Georgia gives owners no right to charge an EV and no right to install solar
Georgia gives owners no right to charge an EV and no right to install solar
2026-09-10 · Georgia · Regulation · Reported — unconfirmed
What we found. Georgia homeowners frequently ask whether their association can stop them installing an electric-vehicle charger or rooftop solar. The answer, unchanged through the 2025-2026 period and unchanged by Georgia's new community-association statute, is that it can.
No right to charge
Georgia has no right-to-charge statute. There is no Georgia analogue to the provisions in California, Florida, Colorado and other states that bar an association from prohibiting an owner from installing charging equipment at their own expense.
A Georgia condominium or homeowners association is under no legal obligation to permit, or to install, EV charging. Where the equipment would sit on or draw from common elements, the association's consent is required as a matter of property law, and its architectural review provisions apply as they would to any other modification.
No right to solar
Georgia has no solar-access statute of the kind that overrides covenants. O.C.G.A. § 44-9-20 and the sections following provide for solar easements — a mechanism for securing access to sunlight across neighbouring land by agreement. It is not a prohibition on covenant restrictions and does not override architectural control.
The bill that would have changed this, HB 389, was withdrawn from Judiciary and recommitted to House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications in February 2025, shelved by the chairman that March “until next year for further work,” and never taken up again. It died with the biennium on 2 April 2026.
The Public Service Commission did nothing that changes this
We checked. The PSC's activity in the window centred on Docket 56002, Georgia Power's 2025 Integrated Resource Plan, filed 31 January 2025 with hearings through mid-2025, and Docket 56003 on certification and an amended demand-side management plan.1
The IRP was approved and includes EV charging programme support. But the PSC regulates the utility, not the covenant. No PSC order in the window alters what a Georgia association must permit.
The economics point the other way too
Worth stating, because it explains why solar-access pressure has not built in Georgia the way it has elsewhere. Georgia has no statewide full-retail net metering. Georgia Power's solar buyback exports at roughly 7.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for 2026 against a retail rate near 13 cents, and the legacy programme from the 2019 rate case remains capped at 5,000 participants out of roughly 2.7 million customers, first come first served. The Commission in 2025 allowed Georgia Power to defer expanding net metering.2
For most Georgia homeowners the export rate settles the question before an architectural committee ever sees an application.
The one binding mandate, and it is municipal
The only instrument in Georgia that actually requires EV infrastructure at residential property is a City of Atlanta ordinance.
The EV Readiness Ordinance, Ord. No. 2025-03 (25-O-1011), adopted 23 January 2025 and effective 1 January 2026, creates three tiers — EVSE Capable, EVSE Ready and EVSE Installed — and requires new commercial and multifamily developments to provide a proportion of spaces in the installed and capable categories, with fire-safety provisions for enclosed garages.3
Two limits matter enormously for existing Georgia associations:
- It applies to new construction and major renovation. An existing Atlanta condominium is not retrofitted by it.
- It is City of Atlanta only. It has no application in Sandy Springs, Marietta, Savannah or anywhere else.
A Georgia board rebuilding structured parking inside city limits is now designing to it. Everyone else is not. We were not able to retrieve the ordinance text from a City of Atlanta primary source, and the tier percentages reported in secondary summaries should be verified against the municipal code before anyone relies on them.
What SB 406 did — and did not — do here
Nothing. We searched the enacted text of the Georgia Property Owners' Bill of Rights Act. Neither solar nor EV charging appears in it.
This is worth stating clearly because an earlier draft of the bill contained a list of owner rights including satellite-dish, American-flag, political-sign and religious-display rights. All four were removed before passage, and solar and charging were never on that list. The enacted § 43-17A-7 runs to twelve items covering records, insurance certificates, meetings, access, foreclosure process, amendment thresholds, director duties, household composition and discrimination.4
Any Georgia guidance suggesting Act 715 created display, solar or charging rights is describing the superseded draft.
What actually determines the answer for a Georgia owner
Since no statute helps, the declaration does — and the Court of Appeals gave owners one genuinely useful tool in 2025.
In Kinnaird v. Morningview Homeowners Association, Inc., No. A25A1083 (10 Sept. 2025), owners applied to install 33 solar panels sited away from the street and were denied by email the next morning. The trial court gave the association summary judgment on a broad covenant not to sue. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding the clause did not insulate the association “from liability for all situations involving approval or disapproval of requested modifications,” because the owners were challenging “how the HOA and ARC did or did not execute their duties in the approval/disapproval process.”5
So the Georgia position is: the association may refuse, but it must be able to explain how it decided, and a covenant not to sue will not spare it that.
Practical route for an owner
- Read the declaration, not the internet. Many Georgia declarations do not prohibit solar or charging outright; they subject exterior modifications to architectural approval. That is a process problem, not a prohibition.
- Apply properly and in writing. An owner who installs first has no case worth making — see Cotton v. Vinings Estates, where owners who built without approval were ordered to demolish and hit with $73,000 in fees.
- For charging, propose a metering answer. The association's real objection is usually electricity cost allocation and liability, not aesthetics. A dedicated sub-meter and an indemnity address both.
- From January, a denial can be complained about. Section 43-17A-5 lets a resident complain to the Secretary of State within 180 days of the association's action. Whether a hearing officer will review an architectural decision is untested; nothing in the statute says they may not.
- The long route is amendment. An association that submits to the Property Owners' Association Act under the new 80% route in § 44-3-235(a)(3) has its amendment threshold capped at 80%.
What to watch next
Whether a right-to-charge bill appears in 2027. Georgia has never had one filed, which is notable given that HB 389 addressed solar. The argument for charging is easier than the argument for solar — the equipment is smaller, the aesthetic objection weaker, and the association's cost concerns answerable by sub-metering. It is the most plausible unfiled Georgia association bill of the coming session.
Related Georgia HOA Topics
- Docket 56002 filings (Georgia Power 2025 Integrated Resource Plan) — Georgia Public Service Commission ↩
- Georgia PSC allows Georgia Power to hold off on net metering expansion — SaportaReport ↩
- “City of Atlanta Passes ‘EV Ready’ Ordinance into Law” — City of Atlanta ↩
- Senate Bill 406, as passed (26 LC 49 2879S) — signed copy, Office of the Governor ↩
- Kinnaird v. Morningview Homeowners Association, Inc., No. A25A1083 (Ga. Ct. App. 10 Sept. 2025) — slip opinion ↩
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