What makes a condo EV charger install different?
Installing an EV charger in a condo means working through the Ontario Condominium Act Section 98 approval process, board timelines, and shared-parking metering. The wiring is the straightforward part. The approval, the insurance, and the billing arrangement are where most owners get stuck for months.
Our crew handles the technical assessment, the load management design, and the submetering versus common-element billing decision, then coordinates with condo insurance and property management. We provide a Certificate of Insurance on request for boards and property managers, which is usually the first thing they ask for.
The physical work depends on your building. A stall near the electrical room may need only a short conduit run. A stall three levels down needs core drilling through concrete slabs, fire-stopped penetrations, and a routed feeder that will not interfere with sprinklers, ventilation, or clearance requirements.
How does the Section 98 approval work?
Section 98 of the Ontario Condominium Act covers changes an owner makes to common elements. Your parking stall is a common element or an exclusive-use common element in almost every building, so a charger falls squarely under it.
The section requires a written agreement between you and the corporation covering who installs it, who maintains it, who insures it, and what happens when you sell. The board cannot refuse a reasonable request without valid grounds, but “we do not have the information to assess this” counts as valid grounds. That is why incomplete applications sit for months.
What a board actually needs to say yes: a documented load study showing the building can carry the charger, a clear billing arrangement so no other owner subsidizes your electricity, proof of the contractor’s insurance and licensing, and a description of the physical work including how penetrations will be fire-stopped. We prepare all of that as the technical package behind your application.
Common problems we solve
- Applications stalled at the board. Usually missing a load study or a billing plan, both of which we supply.
- “The building has no capacity.” Often untrue, and where it is true, an EVEMS design solves it without a new building service.
- Billing disputes. Settled upfront with revenue-grade submetering through Wyse Meter Solutions, Carma, or SWTCH Energy.
- Insurance objections. Answered with a Certificate of Insurance showing $2M general liability, WSIB coverage, and bonding.
- One-off installs that block the next owner. We design the first stall so the building can add more without starting over.
How is the electricity metered and billed?
There are two workable models and one that causes arguments. Dedicated submetering puts a revenue-grade meter on your charger so you are billed for exactly what you draw. Common-element billing runs the load through the corporation’s account with a cost-recovery arrangement written into the Section 98 agreement. The third option, quietly drawing from a shared circuit with no metering, is what boards are trying to prevent, and rightly so.
Most Toronto boards now prefer submetering because it settles the fairness question permanently. Providers such as Wyse Meter Solutions, Carma Corp, and SWTCH Energy handle billing directly with the owner, and networked chargers on the FLO or ChargePoint platforms can integrate access control for shared stalls.
Where the building is capacity-constrained, an EVEMS load management layer sits above all of it, dividing available current between active chargers so the building service is never exceeded. That design is what turns a single approved stall into a building that can support twenty.
What does it cost, and how long does it take?
Per-unit installs run $2,500 to $6,500 CAD. Short runs with existing capacity sit at the low end. Long runs, core drilling between parking levels, and dedicated submetering push toward the top. Full-building MURB infrastructure is scoped and quoted per project alongside our commercial EV charger installation work.
The install itself takes one to two days. Board approval is the long pole: typically 4 to 12 weeks depending on how often your board meets and how complete the first submission is. Starting with a full technical package is the difference between one board meeting and four.
Every install includes the ESA permit, inspection, and Certificate of Acceptance, and we handle the Home Renovation Savings rebate filing where the charger and install qualify.
Ontario Condominium Act Section 98 EV charger approval guide
Section 98 of the Ontario Condominium Act is the legislative section that governs any addition, alteration, or improvement to a unit or the common elements made by an owner. Every EV charger installation in a condominium follows the Section 98 process, whether the charger goes on an owned parking space, an exclusive-use common element, or a shared common-element parking area.
The process runs in stages. First, the owner submits a Section 98 application to the corporation. The application includes an installer’s technical proposal, load calculations, submetering design, and insurance coverage. The board reviews and can approve, request revisions, or decline with reasons. If approved, a Section 98 agreement is signed and typically registered on title so subsequent owners inherit the terms. Then install proceeds and the ESA inspection closes the file.
Where the process breaks down is when the technical package is incomplete. Boards routinely delay applications for load calculations that don’t reference the building’s incoming service, for missing submeter design, or for insurance certificates that don’t name the condo corporation as additional insured. We prepare all of this on your behalf as the standard package, which is why our board approval rates are high and turnaround is measured in weeks rather than months.
Submetering vs common-element billing for condo EV charging
Two ways to handle the electricity cost of an EV charger in a condo, and the choice depends on the board and the corporation’s electrical service architecture.
