Condo EV Charger Installation in Miami and South Florida

For condo owners, boards and managers

How a condo EV charger gets from request to final inspection

Your right to install a charger under Florida law

Florida's condominium statute protects an owner who wants to charge at their own parking space. Under section 718.113(8), Florida Statutes, a declaration of condominium or restrictive covenant may not prohibit, or be enforced to prohibit, a unit owner from installing an electric vehicle charging station within the boundaries of the owner's limited common element or exclusively designated parking area, and the board may not prohibit it either. The owner's installation is still subject to the conditions in the rest of the subsection, covered below.

The statute also gives the owner an implied easement across the common elements to install the charger and bring power to it, subject to the rest of the subsection. That matters in a garage, because the wire almost always has to cross walls, ceilings and slabs the association controls.

Two limits are easy to miss. First, the right attaches to a space that is a limited common element or is exclusively designated to your unit. If spaces in your building are first-come or assigned from year to year by rule, read your declaration before you plan around a particular spot. Second, the right belongs to the unit owner. A tenant renting a condo unit has no separate statutory right and needs the owner to make the request (see our guide to EV charging when you rent in Florida).

What the association can require

The right comes with conditions. The same statute lets the association require the owner to:

• comply with bona fide safety requirements consistent with applicable building codes or recognized safety standards;
• comply with reasonable architectural standards covering the dimensions, placement or external appearance of the charger, as long as those standards do not prohibit the installation or substantially increase its cost;
• use a licensed and registered firm familiar with installing and removing EV charging equipment;
• provide a certificate of insurance that adds the association to the owner's policy for claims related to the installation, maintenance or use of the charger, within 14 days after receiving the association's approval or its notice asking for the certificate;
• reimburse the association for the actual cost of any increase in its insurance premium attributable to the charger, within 14 days after receiving the premium invoice.

The owner also carries the costs: installation, operation, maintenance and repair, including hazard and liability coverage, and removal if the owner or a later buyer no longer wants the charger. The installation may not cause irreparable damage to the condominium property. The association can collect these costs the way it collects assessments, under section 718.116.

The insurance certificate is the item that most often stalls an approved project. Call your insurance agent when you send the request to the board, not after the approval arrives, so the 14-day window is not a scramble.

Metering: separate meter or embedded meter

The statute requires the electricity for the charger to be separately metered or metered by an embedded meter, and paid for by the owner who installs it. In practice there are three ways buildings handle this, and which one fits depends on where the power comes from.

Ask the board or manager early which approach the building accepts, and how it wants readings reported. If the association will bill you from an embedded meter, agree in writing on who reads it, how often, and at what rate, so there is no argument later.

High-rise garages and electrical rooms

In a single-family home, the question is usually whether the panel has room. In a condo tower, the questions stack up:

• Is there capacity? Many South Florida condo buildings were designed decades before EVs, and the garage and house panels may already be close to full. A load evaluation of the panel that would feed the charger, and sometimes of the building service, answers this. The electrical code lets an existing service be evaluated from a year of maximum-demand data (NEC 220.87), which the building's utility account can often provide.
• Where is the nearest panel with room? The distance from that panel to your space drives the length of the run, the wire size and much of the labor. A space near the electrical room is a very different job from one three levels down at the far end of the garage.
• What is the route? Conduit usually runs exposed along garage ceilings and walls. Coring through a post-tensioned slab is avoided wherever possible, and where it cannot be, the association will usually want its engineer involved first so tendons are located before anyone drills.
• How many chargers will follow? When one owner asks, others usually follow. A board that plans a shared feeder or a load-managed group of circuits now can avoid a garage ceiling full of single runs later.

Each EV charger needs its own individual branch circuit with no other outlets on it (NEC 625.40), and the breaker is sized for continuous duty at not less than 125 percent of the charger's maximum load (NEC 625.41), so a 40 amp charger needs at least a 50 amp breaker. Where capacity is tight, many chargers can be set to a lower current, and the code allows the adjusted setting to be used as the rating when access to that setting is restricted (NEC 625.42). Florida is on the Florida Building Code 8th Edition, which uses NEC 2020 for electrical work (Florida Building Commission); your building department has the final word on how it applies.

Salt air matters too. Oceanfront garages are open to spray and wind, so the charger's enclosure rating, the conduit and the fittings should suit the exposure. Garages in flood zones raise the question of mounting height; our guide to home EV charger installation covers the basics.

Permit and inspection

An electrical permit is required. In unincorporated Miami-Dade the county states plainly that "an electrical permit is required for electrical work" (Miami-Dade electrical permits), and every municipality in Miami-Dade has its own building official who issues permits within its limits (Miami-Dade, how to apply for a permit). Broward and Palm Beach addresses work the same way: the building department for your address sets what it wants submitted.

Some cities ask for the association's approval letter with the application. Pompano Beach's published vehicle charging station checklist, for example, asks for the approval letter from the condominium association or HOA when the charger is in one (Pompano Beach checklist). Florida's Rule 5J-28 keeps local electrical permitting and inspections in place for charging stations and sets a 90-day limit for approving or denying a complete application (Rule 5J-28). Our guide to EV charger permits in South Florida goes through the process county by county.

What KRW Electric does on a condo charger

1. Site assessment. We look at your space, the nearest panel with room, the route, the garage construction and the exposure, and we find out how the building wants the charger metered.
2. A written scope for the board. Charger make and model with its listing, mounting location, circuit size, the route of the conduit, the power source and metering method, and how penetrations are sealed.
3. License details for the association. KRW Electric Company LLC holds Florida electrical contractor license EC13012832, which anyone can check on the state's license lookup. That answers the statute's licensed-and-registered-firm condition.
4. Permit and inspection. We pull the electrical permit with the building department for your address and meet the inspector.
5. Close-out documents. The final inspection record, the circuit and breaker label, and the charger's settings, so the association's file is complete if the unit is sold.

The certificate of insurance comes from your own insurance agent, not from us, and the board decides on approval. If the board would rather install shared chargers for everyone, which section 718.113(9) allows on common elements with charges set by the board (and which that subsection says is not a material alteration or substantial addition to the common elements), see our multifamily and condo charging page. For the paperwork side, our step-by-step guide to condo board approval includes an outline for the request letter, and the Florida Home EV Charging Guide collects every related topic in one place.

This is general information about Florida law, not legal advice. Statutes and rules change, and your own declaration, bylaws, rules, or other governing documents may add requirements. Read them, and talk to a Florida attorney if a dispute is likely.