Submetering and Billing Rules for EV Charging at HOAs and Condos

When a board adds shared EV charging, the obvious question is how to charge residents for the electricity they use. What many boards do not realize is that the answer is governed by state utility law and weights-and-measures regulations, not just the association's own fee policies. Bill it the wrong way and you can expose the association to refund claims, fines, or even a finding that you are operating as an unlicensed utility.

This article explains the three legal frameworks that shape how you can meter and bill EV charging: utility resale rules, metering accuracy standards, and your own governing documents. It then gives boards a practical path to a billing setup that holds up to scrutiny.

Historically, most states treated anyone who sold electricity by the kilowatt-hour as a regulated public utility, subject to the same rules as the local power company. Taken literally, that would make an HOA that bills residents per kWh for charging an illegal utility. To remove that barrier, more than 30 states and the District of Columbia have issued rulings or passed laws declaring that EV charging providers are not public utilities and may sell electricity by the kWh. California did this through the Public Utilities Commission, and states such as Texas, Florida, and Colorado followed with similar legislation or orders.

The catch is that these carve-outs are specific. Some states only exempt power sold as a vehicle fuel, others limit how it may be priced, and a few still restrict per-kWh resale entirely, forcing providers to bill by the hour or by the session instead. Before your board picks a pricing method, confirm what your state allows. If per-kWh billing is not clearly permitted where you operate, time-based or flat-fee billing is the safe fallback.

If you bill by the kilowatt-hour, the meter inside the charger is a commercial measuring device, legally similar to a gas pump or a grocery scale. It must meet the accuracy standards in NIST Handbook 44, the national reference adopted by nearly every state's weights-and-measures division. Handbook 44 includes a dedicated section for electric vehicle fueling systems, setting a typical accuracy tolerance of plus or minus 2 percent.

In practice this means the charger model should carry a National Type Evaluation Program, or NTEP, Certificate of Conformance, and in many states the device must be registered or inspected by the county or state sealer of weights and measures before you can bill from it. Ask any installer or charging-network vendor to confirm in writing that their hardware is NTEP-certified for per-kWh billing. Non-certified chargers are perfectly fine for free or flat-fee use, but using them for metered billing can trigger penalties.

Most multifamily EV charging draws from the building's common-area electrical service, so the kilowatt-hours land on the association's master utility bill. Submetering is how you separate each driver's usage from that shared bill. A networked charger typically has a built-in revenue-grade meter and reports usage to a software platform that produces per-user statements; some setups instead use a dedicated external submeter on each circuit.

Boards should also decide whether to recover only the energy cost or to build in demand charges and a maintenance reserve. Commercial utility rates often include a demand charge based on the single highest 15-minute spike in power draw, which can add 30 to 50 percent to the true cost of charging. A defensible rate covers energy, a fair share of any demand charges, and a small contribution toward future repairs, all set transparently and disclosed to residents.

Even when state law permits per-kWh billing, your association cannot impose a new charging fee out of thin air. The authority to assess residents flows from your CC&Rs, bylaws, and rules. In states with right-to-charge statutes, such as California Civil Code sections 4745 and 6713, plus Florida, Colorado, and roughly a dozen others, owners have a legal right to install charging, and the association's rules must be reasonable and applied evenly. A rate that is punitive or that singles out EV owners can be challenged.

Before launching paid charging, have the association's attorney confirm that the governing documents authorize the fee, then adopt a written EV charging policy. That policy should state the rate, the billing method, who is responsible for maintenance, and how disputes will be handled.

Pulling it together, a board can stay on the right side of the law by working through a short sequence before the first invoice goes out.