How long does a commercial EV charging project take?
The electrical work takes weeks. The project takes as long as your utility does. Interconnection, any transformer work and make-ready approval sit on the critical path, and everything your electrician does is short next to them. The ordering rule that saves the most calendar time is counter-intuitive: open the utility conversation before you select hardware, because the utility's answer about available capacity changes which hardware makes sense, and a design chosen before that answer is a design you may have to permit twice. Permits matter, but they sit in the middle of the sequence and they are rarely what you are waiting on.
Updated 2026-08-20
Why the utility is the critical path
Everything on the customer side of the meter is work you can schedule. Everything on the utility side is work you can only apply for.
The real sequence
Twelve steps, with who controls each, roughly how long it runs, and what it can overlap with.
The ordering rule that saves the most time
Open the utility application before you choose hardware. Not after the design is finished, and certainly not after equipment is ordered.
Where permits actually sit
Permits are mid-sequence, they usually take days to weeks, and on a commercial charging project they are almost never the long pole.
What actually causes the long delays
When a commercial charging project runs a year late, it is almost always one of these, and none of them are the electrician.
How to compress it honestly
You cannot shorten the utility. You can stop adding to it.
How long does it take to install EV chargers at a commercial property?
The construction is weeks. The project is however long your utility takes, which can be a similar few months or well over a year where a transformer or service upgrade is involved. Nobody can give you a national number that means anything, because the dominant variable belongs to a specific utility in a specific territory. Ask them for their current timeline in writing before you plan around anything.
What takes the longest on an EV charging project?
Utility work. Interconnection review, any new or upsized transformer, and final energisation. On a Level 2 project inside existing capacity these can be modest. On a DC fast project requiring new utility equipment they dominate everything else combined.
Do we need the permit before we order equipment?
Not strictly, but do not order before the utility has answered on capacity, because that answer can change what equipment is right. Permit review and procurement overlap comfortably. Capacity discovery and procurement do not, and reversing them is how properties end up owning hardware their service cannot feed.
Can we start construction and apply for the make-ready rebate afterwards?
Generally no, and this is the most expensive scheduling mistake in the whole topic. Most make-ready and rebate programs require approval before construction begins, and work started early is often permanently ineligible. Read the program terms before a shovel moves. The sequence matters more than the amount.
How can we get charging live faster?
Design phase one to fit inside the capacity you already have. A project that avoids a utility service upgrade skips the longest item on the schedule entirely, and load management is frequently what makes that possible. Then trench once for the full build-out so later phases never revisit the civil work.
Does a multifamily board approval really add months?
It can, because associations decide on meeting cycles rather than project cycles and often need a vote, a budget line and sometimes an insurance review. Start it in parallel with design rather than treating it as a rubber stamp at the end. It costs nothing to begin early and it is a genuine critical-path item on many properties.
Start the schedule with a number
A budget range is what unlocks the board conversation and the utility application, and both of those are the slow items. The estimate takes about a minute and gives you a modelled range with the utility-side work identified separately.