December 2, 2023

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Expensive Tony:

I submitted a request to my strata council to put in a charging station for my electrical automobile. They’ve agreed that I might be granted permission topic to a protracted listing of situations, together with my settlement to pay all prices and authorized prices for the alteration settlement. I’m involved concerning the situations because the strata council has indicated that if the strata company upgrades to an electrified system, my upgrades will now not apply, and I must have interaction within the strata-provided system. Is there a way I can require the strata to reimburse me for these prices if there’s a change?

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— Kevin W., North Vancouver

Expensive Kevin:

The change in laws with Invoice 22 has launched the ideas of strata companies both allowing charging stations or electrifying their parking garages for the readiness of stations.

Expertise is quickly altering for charging, administration of charging and distribution and the automobiles.

Everybody who installs a single charging station presently, with the consent of their strata company, ought to anticipate their station could turn out to be redundant or absorbed in some method into the strata company electrification plan.

Strata companies are now not permitted to reject a request for an proprietor to put in a charging station; nevertheless, they could require the proprietor to be chargeable for all the prices regarding the set up of the station, any electrical upgrades that meet the constructing code, and prices of operations together with the price of the electrical energy, and extra prices of insurance coverage and agreements.

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One of the vital sophisticated points for a lot of strata companies is figuring out how the parking areas are allotted and the way they will guarantee an proprietor who pays for these upgrades has steady use as a result of most parking is widespread property.

Beneath the present construction of the Strata Property Act, a strata company could solely designate unique use of a standard property sparking house for as much as one yr.

There are two options to this barrier. A parking house could also be designated as restricted widespread property by three-quarter vote of the homeowners at a normal assembly (and assembly the LCP submitting necessities of the Act ) or, coming quickly, a legislative replace as a part of Invoice 22 that may allow strata companies to enter into prolonged unique use agreements for parking and EV charging.