What this document is
This is the province's guidance for the people who prepare Electrical Planning Reports. It defines the purpose, scope, and limitations of an EPR and gives practical direction for preparing reports that meet the Strata Property Act and Regulation. Although written for practitioners, the province notes it is also useful for strata councils and owners who want to understand what their report should contain — which is why we summarize it here.
What an EPR must do
The guidance describes the EPR as a high-level planning tool. At minimum, a report must:
- summarize the current electrical capacity, peak demand, and known constraints of the strata's electrical system;
- provide order-of-magnitude estimates of the capacity required for anticipated new loads, including electrifying equipment currently powered by other fuels; and
- identify opportunities to reduce or manage demand — load-management strategies, right-sizing of equipment, and potential distribution-level upgrades.
It is equally clear about what an EPR is not: it does not provide detailed load calculations, code-compliant electrical or mechanical design, equipment selection or sizing, or advice sufficient to install new loads. Estimates and scenarios are indicative and for planning only, and they reflect conditions at the time the report is prepared — capacity and loading change as buildings electrify.
The three future demands every report considers
The guidance directs EPRs to provide planning-level information on how the strata could accommodate:
- space heating and cooling with electric heat pump systems;
- electrification of major building systems currently served by fossil fuels; and
- growing resident demand for EV charging — including scenarios that support broad or universal access.
Because EV charging is a large and highly flexible load, the guidance places particular emphasis on assessing it in ways that minimize peak demand — branch-circuit load sharing, service monitoring, and load-management systems consistent with the Canadian Electrical Code — so the strata avoids unnecessarily or prematurely triggering costly service upgrades.
Why councils should care about the 2026 update
The May 2026 update tightened several things a council can look for in a report it receives:
- a clearer split between the mandatory minimum content the Regulation requires and optional, supplemental services — with the costs of each clearly distinguished;
- transparent documentation of assumptions, consistent presentation between narrative and tables, and plain-language summaries so the report stays usable for years; and
- a reminder that municipal and authority-having-jurisdiction requirements arise at installation time — outside the EPR's scope, but relevant to later projects.
The reason the guidance gives for its scope discipline is worth quoting in spirit: an EPR helps a strata avoid exceeding available capacity, brownouts (temporary voltage drops when demand exceeds capacity), and unnecessary or premature service upgrades. That framing — plan first, spend once — is the practical heart of the document.