Incentive Provider Resources

Utility Incentive Design Best Practices for EV Charging at Multifamily Properties

Charging at home is an essential component for enabling rapid electric vehicle (EV) adoption. Charging infrastructure at multi-family housing (MFH) properties must be carefully incentivized to foster sustainable development and build-out. Ideally, EV charging incentives provided by utilities encourage manageable load growth, which should benefit the property owner, the resident, (if the home is not owner-occupied), and the utility: a win-win-win situation for MFH owners, residents, and the utility that serves them.

This report overviews the following:

• Rationals
• Utility perspective
• Property Management perspective
• Sample programs
• Structuring MFH EV charging incentive program
• Program design recommendations

This document would not have been possible without the work of Kevin Wood and Derek Ichien from Energetics (a CLEAResult company). Whit Jamieson from Forth’s Charge at Home program team provided significant editing and revising support.

How to Improve EV Charging Incentive Programs

7 Ways for Grant and Rebate Administrators to Streamline Their Processes, Administer More Funds, and Increase the Installation of Electric Vehicle Chargers

Written by: Ben Nussbaum, Partner EVx Advisors

EV Ready Program Design Guidance by Peninsula Clean Energy – June 2025
To achieve widescale EV adoption, significant EV charging infrastructure will need to be installed quickly. This effort requires design approaches for EV charging installation projects that minimize impacts, such as high capital costs and electrical grid pressure, to achieve the charging infrastructure necessary to facilitate this timely transition from fossil fuels. And increasingly, it also requires design approaches that minimize end user costs, providing a fuel-cost savings potential for drivers who adopt EVs.  

These design guidelines provide the high-level framework for how Peninsula Clean Energy, and it’s consulting partners, design EV charging infrastructure projects for customers in its EV Ready Program, to help facilitate a rapid and inclusive transition to EVs. These guidelines are freely available to be used by other CCAs, utilities, implementers, contractors, etc. 

A key principle of the guidelines is known as “right sizing,” designing projects that are appropriately sized, allowing for greater benefits (such as more chargers) at lower costs. Since the significant majority of San Francisco Bay Area drivers travel less than 30 miles per day, low-power EV charging is sufficient if everyone has access to at-home overnight charging. As a result, these guidelines frequently recommend low power charging at multi-family properties for overnight parking.  

Another critical element of PCE’s EV Ready Program is to provide EV charging to multi-family residents, a critically underserved population for EV adoption. We believe that cost-effective and right-sized EV charging projects can quickly produce mass quantities of at-home charging for multifamily residents.  

PCE EV Ready Design Principles:  

1. Maximize the quantity of ports the program achieves to support EV growth overall. Design for a future where every multifamily parking space has a charger or outlet. 
2. Provide charging service levels that satisfy the everyday needs of most personal EV drivers (<30mi). 
3. Control the cost per port to reduce barriers to installation.
4. Minimize grid impacts, including distribution infrastructure and peak generating capacity, by maximizing port count within existing electrical service or transformer capacity.
5. Reduce the cost to charge for EV drivers, with the aim of approaching parity with the cost to charge at single-family homes  

Each of the following design principles supports one or more of these goals. These principles are being used to guide charging infrastructure scope recommendations for EVRP participants receiving technical assistance and are primarily oriented to charging solutions for MUDs and workplaces. They continue to be improved as unique site conditions are encountered and charging technology evolves. 

The State of Managed Charging in 2024
Overview:

• Managed charging programs successfully decrease bulk- and distribution-level costs and utilities should deploy them at scale in the next few years.
• Successful and cost-effective programs shift energy to low-cost, non-peak times and lower non-coincident peaks that impact the distribution system.
• OEMs are an important stakeholder group for ensuring effective telematics integrations and as a customer marketing channel.
• Telematics, networked EVSE, and AMI each provide different types of data and granularity for monitoring and controlling customers’ EV charging.

Alternative Fuels Data Center State Laws and Incentives web page
The incentives listed on this site are not exclusive to multifamily properties.

This is the best resource for finding state incentive programs and is a great place to compare existing incentive program design.

State incentive program administrators are often times open to discussing how the program was designed and current lessons learned. Connecting with other states to collect information during your program design phase is a great idea.