EV-Ready Building Code *

T3.5 EV-ready building code * (Also B4.10)
Require all new residential construction be built EV ready. Create a simple and consistent residential charging station permitting process to reduce costs and time to development.

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 (which includes duplexes, triplexes, multi-family, and neighborhood businesses), utility, and miscellaneous were exempted. HB1287 removes the exemption for R-3 buildings. It 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. Olympia is in the process of adopting expanded commercial and large multifamily requirements as part of the 2021 code upgrade.

In 2019 Seattle adopted an ordinance requiring a fully-wired circuit for an EV charging power outlet for parking spaces in new construction [(23.54.30 (L)]. It requires at least one outlet in the parking for an individual residential unit. If there’s surface parking for multiple residences and one to six spaces, each must be EV-ready; if there are seven to twenty-five spaces at least six must be. If there are more than that (and in multifamily parking garages and other residential uses) 20% of the spaces must be EV-ready, and at least 10% of the spaces in all non-residential uses must be. (The staff report provided some cost estimates, and suggested that in these somewhat larger projects where shared parking facilities have a separate meter load-management technology would allow the infrastructure for 20% of the spaces to fully electrify all the spaces in the facility.)

(I initially thought that the residential & multifamily requirements would have needed approval from the State Building Code Council under RCW 19.27.060(1)(a) and RCW 19.27.074(1)(b), but I emailed them to ask, and apparently L&I is normally in charge of the electrical code, and the Building Code Council didn’t really think the bill should have been written to give them the responsibility to make the charging rules.)