As Canada's Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate drives new-vehicle sales toward 100% electric by 2035, multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) — condominiums and apartments — face a growing need to provide charging. Electric vehicles are expected to climb from roughly 1% of vehicles on the road today to about 43% by 2035, and to 100% by 2045. This white paper looks at how charging infrastructure can practically be rolled out in existing condominiums, and argues that federal cost-sharing should better match the realities of these buildings.
Electrical capacity is usually not the problem
A common worry is whether a building's electrical service can handle many chargers. In practice, intelligent, networked load-management systems solve this for almost every building. Because vehicles sit parked for long periods, smart chargers can share the available capacity and stagger charging overnight, so cars are ready by morning — typically with no utility upgrade required. (The average driver needs only about 10 kWh per day to cover the national average of 55 km.)
The real challenge: rolling out infrastructure over decades
In a 100-unit condominium, matching Canada's EV adoption rate means roughly one new charger is needed every three months, scattered randomly across the parking area over some 25 years. Parking spaces usually cannot be reshuffled to group the installations together. That leaves three options:
- Install infrastructure and a charger each time a resident needs one. This avoids large upfront costs and obsolete hardware, but the piecemeal wiring becomes a costly, sub-optimal patchwork of panels and conduit — and the short, unpredictable timelines don't fit cost-sharing programs.
- Install all infrastructure and all chargers now. This gives an optimized, program-eligible installation, but most chargers would sit unused for years, risk becoming obsolete, and lock the building out of fast-evolving technology such as vehicle-to-building (bi-directional) charging.
- Install all infrastructure now, then add chargers as residents need them. This is the most practical approach: optimized wiring plus just-in-time chargers purchased by residents, exactly as happens in private homes. The catch is that today's federal program (ZEVIP) won't cost-share an infrastructure-only project, so the high upfront infrastructure cost stalls condo boards — which typically need 80% owner approval to proceed.
An "EV ready" precedent
British Columbia already points the way: BC Hydro rebates 50% (up to $600 per connector) for charging infrastructure without requiring chargers to be connected. This "EV ready" approach puts existing condominiums on the same footing as the EV-ready requirements now legislated for new buildings in many jurisdictions.
The proposal
ZEVIP could add a stream that cost-shares infrastructure-only ("EV ready") retrofits for existing condominiums, with the building reporting charger usage annually until most connectors are installed and in use. The benefits:
- Residents who buy an EV get immediate access to a charger.
- Government gets real, undistorted, long-term adoption and usage data.
- Public funds are not spent on unused chargers, and instead stretch across more current and future EV owners.
- Buildings stay open to future vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-building (V2X) technology.
This white paper was authored by Stephen Mildenberger (Lead Associate for MCC Energy Strategies on MURBs and a board member of the Electric Vehicle Association of Atlantic Canada) and Bruce McCulloch, with input from SWTCH Energy and Halifax condominium and property-management partners.