Pennsylvania HOA EV Charging

Quick-Reference EV Charging Table

Chapter 31, the Uniform Condominium Act, governs condominiums and Chapter 51, the Uniform Planned Community Act, governs planned communities; the two acts have parallel but distinct provisions and different section numbers, and EV-charging values must be drawn from the correct chapter for each column. Because no EV-specific provision exists, the general provisions of each chapter plus the declaration control.

Section 1: Overview — How EV charging is regulated for HOAs in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania has no electric-vehicle-charging-specific statute for community associations. A direct review of Title 68, Real and Personal Property, of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, covering the condominium chapters, Chapter 31 and its creation, alteration, and management subchapters, the cooperative chapter, Chapter 41, and the planned-community chapters, Chapter 51 and its subchapters, locates no provision granting a unit or lot owner a right to install a charging station or limiting an association's authority over one.¹ The general provisions of Chapters 31 and 51, together with each community's recorded declaration, control.

Pennsylvania regulates common-interest communities through two separate, comprehensive statutes. Condominiums fall under the Uniform Condominium Act at 68 Pa.C.S. Chapter 31 and following,² and non-condominium planned communities fall under the Uniform Planned Community Act at 68 Pa.C.S. Chapter 51 and following,³ each read together with the community's declaration. The legislative trajectory is relevant: Senate Bill 1125 of the 2023-2024 session would have added EV-charging provisions to the condominium, cooperative, and planned-community chapters, but it was referred to committee and died at the end of the session without becoming law, so no enacted rule currently governs.⁴

Nationally, this places Pennsylvania in the category of states with no EV-charging-specific statute, distinct from states such as California and Colorado that have enacted right-to-charge mandates limiting association prohibitions.⁵ The sections below apply the general framework of each act to charging-station requests and identify where the declaration, rather than the statute, decides the outcome.

Section 2: The statutory and regulatory framework

2A. EV-charging-specific law in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania has no EV-charging-specific statute for community associations, a conclusion confirmed by a direct search of the condominium, Chapter 31, cooperative, Chapter 41, and planned-community, Chapter 51, chapters of Title 68, including their creation, alteration, and management subchapters.¹ The consequence is concrete. There's no statutory override of the declaration, no statutory approval timeline, no statutory deemed-approval clock, and no statutory cap on the conditions an association may attach to a charging-station request. Whatever governs a request comes from the declaration, bylaws, and rules, applied against the general provisions of the applicable act.

The legislative trajectory reinforces the point rather than changing it. Senate Bill 1125, 2023-2024, introduced April 30, 2024 by Senator John Kane, would have amended Title 68 to allow unit owners, proprietary lessees, and planned-community owners to install charging stations for personal, non-commercial use in their designated parking spaces, subject to an application-and-approval process and reasonable association restrictions and charges; the drafting followed model language patterned on Oregon's decade-old statute.⁴⁶ It was referred to the Transportation Committee and died at the end of the 2023-2024 session without a floor vote.⁴ Its proposed approval process, cost rules, and restriction limits aren't law and shouldn't be treated as binding on any Pennsylvania association. A House companion introduced June 3, 2024 by Representative Tim Brennan met the same fate, and no successor bill specific to community-association EV charging has been enacted.⁶

One inference must be avoided. The general alteration provisions and association-powers provisions of the Uniform Condominium Act and the Uniform Planned Community Act don't themselves create an EV-charging right. A limited right to alter a unit isn't a right to install equipment that uses or alters common elements, and none of the general provisions manufactures a deemed-approval deadline, an insurance figure, or a cost-allocation rule.

2B. Condominiums: how Chapter 31's general provisions bear on EV charging

The Uniform Condominium Act, 68 Pa.C.S. Chapter 31 and following, was enacted in 1980 and is based on the 1980 Uniform Condominium Act.² It contains no EV-charging provision, so a charging-station request is analyzed under its general alteration and association-powers sections plus the declaration.

Section 3213, alterations of units, permits a unit owner to make improvements or alterations to the owner's unit that don't impair the structural integrity or mechanical systems or lessen the support of any portion of the condominium. The same section provides that an owner may not change the appearance of the common elements or the exterior appearance of a unit without permission of the association.⁷ This is the pivot for most condominium charging requests: work confined within the unit is treated differently from work that touches or changes the common elements or the building's exterior.

