EV Compliance Planning Tool
EV Mandate & Capacity Planner
Find the EV parking rules that apply to your project, estimate required spaces, and compare standard electrical capacity against PlugOp-style energy management.
Enter project details
Start with the total number of parking spaces planned for the project.
Choose a covered jurisdiction
Select a highlighted state, then choose the applicable requirement.
Covered states & districts
Select a state above to see its requirements.
Definitions
EV-capable, EV-ready, and EVSE-installed
- EV-capable
- Raceway or conduit, panel capacity, and space reserved for a future circuit, but no conductors pulled and no charger installed. It is the cheapest tier to build during construction and the one that leaves the most work for later — a future installation still needs conductors, a breaker, and a charger.
- EV-ready
- A dedicated branch circuit run to the parking space and terminated at an outlet or junction box, sized for Level 2 charging. Adding a charger later becomes a mount-and-connect job rather than an electrical project, which is why this tier often carries the best value in new construction.
- EVSE-installed
- A working charger in place at the stall, energized and usually networked. This is the only tier residents can use on day one, and the only one that satisfies requirements written in terms of installed charging equipment.
Capacity
What decides how many chargers a site can support
The constraint on most multifamily properties is not parking or budget but available electrical capacity. A Level 2 charger on a dedicated circuit is typically provisioned at 40 amps, so a handful of stations can consume the spare capacity of an entire building service. Once that runs out, the next charger requires a service upgrade, and the project changes cost category.
Managed charging changes the arithmetic by allocating available capacity across ports instead of reserving peak draw for each one. Because vehicles at a residential property charge overnight and rarely all need full power at the same moment, sharing capacity lets a site support several times the port count that dedicated circuits would allow on the same panel.
That is why capacity belongs in the plan as a scenario rather than a fixed number. The same site can need a costly service upgrade or none at all depending on the design assumption, and a proposal that quietly assumes dedicated circuits is not comparable to one that assumes managed charging.
- Service sizeThe main service rating sets the ceiling for everything else, and existing building load determines how much of it is actually free.
- Existing loadMeasured or calculated demand from dwelling units, house panels, and common-area equipment — not the sum of breaker ratings.
- Port countHow many stalls need charging in this phase, and how many the design should leave room for in the next.
- Load managementWhether ports share capacity under managed charging or each gets a dedicated circuit, which changes the capacity requirement several times over.
Common questions
Using the mandate and capacity planner
- What does this planner actually calculate?
- It estimates how many spaces a project is likely to need at each readiness tier under applicable requirements, and shows how electrical capacity requirements change between dedicated circuits and managed charging.
- Is the result a substitute for a code review?
- No. Requirements come from state code, local amendments, and sometimes ordinance or funding conditions, and local interpretation varies. Treat the output as a planning estimate to confirm with the authority having jurisdiction.
- Why do mandates differ so much between jurisdictions?
- Some are written as a percentage of total parking, some as a count tied to unit numbers, and some apply only above a project size threshold or only to new construction and major renovation. The base a percentage applies to also varies.
- How does load management change the numbers?
- Dedicating a circuit to every charger reserves capacity for a peak draw that rarely happens simultaneously. Sharing capacity across ports lets the same service support substantially more chargers, which is often the difference between a project that needs a service upgrade and one that does not.
- Should we build past the minimum requirement?
- Usually for conduit and panel space, rarely for chargers. Pathway and capacity are inexpensive during construction and expensive to retrofit, while chargers can be added as demand appears.
- What do we do with the output?
- Use it to pressure-test a design or a vendor proposal before pricing is locked, and to check whether the electrical scope in a quote assumes managed charging or dedicated circuits.
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