New Castle County, Delaware Passes EV-Capable Ordinance

For All New Residential Construction

The New Castle County Council in Delaware passed an EV-Capable ordinance for new residential construction to ensure that homes will have the capability to have Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment installed quickly and affordably in the future. Ordinance 21-116, sponsored by Councilperson Dee Durham, will require a junction box or receptacle within five feet of the parking space, conduit from the receptacle to the electrical panel and sufficient space in the panel to install a breaker for an EVSE.

For new multi-unit dwellings, the ordinance requires 10% (amended from the proposed 50%) of parking spots to be EV-capable. There must be a minimum of two EV-capable spots with one of them required to be designated as handicapped accessible. If approved by the County Executive, the ordinance will apply to all new construction permit applications beginning on July 1, 2022.

Councilperson Durham said that she and her staff talked to people all around the country in preparation for this bill. She originally wanted the ordinance to require “EV-Ready” which would include full wiring and circuit breakers but learned that the County didn’t have the regulatory authority over the electrical code. Those changes will have to be made at the state level since the state oversees the electric code.

The preamble of the New Castle County ordinance cites Howard and Montgomery Counties in Maryland as locations that already require new residential construction to 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 Maryland passed an ordinance in 2018 to require EV charging infrastructure at new residential construction. Howard County’s EV-Ready code has become a model for the nation and is cited as an example in the Great Plains Institute’s “Summary of Best Practices in Electric Vehicle Ordinances”.

Stakeholder Input

The New Castle County Delaware ordinance involved a lot of stakeholder input and took a lot time and deliberation to arrive at the version that passed last night. Here is a synopsis from the bill of the changes from the originally proposed legislation to the final version.

• clarifies that EVSE may be located no more than five feet (rather than three feet) from the EV-capable parking space,
• reduces the required amount of EV-capable parking spots in the parking lots of commercial residences from 50% to 10% with a minimum of two spots (one of which must be ADA-compliant);
• excludes homes with electrical service panels in the garage from the requirement of having an EV-capable parking space;
• removes the pricing language from the “mandatory option” provision,
• clarifies that the “mandatory option” of upgrading to an EV-ready parking space includes provisions to allow residents to access any available electrical rate discounts for Plug-In Vehicles; and
• changes the effective date from January 1, 2022 to July 1, 2022, and shall apply to all building permits submitted after that date.

The 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.”

For more about EV-Ready ordinances and laws, see the PlugInSites Legislation Reference – New Construction EV-Ready Requirements.