Case Study: How a Garden-Style Apartment Community Rolled Out EV Charging Across Surface Lots

Maple Ridge Commons is a representative example, drawn from several real garden-style apartment retrofits, of a property type that managers know well: 240 rental units spread across twelve two- and three-story buildings, with roughly 320 surface parking spaces, including a mix of open stalls and covered carports. The community was built in the late 1990s, and its electrical service is split across four separate meter banks rather than concentrated in one room, which is typical for sprawling, low-rise sites.

By 2025 the property manager was fielding a steady stream of EV charging requests. A handful of residents had already started running extension cords from their units out to the carports overnight, which is both a fire hazard and a violation of most leases. The owner wanted a plan that could be installed in stages, would not require an expensive utility service upgrade up front, and could generate enough revenue to cover its own operating costs.

The core challenge was geography. Unlike a high-rise with a single garage, a garden-style site means parking is scattered hundreds of feet from the nearest electrical panel, so trenching and conduit, not the chargers themselves, become the largest line item.

The first step was a paid site assessment by a licensed electrician working alongside an EV charging consultant. They mapped each of the four service points and found that two of them had meaningful spare capacity, about 150 amps combined, while the other two were nearly maxed out by existing building loads. This single finding shaped the entire rollout: the first chargers would go where the power already existed.

In parallel, the manager surveyed residents to size real demand rather than guessing. Gauging demand before committing capital is one of the most important planning steps, because over-building wastes money and under-building creates a waitlist that frustrates residents.

The survey results were clear and actionable:

Because the cars sit parked all night, the team chose networked Level 2 chargers rated at 7.7 kilowatts, which fully recharge a typical EV in a few hours. Level 2 hardware is far cheaper to install than DC fast charging and is the right fit for residential dwell times. The chargers were specified as OCPP-compliant, an open communication standard that lets the property switch software vendors later without replacing the hardware.

The key engineering decision was dynamic load management. Rather than upgrading the electrical service to power every charger at full output simultaneously, the system automatically shares the available capacity among active vehicles, slowing each one slightly during peak periods. This let the community install 16 ports in Phase 1 on existing capacity, avoiding a service upgrade that alone could have cost 80,000 dollars or more.

All work followed NEC Article 625, the section of the National Electrical Code governing EV charging equipment, including dedicated circuits and proper disconnects. Crucially, the Phase 1 trenches were sized to carry conduit for future phases, so later expansion would not require digging up the same parking lots twice.

Phase 1 delivered 16 networked Level 2 ports at a total project cost of about 92,000 dollars, or roughly 5,750 dollars per port. That per-port figure is higher than a single-family garage install precisely because of the trenching and long conduit runs out to the carports; the chargers themselves were a minority of the budget.

Two incentives materially lowered the net cost. The local electric utility ran a make-ready program that reimbursed the property for the wiring and infrastructure leading up to each charger, covering about 2,000 dollars per port. Separately, because the property is owned by a taxable entity and sits in an eligible census tract, the ownership consulted its tax advisor about the federal 30C Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit, which can offset up to 30 percent of eligible costs, capped at 100,000 dollars per item of equipment.

The combined effect of those programs brought the net out-of-pocket cost down substantially:

Networked chargers made cost recovery straightforward. The management company set a price per kilowatt-hour that covered the underlying electricity plus a small margin for software fees and maintenance, and residents paid through a mobile app or an RFID card tap. Sessions and revenue are tracked automatically, so the property is not subsidizing one resident's fuel out of everyone's dues or rent.

To keep things fair on a shared lot, the chargers were installed as first-come, first-served public stalls near the buildings with spare capacity rather than assigned to specific units. A two-hour idle fee after a session ends discourages drivers from leaving a fully charged car parked in a charging stall all day, which keeps the ports turning over.

Communication mattered as much as hardware. The manager sent advance notices explaining the pricing, the construction schedule, and the parking changes, which headed off most complaints before they started.

Phase 1 went from signed contract to 16 live ports in about five months, with permitting and the utility make-ready review consuming a meaningful share of that timeline. Within the first quarter, evening utilization regularly exceeded 70 percent, and a short waitlist confirmed the demand the survey had predicted. The per-use revenue covered the networking and electricity costs, so the chargers did not become a drain on the operating budget.

The project also validated the phased approach. Because conduit was already in the ground, Phase 2 was quoted at a noticeably lower per-port cost, and the load-management system absorbed the new chargers without triggering the service upgrade the owner had feared.

For boards and property managers planning a similar rollout, the team distilled a few lessons: