Case Study: How a 320-Home 55+ Active Adult Community Rolled Out EV Charging

Sunhaven Village is a 320-home active adult (55+) community in the Phoenix metro area. Most residents live in single-story attached villas with a dedicated carport, and the community shares a clubhouse, guest parking lot, and pool. Like many 55+ communities, its board assumed electric vehicles were a younger buyer's concern. That assumption did not hold.

By early 2024, the board counted 22 EVs among residents and a growing informal waitlist of owners asking where they were supposed to charge. Several were plugging into standard 120-volt household outlets in their carports overnight, which delivered only 3 to 5 miles of range per hour and, in a few cases, tripped breakers on shared circuits. One resident had installed a home charger without approval, raising liability and cost-allocation questions the board was not prepared to answer.

The board treated this as a governance problem, not just an amenity request. Rather than approve one-off installations, they voted to study a community-wide solution that would be safe, fairly billed, and expandable as demand grew.

The board hired a licensed electrical contractor to perform a site assessment before committing to any hardware. The finding was common for communities built in the 1990s and early 2000s: the existing electrical service and transformers had limited spare capacity. Wiring a fast charger to every carport at once would have forced an expensive utility transformer and service upgrade, easily adding six figures to the project.

To size the first phase correctly, the board surveyed residents rather than guessing. About 9 percent of homes owned or were shopping for an EV, and another 15 percent said they expected to buy one within three years. That data told the board it needed meaningful shared capacity soon, but not a charger at all 320 spaces on day one.

The contractor recommended networked Level 2 chargers (240-volt, roughly 25 to 30 miles of range per hour) paired with load management software. Load management, sometimes called load balancing, lets multiple chargers share a fixed amount of electrical capacity by automatically slowing or staggering charging when demand peaks, so the community avoids the transformer upgrade entirely.

The board approved a phased plan. Phase 1 installed 12 dual-port networked Level 2 stations, for 24 charging ports total, concentrated in the clubhouse guest lot and a nearby cluster of carports where trenching distances were short. Because trenching and conduit are often the single biggest cost driver, keeping the first chargers close to the existing electrical room held costs down.

All ports were placed on a single load-managed circuit that the software caps at the building's available capacity. During a busy evening, the system spreads that capacity across every active vehicle. Residents charging overnight still finished with a full battery, because most cars sit parked for eight or more hours and only need a fraction of that time to refill a daily commute.

The community also installed underground conduit stubs to a second cluster of carports during Phase 1, even though the chargers were not yet mounted. This make-ready work, done while trenches were already open, cut the cost of future expansion dramatically and is a standard future-proofing move.

The installed cost came to roughly $6,500 per port, or about $156,000 for the 24-port Phase 1, including trenching, the make-ready conduit for Phase 2, and the networking hardware. Two funding sources kept this off residents' backs.

First, the community's utility offered a make-ready rebate through its multifamily charging program. Arizona Public Service and Salt River Project both run programs that cover a large share of the electrical infrastructure, the panels, conduit, and wiring, up to the charger itself. Sunhaven's rebate offset close to 40 percent of eligible make-ready costs. Boards should confirm current program terms directly with their utility, since funding rounds and caps change.

Second, the board funded the remaining balance from its reserve fund rather than a special assessment, treating shared charging as a capital improvement. One important note for HOAs: the federal 30C Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit is valuable but generally benefits taxpaying entities. Most HOAs are non-profit and pay little or no federal income tax, so they usually cannot use 30C directly. Sunhaven relied on the utility rebate instead, which is the more practical incentive for community associations.

Eighteen months after activation, resident EV ownership had climbed from 22 to 41 vehicles, and the 24 ports were comfortably absorbing the load thanks to load management and overnight charging patterns. The networked software billed users automatically at a flat $0.28 per kilowatt-hour, a rate the board set to cover the electricity cost plus a small margin for maintenance and eventual replacement.

Because drivers paid for their own energy, the charging stations did not raise dues for the roughly 90 percent of homes without an EV, which had been the board's biggest political concern going in. Utilization data from the software also gave the board a clear, factual trigger for Phase 2: when average port utilization crossed 60 percent, they activated the pre-stubbed carport cluster at a fraction of the original trenching cost.

The board reported that the clearest win was governance clarity. With an approved, metered, safe system in place, they could enforce a simple rule against unauthorized private installations and point residents to a fair, funded alternative.

Sunhaven's experience shows that EV demand in active adult communities is real and often underestimated. Waiting until residents install their own chargers creates safety and fairness problems that are harder to unwind than a planned rollout.

The financial takeaways are straightforward. Load management is what makes shared charging affordable, because it avoids the transformer and service upgrades that sink many budgets. Trenching distance drives cost, so concentrate early chargers near existing electrical infrastructure and stub out conduit for the future while the ground is open. Lean on utility make-ready rebates rather than assuming the federal 30C credit will apply.