T3.1 EV parking new construction *
Require developers of large commercial and residential buildings to dedicate a percentage of parking spots for plug-in electric vehicles and to install charging infrastructure.
RCW 19.27.540 requires the State Building Code Council to develop rules by July 2021 requiring wiring or suitable conduit for 240V charging for the greater of one parking space or 10% of the parking spaces at all new buildings that provide on-site parking. The electrical rooms have to be sized to provide charging for a minimum of 20% of the spaces. (In “mercantile, educational, and assembly” buildings, the requirements only apply to the parking for employees.) In addition, buildings classified as R-3, utility, and miscellaneous were exempted. The 2018 International Building Code, which the State adopts and then amends in some ways, defines R-3 zoning as including “buildings that do not contain more than two dwelling units,” as well as some congregate living facilities, care facilities and lodging houses. HB1287 recently removed the exemption for R-3 buildings. This seems to mean that single family housing and duplexes were exempted from the requirement under RCW 19.27.540 and have now been made subject to it by the removal of the exemption, but reportedly the Building Code Council is in discussions about whether that was the Legislature’s intent. (If single family residences and duplexes aren’t part of the R-3 category then it would seem that they weren’t ever exempted from the requirement, and should have been subject to it all along.)
The local jurisdictions have the authority to increase the code requirements for non-residential construction and for multi-family buildings over three stories. We might require wiring or conduit for a larger percentage of the spaces in these buildings, or for all of them, since it’s clear that more than 20% of the vehicles parking at them will be electric within the expected life of the buildings. Seattle’s EV Ready building ordinance, which was adopted in 2019, already has some higher residential requirements than the State’s new ones, requiring those buildings to have at least 20% of their parking spaces be EV-ready (with tiered requirements for various numbers of surface parking spots). (According to the staff report for that ordinance, load management software may well be able to allow charging all the parking in one of these spaces in the long run from the capacity for the 20% requirement.) This would require charging the vehicles more slowly, though, since the software basically divides the available power among a number of loads.
King County’s new charging ordinance is more ambitious. It used the zoning code to require on or off site parking for new construction to include wiring for a charger at one parking space in single detached dwelling units, townhouses and cottage housing; installed chargers at 10% of the spaces for new apartments; and wiring for them at an additional 25% of those spaces. New non-residential buildings, buildings for group residences or temporary lodging, parking lots, and park and rides are required to have installed chargers at 5% of the spaces and wiring for them at 10% of the spaces. (These requirements also apply to remodels that increase the value of existing buildings of most of these kinds by more than 50%, and to expansions of parking areas by more than 50%.) The ordinance allows for some exceptions, requires affordable housing to provide chargers for 5% of the spaces now and , and includes rules about providing accessible spaces, and provisions about load sharing. There are staff comments about some issues about combining accessible spaces, EV charging spaces, and spaces for ordinary cars in small lots on p.13-14 of the committee packet.
HB1287 also requires creating a tool for forecasting and mapping EV charging infrastructure needs; addressing those in utilities’ integrated resource planning, and directs the Building Code Council to provide for those needs in future code updates.
Pacific Gas & Electric did 2016 studies of EV readiness for San Francisco and Oakland using detailed RS Means construction estimates. They concluded that installing complete or nearly complete 240-volt 40-amp electric circuits as a retrofit is several times more expensive than installing this infrastructure during new construction.
Atlanta has EV readiness requirements for residential construction, and for commercial. Miami-Dade County has an ordinance for multifamily and commercial construction.