own electricity through sub-metering. Simple and fair per person, but it builds no shared infrastructure and tends to hit the capacity wall we described above.
Shared backbone, user-pay chargers. The strata funds the EV-ready backbone (panel capacity, conduit, load management) as a common expense, then each owner pays to connect and operate their own charger. This is increasingly the recommended approach because it plans for the whole building while keeping personal costs personal.
Fully strata-owned. The strata installs, owns, and bills for the chargers. It captures the most control but adds ongoing management and billing overhead that a small self-managed council may not want.

The fairness question underneath all of this is whether every owner should help pay for infrastructure only some will use today. There is no single right answer, but two principles help. First, meter the electricity so EV owners' charging costs land on them and do not quietly get absorbed into everyone's strata fees; our breakdown of what strata fees actually cover is useful context for that conversation. Second, for the larger shared upgrade, weigh your funding options honestly, reserve fund, special levy, or a strata loan, using our comparison of how BC stratas fund big projects.

Fold EV planning into your depreciation report and reserve

EV charging infrastructure is now a long-lived building system, and it should be treated like one in your financial planning. When you commission or update your depreciation report, ask that shared EV infrastructure be included so its future replacement is accounted for rather than sprung on owners later. If you are already thinking about the reporting timeline, our overview of the BC depreciation report deadline is a helpful starting point.

The same logic applies to your contingency reserve fund. Building capacity a little at a time, and funding it gradually, is almost always cheaper and calmer than an emergency special levy after the parkade has run out of power. Planning EV charging early is really just good reserve-fund discipline wearing a modern label.

Frequently asked questions

Does our strata have to allow EV chargers? BC's rules have moved firmly toward requiring stratas to consider owner charging requests reasonably rather than refusing them out of hand. That is not the same as an unconditional right to install anything, anywhere. The safest course is to have a clear policy and to get legal advice on the current approval standard before you refuse a request.

Can we say no because the building can't handle the load? Genuine electrical capacity limits are a legitimate consideration, but "we think it's too much" is not the same as a documented assessment. This is exactly why the capacity study matters. If your building truly cannot support more chargers without an upgrade, an engineer's report is far stronger footing than a hunch.

Who pays for the electricity an EV uses? Best practice is to meter or sub-meter each charger so the owner using it pays for their own power. Without metering, EV charging costs can quietly get spread across all owners through strata fees, which is neither fair nor sustainable as adoption grows.

Do we need a bylaw before we approve chargers? You do not always need one to approve a single installation, but you should adopt one before EV requests become routine. A clear bylaw sets installation standards, insurance and liability, metering, and maintenance responsibility, and it saves council from making inconsistent one-off decisions.

How much does an EV-ready assessment cost? It varies widely with building size, age, and electrical complexity, so we won't quote a figure that would only mislead you. Rebate programs for stratas can offset part of the cost. Get a couple of quotes from qualified firms and confirm current incentives before budgeting.