Association authority over common elements is broad. Section 3302, powers of unit owners' association, authorizes the association, subject to the declaration, to regulate the use, maintenance, repair, replacement, and modification of common elements, and it governs the granting of easements over common elements and the imposition of charges for their use.⁸ Assigned or reserved parking is frequently a limited common element rather than part of the unit, which matters because alterations there and the wiring that reaches there generally require association permission.

Chapter 31 neither compels nor prohibits EV charging; it's silent on the subject. Where the statute is silent, the declaration and the association's design-review and rulemaking authority control the method, the location, and the conditions.

2C. Planned communities: Chapter 51, plus the role of CC&Rs and corporate law

Non-condominium planned communities are governed by the Uniform Planned Community Act, 68 Pa.C.S. Chapter 51 and following, enacted in 1996 and drawn from the planned-community provisions of the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act.³ Pennsylvania planned communities are statutorily governed; the planned-community column isn't a declaration-only column. Chapter 51 contains no EV-charging provision, so charging requests are analyzed under its general provisions plus the declaration.

Section 5302, power of unit owners' association, authorizes the association, subject to the declaration, to regulate the use, maintenance, repair, replacement, and modification of common elements and common facilities, to cause improvements to common facilities, and to grant easements over common facilities.⁹ Section 5106 confirms that an association, where the declaration, bylaws, or rules so provide, may conduct architectural review of units, landscaping, building exteriors, and aesthetics.¹⁰ The act also carries a parallel alterations-of-units provision, § 5213, analogous to the condominium rule.¹¹ Together these sections place the lot, driveway, assigned space, and exterior modifications under the declaration and any architectural control the community has adopted.

Order of precedence runs from the statute's non-variable provisions, to the statutory defaults as modified by the declaration, to the declaration, then the bylaws, then the rules. For associations organized as nonprofit corporations, the Pennsylvania Nonprofit Corporation Law of 1988, 15 Pa.C.S. Chapter 51 and following, supplies corporate-formality scaffolding such as board governance and notice, but it confers no EV-specific authority. Where both the statute and the declaration are silent, common-law contract and property doctrine fills the gap.

Section 3: What HOAs can and cannot do regarding EV charging

The following applies the general framework to a charging-station request. Because no EV statute exists, every item is governed by the declaration read against the general provisions of the correct act. Condominium citations come from Chapter 31; planned-community citations come from Chapter 51.

A. Installation rights and prohibitions

An association may prohibit or condition a charging-station installation to the extent its declaration and rules allow, because no Pennsylvania EV statute limits a prohibition, true for both condominiums and planned communities. For condominiums, work that changes the common elements or a unit's exterior appearance requires association permission under § 3213, and modification of common elements is regulated under § 3302.⁷⁸ For planned communities, the same control flows from the declaration and § 5302.⁹ No statutory limit constrains a prohibition in either setting, so the distinction that matters is practical: an association conditioning an installation regulates how and where it happens, while an association prohibiting one forecloses it entirely, and only the declaration determines which is permitted.

B. Conditions an association may impose

An association may require architectural or design approval of the method, equipment, and wiring routing where the declaration, bylaws, or rules so provide, § 5106 for planned communities, § 3302 and the declaration for condominiums.¹⁰⁸ It may require professional installation and compliance with applicable building and electrical codes as a matter of the declaration and general reasonableness. It may allocate liability and require insurance or indemnification from the owner, but only because the declaration provides for it, as no statute sets an insurance figure. It may impose aesthetic and location standards through architectural review, § 5106 for planned communities, the declaration for condominiums.¹⁰ The ceiling on these conditions isn't statutory; it's set by the declaration and the general obligation of good faith, not by an EV-charging cap.