Dedicated submetering routes the EV load through a revenue-grade meter installed by a licensed submeter provider such as Wyse Meter Solutions, Carma Corp, or SWTCH Energy. The provider handles billing directly to the unit owner monthly, and the corporation is not involved in cost recovery. Meters are M-Bus, Modbus, or IP-networked back to the provider’s platform. This is the cleanest architecture and the one boards prefer for owner-controlled chargers.
Common-element billing routes the load through the corporation’s meter and the corporation bills back through condo fees, a special assessment, or a formula-based allocation. This works for shared or visitor charging where cost recovery per user is impractical, and for very small installations where the meter cost is disproportionate. It requires board bylaw amendments in most cases and clear allocation rules to survive audit.
Section 98 agreements for owner-installed chargers almost always specify dedicated submetering because it isolates cost, avoids inter-owner disputes, and keeps the electricity cost with the actual user.
How to get your condo board to approve an EV charger
The single biggest factor in getting a Section 98 approval quickly is presenting a complete technical package on the first submission. Boards, especially self-managed ones, are cautious about incomplete requests and often defer until the next quarterly meeting for missing information. A complete package on the first pass frequently gets approved between meetings.
The complete package includes: a licensed electrician’s proposal (that is us) with the specific charger model, breaker size, conductor sizing, and mounting location; a load calculation referencing the building’s incoming service and current occupancy; a submeter proposal from Wyse, Carma, or SWTCH with meter model and monthly service cost; a Certificate of Insurance naming the corporation as additional insured for $2M general liability; and an execution plan covering core drilling, fire-stop penetrations, elevator use, and clean-up.
We also draft the Section 98 agreement language for your lawyer or the board’s lawyer to review. That saves weeks of back-and-forth on standard clauses (indemnity, restoration on move-out, meter access, dispute resolution). Boards that have seen 3 or more of these packages recognize the pattern and approve faster on the fourth.
Load management for condo and shared parking EV charging
Load management in a condo garage differs from a house because the incoming service usually supports 10 to 30 percent of stalls simultaneously, not 100 percent. That constraint makes shared-circuit load management not just economical but structurally necessary once the number of chargers passes the panel’s diversified capacity.
The typical architecture: an OCPP-networked charger (ChargePoint CP4000, FLO CoRe+, SWTCH Level 2) reports real-time load to a back-end platform, which throttles individual chargers to keep the aggregate under the branch feeder limit. Sixteen chargers on a 200A feeder that could not simultaneously deliver 48A each will happily deliver 12A to all sixteen, or 48A to two while the rest wait, based on plug-in times and priority rules.
Full DCC-9 or DCC-12 style hardware EVEMS also works at the branch feeder level in a garage, where a single EVEMS controls a bank of chargers on a shared subpanel. The cost per stall is lower this way for garages doing 8 or more stalls at once.
How much does condo EV charger installation cost in Toronto?
A single condo unit install with a hardwired Level 2 charger and dedicated submetering runs $2,500 to $6,500 CAD in Toronto, depending on the run length from the electrical room to the parking stall and the complexity of the fire-stop penetrations and core drilling.
The cost breakdown looks like: charger unit $600 to $1,200 CAD, hardwired install labour and materials $1,200 to $2,800 CAD, core drilling and fire-stop $200 to $600 CAD, submeter installation and provider setup $400 to $800 CAD, ESA permit and inspection $200 CAD, and Section 98 documentation and coordination $200 to $500 CAD.
Bulk installs of 8 or more stalls at once come in cheaper per stall through economies of scale on the meter setup, the shared conduit runs, and the shared board-approval workflow. We regularly quote condo boards for 12, 20, and 40-stall initial builds with future expansion routes.
Condo EV feasibility study and Section 98 turnkey package
For condo corporations planning a building-wide EV charging strategy, we deliver a feasibility study that answers three questions: how many stalls can the incoming service support, what is the cost to install 10, 25, 50, or 100 percent of stalls, and what does a phased 3-to-5-year rollout look like with load management scaling.
The feasibility study includes a full building electrical audit, existing service capacity and utilization measurement, transformer and switchgear analysis, a stall-count-versus-cost curve, a load management architecture recommendation, and a phased capex plan with ZEVIP grant application support where applicable.
Cost of the feasibility study itself runs $2,500 to $6,000 CAD depending on building size and complexity, and is typically credited against the first phase of installations. Boards that commission the study upfront avoid the common trap of approving individual owner requests one at a time until the branch feeder is oversubscribed and further requests have to be declined.
