What does commercial EV charging involve?
From employee-facing Level 2 chargers to DC fast chargers for public networks, our crew designs and installs commercial EV charging with load management for multi-charger sites, 480V three-phase distribution, and OCPP-compatible networking. We coordinate utility service, file permits, and help you subsidize capital cost through the federal ZEVIP program and Ontario rebates.
The engineering problem is different from a house. A residential install asks whether one service can carry one charger. A commercial install asks how many chargers a site can carry simultaneously, what that does to your demand charges, who pays for the electricity, and how you add stalls five through twelve without redoing the feeders.
That is why we scope commercial work from the electrical room outward: available capacity first, then distribution, then the charger count and the management layer that keeps them inside the envelope.
How do you keep demand charges under control?
Commercial electricity bills are not just consumption. A meaningful share is the demand charge, set by your highest measured draw in the billing period. Install six 48A chargers with no coordination, let them all start at 5pm, and you have written yourself a new peak that follows you on the bill for months.
Load management solves it. The system caps total charger draw at a level your service and your demand tier can absorb, then divides that budget between active sessions. Cars charge slightly slower during busy periods, which nobody notices when the vehicle is parked for eight hours anyway.
For fleet depots the same logic runs overnight, sequencing vehicles so the depot never exceeds its target while every van is full by the morning shift. Where the site is genuinely capacity-limited, that design is often the difference between a project that works and a utility service upgrade you did not budget for.
Common problems we solve
- Demand charge shock after an uncoordinated multi-charger rollout.
- Sites sized only for today, where adding a fifth charger means retrenching the lot.
- Vendor lock-in on closed networking platforms with rising software fees.
- No cost recovery, where the property quietly funds tenant and employee charging.
- Stalled DCFC projects where the utility capacity study was left until the end.
What about DC fast charging?
DC fast charging is a different scope entirely. A DCFC unit needs 480V three-phase supply, a poured concrete transformer pad, substantial trenching, and a utility capacity study that has to be started early rather than late. CCS1 is the dominant connector on Canadian public networks, with CHAdeMO still present on older vehicles and NACS increasingly supported through adapters.
Budget $30,000 to $100,000+ CAD per site depending on the unit, the utility capacity available, and how much civil work the lot needs. Timelines are typically 3 to 6 months. Federal ZEVIP funding has historically covered a meaningful share of eligible capital cost for public-facing installations, which changes the business case considerably.
If your goal is customer dwell time rather than fast turnaround, we will often recommend networked Level 2 instead. Two Level 2 chargers at a retail site frequently serve more customers per dollar than one DCFC.
How is a commercial project delivered?
We start with a scoping call to establish property type, parking count, existing service, and what you want the chargers to achieve. Residential condo boards follow a different path, covered under condo EV charger installation. Then a site assessment covers capacity, distribution, the conduit or trenching route, bollard protection, and signage.
Permits go in, utility capacity is confirmed, and we point you at the funding programs currently open. Installation covers the civil work, feeders, chargers, and the management layer. Commissioning brings the chargers onto an OCPP platform, sets access control and billing rates, and confirms the load management behaves under real simultaneous load.
You finish with permitted, inspected infrastructure, documentation for your records and your insurer, and a system that can scale when the next tenant or the next fleet vehicle arrives.
MURB and multi-unit building EV charging infrastructure
Multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) come in two structural variants for EV charging: purpose-built condos with 100 to 500 parking stalls in a shared garage, and rental apartment buildings with a similar footprint but different governance.
For condo MURBs, the Ontario Condominium Act Section 98 process governs individual owner requests, and a board-driven building-wide plan governs the shared infrastructure. The building-wide plan typically includes a common-element trunk feeder from a dedicated 400A or 600A subpanel in the electrical room out to a manifold in the garage, then owner-installed drops off the manifold as demand grows.
For rental MURBs, the property owner or management company drives the whole install. Cost recovery models include per-kWh billing back to tenants (requires revenue-grade submetering per stall), included in rent (simplest, no metering required), or Amenity Fee approach with a fixed monthly per-stall charge. ZEVIP grant applications for rental MURBs generally require a minimum stall count and demonstrated per-tenant availability.
The typical 40-stall build in a Toronto MURB runs $180,000 to $320,000 CAD before ZEVIP grant, or $90,000 to $160,000 CAD after the 50 percent grant is applied. Per-stall cost varies with garage layout, incoming service capacity, and load management sophistication.
Workplace EV charging with access control and cost recovery
Workplace charging is one of the fastest-growing commercial segments because employers use it as an employee benefit and a recruitment differentiator. The typical workplace install is 4 to 40 Level 2 stations on an OCPP-networked platform (ChargePoint, FLO, SWTCH, EO) with RFID or app-based access control.
Access control separates employees from visitors, and can further separate by department, seniority, or paid tier. Cost recovery integrates with the access system: some employers absorb the full cost as a benefit, some charge a nominal flat per-session fee ($1 to $5), and some charge market-rate per-kWh billing that fully offsets the electricity cost. The billing platform handles invoicing back to employees through payroll or direct billing.
Load management is essential at workplace scale because arrival times cluster around 8am and departure times cluster around 5pm. A 20-station install on a 400A service cannot deliver 40A to all 20 stations simultaneously, but the OCPP platform can throttle each station to keep the aggregate under the branch feeder limit while cycling stations through the day.
Cost for a workplace 20-station install runs $85,000 to $150,000 CAD before ZEVIP grant, or $35,000 to $75,000 CAD after grant. Ongoing OCPP network subscription runs $15 to $35 CAD per station per month.
DC Fast Charger (Level 3) installation for commercial sites
DC Fast Chargers deliver 50 kW to 350 kW directly to the vehicle’s battery, bypassing the onboard AC-DC converter that limits Level 2 speed. Charge rates in the range of 200 to 1,000 kilometres of range per hour depending on charger power and vehicle acceptance rate.
DCFC installation requires 480V three-phase service, which most existing commercial sites do not have at sufficient capacity. Sites typically need a new transformer from the utility, a concrete transformer pad, buried three-phase primary conductors from the transformer to the DCFC unit, and a heavy secondary switchgear cabinet. The full site work is where DCFC installation costs jump: hardware alone might be $30,000 to $80,000 per port, but site work and utility upgrades push total installed cost to $50,000 to $200,000 per port depending on the site.
Demand-charge planning is the operational trap. A single 150 kW DCFC drawing full power for 15 minutes in a billing cycle sets the demand charge tier for the entire month. On Toronto Hydro commercial general service rates, a 150 kW demand peak can add $2,000 to $4,000 to the monthly bill even if the DCFC only ran once. Battery buffering, OCPP-networked load management, or time-of-use scheduling all mitigate the demand-charge exposure.
Federal ZEVIP vs Ontario rebates for commercial EV charging
The Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program (ZEVIP) is the federal Natural Resources Canada grant that funds up to 50 percent of eligible commercial charging installation costs. Level 2 caps at $5,000 per port, DCFC caps at $50,000 per port. Delivery agents administer intake regionally. Application requires site details, load calculations, quote breakdowns, and a project schedule.
Ontario provincial rebates for commercial charging are limited compared to residential. The Home Renovation Savings program does not apply to commercial installations. Some Enbridge Gas commercial programs offer incentives for large-account customers. Save on Energy has periodic commercial programs.
The practical stacking picture: ZEVIP is by far the largest available incentive for commercial installations in Ontario in 2026, and applications should be filed early because delivery agents have finite regional budgets that draw down through the year. We prepare the ZEVIP technical package as standard on any commercial quote over $20,000 CAD.
