Consulting Services for Strata Condos + Commercial Buildings

EV charging infrastructure projects – future proof your building and maximize value to owners. Benefit from professional, expert advice.

  • Where to start? Get a strategy – have an assessment of the opportunities for your building and start the process with the right information to take to your stakeholders.
  • Getting to Yes. Bringing together the configuration and plan to obtain 3/4 vote approval to proceed. Ensure your project configuration is future proofed, ready for a future where all cars and trucks have electric drives.
    • Review of contractor proposals and reports
    • Assessment of building/resident needs
    • Project budget and business case validation
    • Surveys, communications, information sessions, and SGM/AGM support for owners
    • By-laws and rules formulation for EV charging operations
    • Cost recovery plan
  • Funding support – Federal NRCan grant writing, and maximizing all available grants, top-ups and incentives
  • Project management including RFP administration to make sure your project goes to plan and within budget
  • Annual reviews and carbon credit administration services

About

Electric vehicle adoption is taking off. The race for enabling EV charging where you reside is well underway.  With more than 50% of the population in urban centres living in condominiums and rental apartments retrofitting for EV charging infrastructure is more important than ever. The convenience of charging at your residence, or at your workplace is fundamental to the electric car, and one of the key advantages of driving electric. 

Having efficient billing, energy and carbon credit management systems for MURBs and other workplaces is key. As we move to a distributed electricity grid the relationships between all stakeholders becomes more challenging. Making sure you are ready for this future is important.

Electric Advantage was created to help this transition, to help property owners navigate the process of formulating an EV charging infrastructure, maximize incentives and provide the analysis of information to enable decision makers to make informed decisions.

We also provide on-going support services that EV charging infrastructure requires, and interestingly, where electrification in general will take us. Carbon credits play an important part of the equation, and here too we offer services to bring these cash flows to your organization.

We see a bright future where EV charging is just the start of significant change for the benefit of electricity consumers everywhere.

BC MURBs & EV Charging: The time to act is now!

Three financial incentives are currently available to British Columbia multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs – including strata condos, rental apartments, workplaces and hospitality properties). 

The NRCan ZEV Infrastructure Program currently enables up to 75% cost recovery when combined with the CleanBC Incentive.  (2023 application intake dates pending)

In addition BC MURBs can now benefit from selling carbon credits – a new income stream for your building.

Electric Advantage is an independent advisory services and systems company.

To be successful in applying for the 2023 ZEVIP grant (application intake period expected to open in January 2023) have your EV charging infrastructure project finalized and financing approved well in advance. This process generally takes 2-3 months. Until January 31, 2023 we’re taking on British Columbia MURB building owners to help them configure their projects, convince stakeholders to proceed, and apply for funding.

We offer services to ensure a well thought out project configuration to maximize government grants, and the future versatility of your project. We review and assess electrical contractor proposals. We build the business case, communications and information sessions for your stakeholders to move your project forward.

Results: Of our 2022 NRCan ZEVIP grant application strata condominium clients, we helped two recent clients reach a 96% special resolution approval for project funding through respective SGM and AGMs.

John Stonier, CPA, CA

John is our founder and principal consultant. A long time enthusiast for electric vehicles he first engaged with electric vehicles in 2005. At that time there were no production electric vehicles — so he built one by converting a 1999 Porsche Boxster. Ten days after he purchased that Porsche in 2007 a company called Tesla announced they would be building their roadster to ‘dispel the myths about EVs’ – well, the rest is history.  John completed his Porsche conversion and continued to enjoy his convertible EV until he sold it a few years ago.  He’s been driving EVs ever since, including his first production car and favourite EV — a long lasting 2012 Nissan LEAF.

Interviewed by CBC News, March 2022
1999 Porsche Boxster EV conversion by JStonier.

John has been active in the EV movement as an advocate, public speaker, consultant and entrepreneur. Through his involvement with the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association (VEVA) he contributed to many progressive EV policies that are in place today in British Columbia. They include lobbying the City of Vancouver for minimum parking stall wiring which resulted in the City’s ground breaking 2009 By-law to provide electrification of 20% of parking stalls for all new condos commissioned after April 1, 2011. (which subsequently was bumped to 100% in 2018 for all new buildings) The origins of the EV Ready and EV Infrastructure programs as recommended to the government by VEVA are now in place through CleanBC and the BC Government. In 2021 as VEVA President he also advocated for changes within the BC Low Carbon Fuel Standard Regulations to enable MURBs to earn carbon credits on the EV charging infrastructure they build and maintain.

Combined, these policies make British Columbia a world leader in EV charging infrastructure initiatives for both new and legacy buildings.

As a business professional, he combines both his expert knowledge on electric vehicles with financial and data analysis skills to form sound strategies to optimize EV infrastructure projects. Strata condominiums, rental property owners, social housing, workplaces, hospitality properties can all benefit from providing EV charging to their stakeholders.

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