Requirement for New Residential Construction
The County Council of New Castle County, DE is considering an ordinance to require that new housing have the wiring and other necessary capacity to more easily install EV charging stations in the future.
The proposed ordinance states, “residents of New Castle County will increasingly demand that our housing stock be outfitted with the equipment necessary to re-charge electric vehicles” and “retrofitting existing homes to install electric vehicle charging stations is both time consuming and expensive, unless the home was initially designed and constructed to facilitate the easy installation of such charging stations.”
The ordinance cites Howard and Montgomery Counties in Maryland as locations that currently require that all new residential construction be EV-Ready.
WHEREAS, several jurisdictions, such as Howard and Montgomery Counties in Maryland, the City of Atlanta, and the entire State of California currently require that all new construction either provide for the installation of electric vehicle charging stations and/or that all new construction be “EV-ready”
Howard County Council passed an ordinance in 2018 to require EV charging infrastructure at new residential construction. That legislation was one of the first of its kind and has become a model for the nation. Howard County’s EV-Ready code is cited as an example in the Great Plains Institute’s “Summary of Best Practices in Electric Vehicle Ordinances”.
The New Castle County ordinance would require one parking space to be EV-ready for each new single-family home, duplexes and townhouses with garages. Councilwoman Dee Durham, the legislation’s lead sponsor, told Delaware Public Media, “It’s cheaper to do it ahead of time than after the fact.”
For multi-unit dwellings, the ordinance would require 5% of the total available parking spaces to have a Level 2 EVSE installed and 50% of the total spaces must be EV-Ready.
New Castle County Council Meeting on Tuesday
UPDATE – The ordinance will now be introduced at the September 28, 2021 meeting.
The New Castle County Council is scheduled to consider proposed ordinance 21-094 at a meeting on September 28, 2021 at 6:30 PM. Members of the public may be provided an opportunity to make comments according to the agenda.
For more information about this subject, see the PlugInSites Legislation Reference – New Construction EV-Ready Requirements.
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