C. Cost, metering, and maintenance allocation

Installation cost, electricity cost, metering, and maintenance, repair, and damage responsibility are all governed by the declaration, because no statute assigns them for charging stations, true for both condominiums and planned communities. In practice, an owner-initiated improvement is borne by the owner, but the enforceable source of that allocation is the declaration, not an EV statute. On the utility question, an individual owner charging a personal vehicle on the owner's own metered service isn't reselling utility service; the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, which regulates public utilities, adopted a policy statement on November 8, 2018 at Docket M-2017-2604382 concluding that third-party charging is a service rather than a resale or redistribution of electricity under Section 1313 of the Public Utility Code.¹² Act 85 of 2024, effective January 1, 2025, further eliminated the alternative-fuels tax on electricity for charging at a private residence and for charging stations used by tenants, residents, or visitors of a common-interest development.¹³

D. Where the station may be installed

For condominiums, the controlling question is whether the station sits within the unit, including an attached garage defined as part of the unit, in a limited common element such as assigned parking, or in a common element; the association generally controls alterations to common elements and to limited common elements under § 3302 and § 3213 and the declaration.⁷⁸ For planned communities, the owner's lot, driveway, or assigned space is governed by the declaration and the association's authority over common elements and common facilities under § 5302, along with any architectural control under § 5106.⁹¹⁰

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

B. Recent appellate rulings

No Pennsylvania appellate decision issued between July 2023 and July 2026 addresses electric-vehicle charging in a community association. Trial-level HOA civil disputes proceed through the Pennsylvania Courts of Common Pleas, civil appeals go to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, and further review lies in the discretion of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania; the Commonwealth Court hears matters involving state and local government agencies and isn't the ordinary route for a private HOA civil dispute.¹⁴ Because no charging-specific ruling exists in the review window, this section is intentionally empty of case entries.

C. Active legislative debates

Community-association EV-charging legislation remains under discussion in Pennsylvania after SB 1125's failure, and stakeholder groups anticipate that some form of measure may be reintroduced, but no active bill specific to association charging has advanced to enactment as of July 2026.⁶

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Pennsylvania sits in the third of three national categories. The first comprises states with EV-charging-station mandates that void or limit association prohibitions, such as California, Civil Code § 4745,⁵ and Colorado, C.R.S. § 38-33.3-106.8. The second comprises states that address charging within a condominium or HOA act more narrowly. The third comprises states with no EV-charging-specific statute, where the declaration controls. Pennsylvania belongs to the third category, and it's a UCIOA-family state that enacted three separate acts, the Uniform Condominium Act, the Real Estate Cooperative Act, and the Uniform Planned Community Act, rather than a single consolidated code. It has considered but not enacted EV-charging legislation. For a multi-state operator entering Pennsylvania, the practical implication is that charging-request decisions turn on each community's declaration rather than on a statutory script imported from a mandate state. This is a fast-moving area, and Pennsylvania's status should be re-checked each quarter.

HOA Weekly's Pennsylvania EV Charging coverage updates quarterly as the legislature and courts act, and the threshold question of whether a statute exists is re-verified each cycle. Federal incentives may affect installation economics, but no federal law mandates HOA EV-charging access.

Footnotes

1. 68 Pa.C.S. (Real and Personal Property), Title 68 index listing Subpart B (Condominiums), Subpart C (Cooperatives), and Subpart D (Planned Communities) ↩ ↩
2. 68 Pa.C.S. Ch. 31, Uniform Condominium Act (Pennsylvania General Assembly) ↩ ↩
3. 68 Pa.C.S. Ch. 51, Uniform Planned Community Act (Pennsylvania General Assembly) ↩ ↩
4. Senate Bill 1125, 2023-2024 Regular Session, bill history (Pennsylvania General Assembly) ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
5. California Civil Code § 4745 ↩ ↩
6. CAI Keystone Chapter, Pennsylvania Legislative Action Committee, summary of SB 1125 and House companion (Rep. Brennan) sustainability measures ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
7. 68 Pa.C.S. § 3213 (Alterations of units), Chapter 32 ↩ ↩ ↩
8. 68 Pa.C.S. § 3302 (Powers of unit owners' association), Chapter 33 ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
9. 68 Pa.C.S. § 5302 (Power of unit owners' association), Chapter 53 ↩ ↩ ↩
10. 68 Pa.C.S. § 5106 (Applicability of local ordinances, regulations and building codes; architectural review authority), Chapter 51 ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
11. Uniform Planned Community Act, 68 Pa.C.S. §§ 5101-5414 (Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General) ↩
12. Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, Electric Vehicles (Nov. 8, 2018 policy statement, Docket M-2017-2604382) ↩
13. Act 85 of 2024 (S.B. 656), Vehicle Code amendments, electric vehicle road user charge and elimination of alternative-fuels tax on residential and common-interest-development charging ↩
14. Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania, Courts (court structure) ↩