BC Strata Electrical Planning Reports: The December 31, 2026 Deadline

If your strata corporation has five or more strata lots and sits in Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley or the Capital Regional District, you need an electrical planning report by December 31, 2026. Everywhere else in BC the date is December 31, 2028.

It is a new obligation under the Strata Property Regulation, most councils have not started, and the pool of people legally qualified to produce the report is narrow. If your building is on the 2026 clock, this is now a this-year agenda item, not a next-year one.

This article is general information about the Strata Property Act and Regulation — not legal or engineering advice. Deadlines and requirements can change, and every building is different. Confirm your strata's obligation against the current regulation and with a qualified provider.

What an electrical planning report actually is

An electrical planning report (EPR) is a capacity study of your building's electrical system. It answers one deceptively simple question: how much electricity can this building actually deliver, and how much of that is already spoken for?

It is not an EV charging design. It is not a construction drawing set. It is not a quote for an upgrade. It is the study you have to do before any of those become sensible conversations — the electrical equivalent of a depreciation report, in that it turns "we should probably look into that" into a document with numbers in it.

The Province's stated purpose is to get ahead of electrification. Stratas across BC are being asked, all at once, to accommodate EV charging, heat pumps, induction cooking and eventually a good deal more, in buildings whose electrical services were sized decades ago for none of it. Some buildings have generous spare capacity. Some have almost none. Very few councils currently know which one they are.

Who has to get one, and by when

The obligation applies to strata corporations with five or more strata lots. Stratas of four or fewer lots are out of scope, the same carve-out that applies to depreciation reports.

By December 31, 2026

• The Metro Vancouver Regional District
• The Fraser Valley Regional District
• The Capital Regional District

Islands within those districts that are accessible only by air or water — Bowen Island and the Southern Gulf Islands, for example — are excluded from the earlier date and fall into the 2028 group instead.

By December 31, 2028

Every other strata corporation in British Columbia, including those island communities.

New and phased stratas

A newly created strata corporation gets five years from the deposit of the strata plan. Phased strata corporations have their own timing rules in the regulation, and a phased development may end up needing more than one report as later phases add strata lots. If your building is still being phased in, read the regulation carefully rather than assuming a single deadline applies.

For most stratas this is a one-time report, not a recurring five-year cycle like the depreciation report. That said, if you materially change your building's load — a major EV rollout, a heat pump conversion — the numbers in the report stop describing your building, and you should say so out loud at a general meeting rather than quietly relying on a stale document.

What the regulation requires the report to contain

The content is prescribed. A report that omits these elements is not a compliant report, however impressive the cover page:

• The current capacity of the strata corporation's electrical system
• A list of existing demands on that system — suites, common area lighting, elevators, HVAC, any existing EV charging
• An estimate of peak electrical demand and spare capacity
• An estimate of the capacity needed to support anticipated future demands, specifically including EV charging and heat pumps
• Recommendations for managing and reducing demand, and for upgrades that would make more capacity available

That last item is where the practical value sits. A good provider will show you that load management — an energy management system that shares available capacity between chargers rather than sizing for everyone charging at once — can often defer or shrink a service upgrade that would otherwise be a seven-figure conversation.

Who is qualified to prepare it

The regulation restricts this work, and hiring outside the list does not produce a compliant report no matter how competent the person is.

For Part 3 or Part 9 buildings (that is, essentially any strata building):

• A professional engineer or professional licensee (engineering) registered with Engineers and Geoscientists BC
• An applied science technologist or certified technician registered with ASTTBC

For Part 9 buildings only — the smaller, wood-frame, low-rise side of the code:

• A journeyperson in the construction electrician or industrial electrician trade

Before you sign anything, ask for the individual's registration number and confirm it with the registering body directly. "We have engineers on staff" is not the same statement as "the person sealing your report is registered and will sign it."

What it costs, and what actually drives the number

There is no published fee schedule and any firm quoting a fixed price sight-unseen is guessing. What we can be precise about is what moves the number, which is the more useful thing to know when you are comparing three quotes:

• How many buildings and how many electrical services. A single tower with one main service is a very different job from six townhouse blocks with six services.
• Whether you have drawings. If your as-built electrical drawings and single-line diagram exist and are accurate, a large chunk of the field work disappears. If they do not exist, someone has to trace the distribution by hand.
• Whether metering or data logging is required. Estimating peak demand from nameplate ratings is cheap and conservative. Logging actual demand at the main service over a period of weeks costs more and usually finds you more usable capacity — which can pay for itself many times over.
• Suite metering arrangement. Individually metered suites, bulk-metered buildings and buildings with a house panel serving everything all calculate differently.
• Parkade configuration. How the parkade is fed, and whether stalls are strata lot, limited common property or common property, drives how much of the EV question the report can usefully answer.
• Scope creep into design. A report that stops at capacity costs less than one that carries on into concept-level upgrade options and budget-grade cost estimates. Both are legitimate; decide which you are buying.

