Two states adopted a new electrical code within the same week this summer, and it will change how home EV chargers get installed. On July 28, 2026, the Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation (TCLR, the board that oversees the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation) voted to adopt the 2026 National Electrical Code as the state's electrical standard, effective September 1. Minnesota's Board of Electricity had already set its own adoption of the 2026 code for August 17, just under two weeks away as of this writing. Washington has a formal rulemaking underway aimed at an effective date late this year. Buried in the update is a new provision written specifically for EV charging equipment, and it is worth knowing about before you schedule an installer.
What actually changed
The National Electrical Code (NEC) is the model electrical code that most US states and cities adopt, in whole or with local amendments, as their legal standard for wiring work. It gets a new edition every three years; 2026 follows 2023. States do not adopt a new edition automatically or on the same schedule. Each one runs its own process, and the gap between an edition's publication and a given state making it law can run from about a year to five years or more.
The 2026 edition adds a new section to Article 625, the part of the code that governs EV charging equipment: Section 625.4, which did not exist in the 2023 NEC. It reads, in substance, that permanently installed electric vehicle power transfer system equipment must be installed by qualified persons. This is the change worth knowing about if you are planning a hardwired installation; the rest of Article 625's existing wiring, GFCI, and disconnect rules (covered in our hardwired versus plug-in guide) are not affected by this specific update.
Why "qualified person" is not the same as "licensed electrician"
Here is the detail that gets flattened in a lot of coverage of this change: the NEC defines a "qualified person" as someone with the skills, knowledge, and safety training to work safely with electrical equipment. That is a real, specific definition (it lives in NEC Article 100), but it is not the same thing as a state electrician's license. The National Electrical Code does not decide who is allowed to legally perform electrical work for pay or on their own home; that is set by each state's contractor-licensing and permitting law, separately from the NEC.
In practice, the two overlap almost completely once a jurisdiction adopts this section. A local building department reviewing a permit application, or an inspector standing in your garage, is not going to independently vet a homeowner's electrical skill; the documentation they know how to check is a license. So while Section 625.4 technically just requires a "qualified person," expect building departments in states that adopt the 2026 NEC to treat that as requiring a licensed electrician for any permanently installed (hardwired) home charger, the same way most of them already do for other panel and circuit work.
Who this actually affects
If you already planned to hire a licensed electrician for your home charger installation, which is standard practice and, per our own installation guide, the right call regardless of what the code requires, this change affects you not at all. The electrician you were going to hire is exactly the "qualified person" the code has in mind.
Where it matters is the narrower group of homeowners in a state that both allows owner-performed electrical permits on a primary residence and has not previously required a licensed installer specifically for EV charging equipment. That combination let some homeowners legally pull their own permit and hardwire a charger themselves. Once a state adopts the 2026 NEC, that path narrows or closes for permanently installed units, because the equipment now carries its own installer requirement layered on top of whatever the state's general owner-permit rules already allowed.
Plug-in chargers are a partial exception. Section 625.4 is written around "permanently installed" equipment, so a plug-in Level 2 charger that connects to a NEMA 14-50 outlet is not itself a permanent installation in the way a hardwired unit is. That said, the outlet and its 240-volt circuit are ordinary branch-circuit wiring, the same category of work as the hardwired connection, so wherever a state's owner-permit rules already let a homeowner do that wiring, they still do; Section 625.4 does not reach it. What changes is narrower than it first sounds: it is specifically about the charging equipment itself, which mainly matters for the hardwired case.
Where this stands right now
| State | Status | Effective date | Source |
|---|
| Texas | Adopted July 28, 2026 | September 1, 2026 | Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation |
| Minnesota | Adopted | August 17, 2026 | Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, Board of Electricity |
| Washington | Rulemaking in progress (CR-102 filed) | Targeted for late 2026, not yet final | Washington Department of Labor & Industries |
Most states are still enforcing the 2023 NEC and have not announced a timeline for the 2026 edition. If you are not in Texas or Minnesota, the practical requirement to use a licensed electrician for a hardwired charger almost certainly already applies to you under your existing state law, well ahead of whenever your state adopts this specific NEC section. This update mainly closes a narrow, jurisdiction-specific gap rather than creating a brand-new requirement most homeowners were never going to run into.
What to do now
If you live in Texas or Minnesota and are planning a home charger install, nothing about your plan should change if you were already hiring a licensed electrician, which our installation guide and permit guide both recommend regardless of code specifics. Ask your electrician which NEC edition your permit will be reviewed against; if your project spans the adoption date, get clarity on which rules apply to your specific permit rather than assuming.
If you were weighing a plug-in setup specifically to keep the option of doing the wiring yourself where your state allows it, that calculus has not changed; Section 625.4 is aimed at the permanently installed charging equipment, not the outlet and branch circuit that feed it. Our hardwired versus plug-in guide covers the tradeoffs that actually matter for that decision: portability, amperage ceiling, and the existing GFCI receptacle requirement on plug-in installs, none of which this update changes.
If your panel needs work before any of this is relevant, our panel capacity check walks through the load calculation your electrician will run.
The honest caveat
Code adoption is a slow-moving, state-by-state process, and timelines shift. Washington's effective date is not final until its rulemaking closes. Other states may announce 2026 NEC adoption on their own schedules over the next several years, and some states amend sections of a model code before adopting it, so a given state's final language on Section 625.4 could differ from what is described here. The state adoption dates above come from state agency pages and trade-press reporting rather than a direct read of each agency's live page at publish time; if you are working with an electrician on a project that will cross an adoption date, confirm directly with them which code edition and effective date your jurisdiction is enforcing rather than relying on a general timeline.
Last factually verified: August 6, 2026, against reporting on the Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation's July 28, 2026 vote and September 1 effective date (Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation's commission agenda, cross-checked against IEC Fort Worth Chapter reporting), the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry's Board of Electricity page describing the August 17, 2026 effective date, the Washington Department of Labor & Industries' Electrical Currents newsletter describing the pending CR-102/CR-103 rulemaking for 2026 NEC adoption, IAEI Magazine's published summary of the 2026 NEC's new Section 625.4 qualified-installer requirement for Article 625, and the NEC's Article 100 definition of "qualified person" as summarized by Electrical Contractor magazine. evcharginghelp.com is editorially independent and receives no compensation from any company mentioned.