What the owner is on the hook for

The statute is not a one-way ratchet. Under §10A(c) and (e) the owner:

• pays for the installation, using a licensed contractor or electrician
• must conform to health, safety, zoning and permitting requirements
• pays maintenance, repair, replacement, damage, electricity and removal costs
• must disclose the installation to prospective buyers

The metering rule is the one that generates disputes. The owner connects the equipment to the owner's own utility account. Only where that is impossible must the association allow connection to common electricity — and there it may require reimbursement.

“Impossible” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and it is not defined. In a garage where every space is served from a house panel, the practical answer usually involves either a submeter or an EVSE unit with per-user billing, and the allocation of that cost is where the negotiation actually happens.

What a ready board has in place

Because there is no regulation and no appellate decision construing §10A, the association's own written procedure is the entire defence. A workable one contains:

• A dated intake. The 60 days run from receipt. An association without a recorded receipt date cannot prove it met the deadline, and the consequence of missing it is that the application is approved as submitted — including whatever specification the owner proposed.
• A single, early information request. The statute tolls for a reasonable request for further information. One complete request, early, is defensible. A sequence of trickled requests looks like delay and will be argued as such.
• Written denials with reasons. A denial that does not explain which reasonable restriction the application fails is a denial the owner can characterise as an unreasonable restriction.
• An indemnity, insurance and removal agreement executed before work starts, recording the owner's ongoing responsibility for maintenance, damage and removal, and requiring the owner's own liability coverage to name the association.
• Standard specifications. Conduit routing, panel capacity, load management, fire-stopping and equipment listing standards, published in advance. A published standard applied evenly is the clearest evidence a restriction is reasonable.

Common-area chargers are a different statute

Everything above concerns an owner installing in their own space. Where the association installs chargers in the common area, section 85 of the same act amended c. 183A §10(b)(6) so that EV supply equipment in common areas and facilities is not classified as an “improvement” under §18 — which means majority owner approval rather than the 75 percent supermajority §18 requires.

That is a material easing, and it is the route most Massachusetts associations with shared garages should be looking at, since it serves every owner rather than the one with the deeded space.

The money that pays for it

Massachusetts utility make-ready programs fund the expensive half of a garage electrification project — the infrastructure between the transformer and the parking space. Multi-unit dwellings of five or more units are eligible for make-ready electrical infrastructure funding at up to 100 percent of cost, with customer-side charging-station rebates tiered by location: up to 100 percent in income-based environmental justice communities, up to 75 percent for other environmental justice criteria, and up to 50 percent elsewhere.

There is a deadline attached. National Grid has stated it will not accept signed pre-approval offer letters received after 31 December 2026.³ An association contemplating common-area charging in a National Grid territory has one budget cycle to get a letter signed.

What to watch next

No Massachusetts appellate court has construed §10A, and EOHLC has declined to regulate, so the contested terms — “unreasonably restrict,” “substantial weight to threats posed by climate change,” and when connection to the owner's own account is “impossible” — are unresolved. The first litigated denial will shape practice statewide.