How to scope it so the quotes are comparable

The single most common procurement mistake is asking three firms "what do you charge for an electrical planning report" and receiving three numbers that describe three different jobs.

Write one scope, send the same scope to everyone, and ask for a fixed fee against it. The Condominium Home Owners Association of BC has published guidance and template terms of reference for exactly this purpose, and there is no reason to draft yours from a blank page. BC Hydro has also published preparation guidance aimed at the professionals who write these reports — worth skimming so you know what good looks like.

At minimum your scope should state:

• The number of buildings, strata lots, electrical services and parking stalls
• What drawings and past electrical reports you can provide, and their condition
• Whether you want demand data logged, and for how long
• Whether you want concept-level upgrade options and order-of-magnitude costs included
• Whether the provider will present findings to owners at a general meeting, and whether that is in the fee
• The deliverable format, the number of revisions included, and the delivery date

The discipline is the same one you would apply to a roofing tender: one scope, one deliverable, three prices for the same work.

Paying for it

The report is a common expense. There are two normal routes:

1. 1.Budget it in the operating fund. If the report lands in your next fiscal year, put it in the proposed budget and it is approved with the budget by majority vote at the AGM.
2. 2.Spend from the contingency reserve fund. A CRF expenditure that is consistent with the purposes of the fund can be approved by resolution at a general meeting.

If your deadline is December 2026 and your AGM is after that, do not wait for the AGM. Call a special general meeting, or check whether an unapproved-expenditure route is genuinely available to you — but the clean answer is to put the resolution to owners.

What happens if you miss the deadline

There is no automatic government fine, and no inspector is coming. What there is, is exposure:

• An owner can apply to the Civil Resolution Tribunal for an order that the strata corporation comply with the Act and regulation. This is the mechanism that actually gets used.
• Council members owe duties. Under the Act, council members must act honestly and in good faith and exercise the care of a reasonably prudent person. Ignoring a known statutory deadline sits awkwardly against that standard.
• It shows up on the Form B. The electrical planning report is a permanent record of the strata corporation and must be disclosed and attached on a Form B Information Certificate when one is requested. Every buyer's lawyer and every lender will see whether you have one.
• You lose the queue position. There is a finite number of qualified providers and a very large number of stratas on the same two deadlines. Late means expensive and slow, in that order.

A short council checklist

• Confirm your lot count: five or more means you are in scope
• Confirm your regional district and therefore your date — 2026 or 2028
• Gather as-built electrical drawings, the single-line diagram, and any past electrical reports
• Draft one written scope and send it to three qualified providers
• Verify each provider's professional registration directly with the registering body
• Get the funding resolution on a general meeting agenda in time
• File the completed report as a permanent record and add it to your Form B package
• Bring the recommendations to owners before anyone proposes an EV or heat pump project

Frequently asked questions

Which BC stratas need an electrical planning report? Strata corporations with five or more strata lots. Stratas of four or fewer lots are exempt. The deadline is December 31, 2026 for stratas in the Metro Vancouver, Fraser Valley and Capital regional districts, and December 31, 2028 for the rest of BC, including islands accessible only by air or water.

Is an electrical planning report the same as an EV charging plan? No. The report tells you how much electrical capacity your building has and how much is spare. An EV charging plan is a design that spends that capacity. You need the report first, and it will often change what the plan should look like.

Who is allowed to prepare the report? A professional engineer or professional licensee registered with Engineers and Geoscientists BC, or an applied science technologist or certified technician registered with ASTTBC. For Part 9 buildings only, a journeyperson construction or industrial electrician may also prepare one. Verify registration before you sign.

How much does an electrical planning report cost? There is no published rate, and cost varies widely with the number of buildings and services, whether usable electrical drawings exist, whether demand is logged rather than estimated, and how far the report carries into upgrade options. Send one written scope to three qualified providers and ask for a fixed fee against it.

What happens if our strata misses the deadline? No automatic fine, but an owner can apply to the Civil Resolution Tribunal for an order to comply, the gap is disclosed to every buyer through the Form B, and council members are answerable to owners for a missed statutory obligation. Providers also get scarcer and pricier as the date approaches.

Related reading

• EV Charging in BC Stratas: Planning Infrastructure the Right Way
• BC Strata Depreciation Reports: The 2026 Deadline Explained
• What Is a Form B Information Certificate in BC?
• New contingency reserve fund rules for BC stratas
• The BC Strata AGM Prep Guide: Notice, Quorum & Timeline

The Province's own overview sits at gov.bc.ca's electrical planning report page, and the requirements themselves are in Part 5.2 of the Strata Property Regulation.

Keeping statutory deadlines off your council's worry list is a large part of what strata management is for. Onehive manages small and mid-sized strata communities across Metro Vancouver — request a proposal.