Commercial EV charging

Commercial EV charger installation in Edmonton: site assessment, load management, multi-unit residential parkades, networked chargers, permits and utility coordination.

Who needs it

Employees, tenants, customers and condo owners are all asking for charging. For a business, chargers can attract staff and customers. For a condo or rental building, they are quickly becoming an expected amenity. The challenge is doing it in a way that works for the first few drivers and still makes sense when half the parking needs charging.

• Workplaces and office buildings
• Retail, hotels and restaurants
• Condos and apartment parkades
• Municipal and institutional sites
• Dealerships and service centres

A good commercial plan answers a few questions up front: how many drivers need charging now and in five years, how long they park, who pays for the energy, and how much spare capacity the building has. Those answers shape everything else, from the charger type to the panel and metering design.

Workplace chargers can usually be Level 2, because cars sit for most of the day. Retail and hospitality sites with short visits sometimes benefit from faster charging, while condo parkades almost always suit slow, managed overnight charging.

Plan in phases

Installing chargers at every stall on day one is rarely sensible. Installing one charger with no plan for the next ten is a different mistake: it leaves you running new feeders through a finished parkade later. We design a phased plan that installs what you need now and roughs in the capacity, conduit and panel space for what comes next.

Load management is central to this. A load management system shares a fixed amount of capacity among many chargers, so a building can serve far more vehicles than its spare capacity would suggest. Our EV load management service covers how it works.

Condos and rental buildings

Multi-unit residential buildings have extra questions: who owns the charger, who pays for the electricity, and how the board approves it. Your building may have bylaws or policies on owner-installed equipment. We can provide a capacity assessment and options that your board or property manager can use to set a policy.

Networked chargers that bill each driver through an app are often the simplest way to handle cost sharing fairly. Wiring chargers to individual suite panels is sometimes possible, but parkade layouts often make it impractical.

We are happy to attend a board meeting or provide a short written summary to help owners make a decision.

Capacity, utility and code

Every site starts with what the existing service can carry. Where the charging plan needs more, we coordinate with the utility on a new or upgraded service and plan any switchgear work. DC fast chargers in particular usually need substantial three-phase capacity and early utility conversations.

All installations follow the Canadian Electrical Code as adopted in Alberta and need an electrical permit. Parkade work also involves protecting equipment from vehicles, keeping clear of sprinkler and ventilation systems, and labelling everything for the next person.

We also look at the electrical room itself: wall space for new panels, working clearances, ventilation and the route for feeders. Planning these early prevents a phase-two surprise.

What drives cost

Key cost drivers are available capacity, distance from the electrical room to the stalls, parkade construction (concrete coring and surface conduit add work), charger type and network subscription, the number of chargers per phase, and whether a utility service upgrade is needed. We give you a phased budget so you can plan beyond the first installation.

Ongoing costs matter too: network subscriptions, maintenance and the energy itself. We include them in the conversation so the board or owner sees the whole picture, not just the installation.

Questions we hear