South Carolina's 2025 EV charging law says nothing about condos or HOAs — and no bill proposed a right to charge
South Carolina's 2025 EV charging law says nothing about condos or HOAs — and no bill proposed a right to charge
2026-09-19 · South Carolina · Compliance
South Carolina enacted an electric-vehicle charging law in 2025, and it does not give a single homeowner or unit owner any right against their association. The distinction matters because the Act's short title invites the opposite assumption.1
What Act No. 18 actually does
S. 275 was introduced January 28, 2025 by Sens. Grooms, Walker, Climer, Zell and Sutton, passed the Senate 44-0 on February 26, 2025 and the House 109-0 on May 1, 2025, was ratified as R34 on May 6, signed May 8 and became Act No. 18, effective on signing.
Its subject is the supply side. The Act requires that utilities and other providers offering electric-vehicle charging directly to the public do so on a "fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory basis," and that no unreasonable advantage be conferred in relation to DC fast-charging stations. It reaches utilities, municipalities, cooperatives and commercial charging providers.
A full-text search of the enacted bill returns no occurrence of "homeowners," "condominium," "multifamily," "tenant," "landlord" or "covenant."
What South Carolina does not have
Roughly a dozen states have enacted "right to charge" statutes — laws providing that an association may not unreasonably prohibit a unit owner from installing a charging station, usually with conditions about cost, insurance, permitting and metering.
South Carolina has none. Title 27, Chapter 1, the chapter carrying the state's covenant overrides, contains no EV-charging section. And no bill proposing one was filed in the 2025-2026 term — not introduced and defeated, but never filed at all.2
What decides a charger request instead
Everything turns on the governing documents and on where the charger would go.
- A detached home on its own lot. The question is architectural: whether the installation is an exterior modification requiring approval, and whether any wiring, conduit or visible equipment falls within a restriction. There is no statutory override.
- An assigned parking space or limited common element in a condominium. The association controls alterations to common elements, and an owner's right to modify an assigned space is defined by the master deed. A horizontal property regime's common elements are owned in undivided shares, so an installation that draws power through or attaches to common property is an association decision.
- Cost allocation. With no statute, nothing prescribes who pays for the installation, the electricity, the sub-metering, the insurance, or the removal on sale. Where states with right-to-charge laws supply default answers, South Carolina supplies none, so an unaddressed declaration leaves the matter to negotiation.
- Liability and insurance. No statutory framework requires an owner to carry coverage or indemnify the association, and none bars an association from requiring it as a condition of approval.
The only multifamily programme is a utility incentive, not a right
Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress operate Make Ready Credit programmes under South Carolina Public Service Commission Docket No. 2022-159-E, Order No. 2024-70, publishing maximum credit amounts for Level 2 and DC fast chargers for non-residential and multifamily applicants.
Participation has been minimal: the companies reported two applications received and fulfilled between July 1 and December 31, 2025.3 A credit programme reduces the cost of an installation the association has already agreed to. It does not create an entitlement to one.
Why the mischaracterisation spreads
Act No. 18 is indexed under the subject "EV Charging Stations," and summaries that travel by subject line rather than by text place it in the association context. The same pattern has produced several inaccurate claims about South Carolina association law this year, including a widely repeated statement that associations may no longer control homeowners' utilities as of July 1, 2025 — a date taken from H. 3425, a bill that never left its first committee.
The verifiable position as of September 2026: Act No. 18 governs public charging providers; no South Carolina statute addresses charger installation in a community association; and the governing documents decide.
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