EV charger installation in Seattle, the Eastside and Everett

Hardwired 48 A charger or a NEMA 14-50 receptacle?

This is the first decision, and it sets the shape of everything after it.

A hardwired 48 A charger — a Tesla Wall Connector, an Emporia Pro, a DeWalt 48 A — draws 11.5 kW at 240 V. Charging is a continuous load, so the circuit is sized at 125 percent of that: a 60 A breaker and #6 copper. Hardwiring is the only option above 50 A, because a NEMA 14-50 is a 50 A receptacle, and it is the only way to get the full 48 A.

A NEMA 14-50 receptacle sits on a 50 A breaker and caps the car at 40 A continuous, or 9.6 kW. It costs less, most portable units ship with that plug, and you can unplug the charger and take it with you when you move. The catch is that a receptacle feeding a charger needs GFCI protection under NEC 625.54. A GFCI breaker costs more than a plain two-pole breaker and nuisance-trips with some vehicles.

For a car that charges overnight in a garage, the gap between 9.6 kW and 11.5 kW rarely decides anything. The distance from the panel to the parking spot usually does.

Will your panel take the circuit?

Before quoting, we run a load calculation on the existing service under NEC 220.83, the existing-dwelling method that adds the new load to the recorded demand. There are three outcomes.

Spare capacity and a spare slot. The Everett job below is the easy version: a 200 A panel with room for a new Eaton two-pole breaker, written onto the paper directory as CAR CHARGER. One circuit, half a day.

Capacity but no slot. Tandem breakers, relocating a circuit, or a small subpanel. That adds a few hundred dollars, not thousands.

No capacity. A 100 A service already carrying an electric range, a dryer and a heat pump often fails the calculation at 48 A. There are three ways out, in order of cost. Set the charger down: nearly every Level 2 unit fixes its maximum current at commissioning, and 32 A still adds far more range overnight than most drivers use in a day. Add a load-management device: an energy management system under NEC 750 watches the service and sheds the charger when the house pulls near the limit, which lets a 100 A service legally carry a charger it could not otherwise. Or upgrade the service, which is a separate project with a utility disconnect to schedule and is covered on the panel upgrade page.

Load management is almost always cheaper than a service upgrade. Ask about it before anyone quotes you a new service.

Who issues the permit, and what the inspector checks

Washington requires an electrical permit before the work starts, and WAC 296-46B-901 puts that obligation on the contractor rather than the homeowner. Which authority issues it is set by the address; the quick facts on this page list it city by city. What changes with the authority is the paperwork and the fee. Where Washington L&I is the authority, the fee schedule effective 2026-07-01 charges $100.50 for the first panel of up to five circuits and $8.20 for each additional circuit. Seattle, Tacoma Power and most incorporated Eastside and Snohomish cities issue their own permits at their own fees.

The inspection itself is short and specific. The inspector checks conductor size against the breaker, terminations and torque, bonding and grounding, GFCI protection where a receptacle is involved, working clearance in front of the panel, a legible circuit label, and that the charger is set to the current the circuit actually allows. Ten Seattle SDCI electrical permits have been issued to the company since December 2025, nine of them completed and inspected.

Can a condo or HOA stop you?

The right-to-charge statute in the compliance note further down this page answers the legal half of this. What matters in practice is how much work the phrase “reasonable conditions” is doing in it. An association can require a licensed and bonded contractor, a written scope, and restoration of any common-area finish that gets opened up.

The harder questions in a shared garage are electrical, not legal. Where does the power come from — your unit’s panel, or the house meter? If it is the house meter, the energy has to be billed back, which means a networked or submetered charger. And does the house service have capacity for the space you were assigned, or does the building need a plan before the third owner asks? Boards that answer those three questions once, in writing, spend far less than boards that answer them one owner at a time.

Workplace, multifamily and commercial charging

On a business or apartment lot, the hardware is a small part of the number. Port count, trenching and bollards, the distance back to the service, and whether the service has capacity are what move a two- to six-port project. The useful part is that the utility often covers most of it, and which utility serves the meter decides how much. The incentive table on this page puts the current Seattle City Light, Puget Sound Energy, Snohomish County PUD and Tacoma Power programs side by side.

Two constraints to plan around. Every one of those programs requires pre-approval before equipment is purchased, and buying chargers first is the most common way to lose the money. And new construction carries its own obligation: Washington State Building Code Table 429.2 sets EVSE-installed, EV-ready and EV-capable percentages by occupancy group. Confirm the adopted percentages with your jurisdiction before you bid.

That table is a construction requirement, not an incentive, and none of it reaches an existing single-family garage. No utility on this corridor pays a rebate on a home charger.

What we have installed

• Everett, July 2026. DeWalt 48 A charger on a new NEMA 14-50 receptacle — a 50 A circuit, so 40 A continuous — fed by a new Eaton two-pole breaker in a 200 A garage panel.
• Federal Way, September 2026. Tesla Wall Connector, hardwired with flexible metal conduit back to the garage subpanel.
• Seattle, December 2025. Emporia Pro charger installed alongside an EcoFlow Smart Home Panel 2 and a 50 A generator inlet with interlock, over a new 100 A subpanel, permitted through SDCI.

One honest gap: every EV charger we have photographed so far is residential. We have not yet photographed a workplace or multifamily port array, and the commercial galleries elsewhere on this site are tenant-improvement wiring, not charging.