Babylon officials aim to regulate electric vehicle chargers

The Town of Babylon is proposing legislation to regulate electric vehicle chargers outside houses, apartments and businesses.

The new regulations would dictate what types of chargers can be placed in certain property zones and how they are situated, including their proximity to structures.

Town officials said they wanted to create the code after seeing an increase in applications for EV chargers.

“We wanted to make sure we set the regulations in place and have some guidelines for people to follow,” said Denise Graziano, commissioner of the town’s planning and development department. “We just wanted to get ahead of it.”

A hearing on the proposed legislation will take place Wednesday at 3 p.m. at Town Hall in Lindenhurst.

Regulations vary

The regulations vary for the different levels of chargers: Level 1 “slow” chargers that take between eight and 24 hours to fully charge and require a 120-volt circuit; Level 2 “medium” chargers that take four to 10 hours to charge and require a 240-volt circuit; and Level 3 “rapid” chargers that take 20 minutes to an hour and require at least a 60-amp breaker on at least a 480-volt, three-phase circuit.

Level 1 chargers would be allowed only in residentially zoned areas and could only be mounted on interior or exterior residential garage walls.

Level 2 chargers could be in any zone, but Level 3 chargers would be allowed only in business and industrial zones. They would also need setbacks of 10 feet and to be located 30 feet from any building.

Level 1 chargers outside single-family homes currently require a building permit, and that process remains unchanged, said Emily Moll, a town planner who helped design the code. Under the new legislation, Level 2 and 3 chargers would require a departmental review, including site plans, she said.

The new regulations would prohibit chargers in public parking garages or parking areas located beneath buildings. They also would not be allowed to be mounted on the walls of any multiresidential or commercial building.

More development applications

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an agency within the U.S. Department of Energy that collects and analyzes energy data, in the second quarter of this year, 24% of new light-duty vehicles sold in the United States were hybrid electric, battery electric or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. That's a 2-point increase over the same period last year, the data shows.

New York State Department of Motor Vehicle data indicates there are nearly 63,000 electric vehicle registrations on Long Island over the past two years. There are more than 2.2 million gas vehicle registrations over the same period for the Island.  

The town is seeing more applications for multiresidential developments, which often seek to include electric vehicle chargers, said Anthony Cardali, Babylon’s chief fire marshal. He said that in the past, those chargers have often been placed in parking lots near the front of the building, which raised fire safety concerns.

“The battery generates a lot of heat, a lot of flames, and a high-energy fire like that, we really don’t want to have it right there in front,” spreading to the building and potentially blocking the exit, Cardali said. “We don’t want a car fire to become a building fire.”

He said the town has not seen an increase in electric car fires, but there has been a surge in e-bike and scooter fires.

“It’s not so much the charger that would cause the fire,” Cardali said. “What we have experienced with EV fires is that they are quick and fast and furious, and usually it’s because of a problem with the battery.”

The town was one of the first municipalities on Long Island to install electric vehicle charging stations when it put them at Town Hall and then other town locations starting in 2010.

Existing chargers, including those at Town Hall, will be grandfathered and will not be required to comply with the new regulations, town spokesperson Ryan Bonner said.