Pull into one of the larger office lots off Fruitville around 8:15 on a Tuesday and something looks a little off. Two EVs are parked at the chargers, fine, but a third is idling nearby, waiting. The driver isn’t on a break. He’s watching the charge meter on the car ahead of him because his shift starts in fifteen minutes and he needs at least some range before the day ends. The chargers were put in back when maybe one or two employees drove electric. Now it’s eight, and climbing.
A recent cnbc.com, “Employees Are Plugging In — But the Chargers Aren’t Keeping Up” lines up with what a lot of business owners are running into inside their own buildings. The demand jumped. The install plan didn’t.
The part most people get wrong is treating workplace charging like a plug-and-play accessory. It isn’t. A proper commercial EV charger installation means looking at how much capacity the building actually has left, where the conduit can run without tearing up half the lot, and whether the existing service can handle four or six stations pulling at the same time during a shift change.
Sometimes the building has room to grow. Sometimes it really doesn’t, and that’s when a conversation about new electrical service or smarter load management has to happen before another charger gets bolted to the wall.
My take, after enough of these jobs: plan for double the chargers you think you need. Employees adopt faster than anyone predicts. Retrofitting later costs more than doing it right the first time.
steelcityelectricfl.com/EV charger installation
