Utility Interconnection for EV Charging Sites

The wires side, not the chargers, is the critical path. Published anchors for DC fast-charging projects run from roughly 6 to 24 months between utility application and energization, and every one of those anchors is either dated or program-specific (Exhibit 04). Where a circuit or substation upgrade is triggered, the CPUC's own maximum timelines for that work run from about two to nine years (Exhibit 08). Almost every schedule disaster traces to serializing work that could have run in parallel.

You are in the load queue, not the generation queue. A charging site is a new-service or upgraded-service request under the utility's line-extension and service rules. Utility or state generation-interconnection rules apply in addition only if you add solar or storage that operates in parallel with the grid; FERC procedures apply only where the interconnecting facilities sit under a FERC-jurisdictional open-access transmission tariff and are used for wholesale sales. A non-export battery may take a lighter path at some utilities, but that is utility-specific and configuration-specific, never automatic (Exhibit 03).