For homebuilders, including USB and EV chargers makes good dollars and cents.

In new homes, USB charging outlets are now practically table stakes—and EV charging stations with the appropriate wiring in garages are on the rise. More than half of the country’s homebuilders and remodelers now size electrical panels to accommodate an electric vehicle charger, and 40% provide a charging outlet on more than half of their homes, according to the report, “Building Sustainably: Green and Resilient Single-Family Homes 2024,” by the National Association of Home Builders in conjunction with the Dodge Construction Network.

Why this preparation?

For some, including solar panels with the appropriate wiring is part of the overall electrification effort—a quarter of respondents build more than half of their homes to be all-electric, and nearly a fifth (19%) design all their homes to eventually only use electricity. As for certifications, 34% of home builders now classify more than half their projects as green, up one percentage point from 2019.

Why are they doing this? The top reason at 48% was that it was “the right thing to do,” followed by “creating healthier homes” at 38%.

“This demonstrates many builders’ intent to create efficient, resilient and environmentally friendly housing, whether it is considered green or not,” the report’s authors wrote.

Other reasons listed include “code requirements” (36%), “reputation in industry” (30%), “differentiate product in local market” (23%), “market demand” (18%) and “tax credits or government incentives” (16%).

What would it take for homebuilders to develop more green projects? More demand from homebuyers was cited by half of the respondents, followed by availability of government or utility incentives in their markets (48%); meanwhile, 37% cited availability of affordable high-quality green products. 

“Unsurprisingly, builders and remodelers with more green engagement found the cost margin to be lower than those who did fewer green homes,” according to the report. “This may suggest that dedication to green building is needed to result in sufficient expertise and economies of scale to lower the cost of building green.”

Installing solar panels, EV chargers and battery backup systems on new or existing homes offers profitable opportunities for contractors.

Comparing installation costs

While costs to install USB outlets in homes is negligible, wiring for EV chargers in garages can get expensive—but the return on investment for homeowners is worth it, said Ted Clifton, founder and chief designer of Zero-Energy Home Plans, Coupeville, Wash.

For USB outlets in homes, there are no prewire costs associated with installation—it’s basically a 110V outlet with an adapter that allows a USB cord to be plugged in, Clifton said.

“If it’s good for homebuilders and their market to include the extra $5 outlet in each room, they’re going to do that because it’s going to differentiate them in the marketplace,” he said.

For EV charging stations, there’s considerable cost to prewire the garage to accommodate one, two or three 30A or 40A outlets, which would also include a carport or other parking space, Clifton said.

Solar panels can be added to new or existing homes to power EV chargers and other systems.

The farther an outlet is located from the main breaker panel, the more it will cost, he said. Moreover, the cost for larger wire sizes for 40A outlets is about twice as much as for the 30A wires, though the cost for the plug itself is the same. 

“However, I’ve received a lot of feedback from my customers that building homes with solar panels and EV charging stations makes such good economic sense,” Clifton said. “In the homes we build, we offer to install additional solar panels on the roof to power EV chargers in the garage.”

Clifton installs EV charger outlets in every garage of the homes he builds, one for every bay. If it’s a three-bay garage, he might install a 40A outlet that’s closest to the panel because that will give a faster charge for the homeowner’s high-mileage vehicle. Then he’ll install 30A outlets for the other two bays, to be used for vehicles that aren’t driven as much.

Moreover, when installing other 30A, 40A or 50A, 240V outlets, the wire is much larger and contractors have to drill bigger holes through the studs, he said.

“So you have to look at where you’re going—you can’t go through the middle of a plumbing run with it, whereas you can go right around a plumbing run with standard 14-gauge wire,” Clifton said. “You have to plan your approach a little better, and of course that wire is expensive, so you want to keep it as short as possible.”

For retrofits in existing homes, there are devices that allow an EV charger to share a circuit with something else, such as a clothes dryer, he said. The unit won’t let the car charge while the dryer is being run, but as soon as the dryer stops, the unit will start charging the car, so homeowners can prioritize it either way.

This “absolutely” spells opportunity for electrical contractors, as solar panels, battery backup and EV chargers are profit centers for the builder and the electrician, Clifton said.

“For electrical contractors installing EV chargers within a new subdivision with say, 300 homes, they can make an extra $150 profit per home after all their costs, and that’s a lot of money,” he said. “There’s huge potential when contractors are able to get the developer involved in making this decision—or where there’s already state code mandating this.”

Prepared for anything

Sustainable Homes Inc., Boerne, Texas, builds houses designed to run 100% off the environment in the event something comes up, said Darrel McMaster, owner.

“The houses include solar panels and EV chargers, and there’s enough solar generation to create transportation for the owner, although there is also a battery system and generator backup in the event that the solar has issues,” McMaster said.

The company used to install just one EV charger in its houses, but due to increased demand, each house now has two, so the accompanying solar array on the roof increased in size to meet the increased demand, he said. He found that array  needed to be further increased—as well as the size of the backup batteries—to meet the energy needs from increased EV driving over the homeowners’ gas-powered vehicles.

“When we first started building homes in 2009, most of our owners’ electric cars were their third cars,” McMaster said. “But as time has gone on, we now have gotten to the point where the gas car is the third car. Most of our owners have 100% electric cars as well as a plug-in hybrid because they have range anxiety.”

In addition, with the advance of bidirectional chargers, homeowners are now able to charge their electric cars for transportation and see them as a charging capability they can plug back into the electricity, he said. This helps reduce the cost of the house, because they can downsize the size of the battery array to run their house during any event, including power outages from the grid.

“The majority of our customers are people who understand that if they can make an investment in their house at the time that they purchase it, their house can cover all the utility needs—water, sewer, electricity—and will fuel the owner’s transportation,” McMaster said. “Plus, the utilities and the transportation costs are tax deductible.”

“So for our customers, the idea of ‘green’ is a $100 bill—that’s really what it gets down to,” he said.

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