The Oregon Department of Transportation has been paying businesses to install EV charging since 2023. The program is called Community Charging Rebates, and in its most recent round it covered up to $8,000 per charging port, or 80% of what the project cost, whichever came out lower.

Funding is awarded first-come, first-served. Applications are reviewed in the order they arrive, and once the money for a round is committed, that round closes, whether or not the published deadline has arrived.

That timing is what makes this worth understanding before a round opens rather than after. We sat down with Matthew Kristiansen, PEC’s Senior Energy Program Specialist for EV charging, who has worked with the program since its first round in 2023.

About Your Expert

Matthew Kristiansen; Senior Energy Program Specialist, EV Charging Programs

Matthew Kristiansen is a Senior Energy Program Specialist and certified grant writer who has been with PEC since November 2021. He works closely with the sales, project management, and customer teams to secure rebate, incentive, and grant funding for EV charger projects. Matthew is passionate about the collaborative work at PEC and the positive impact it has on communities and the environment.

Article Highlights

• ODOT pays up to $8,000 per Level 2 charging port, capped at 80% of eligible project costs.
• Open to businesses, non-profits, and government entities in Oregon, at workplaces, public parking, and multifamily housing.
• Minimum two ports at a workplace or public site, four at multifamily housing.
• Funding is first-come, first-served, and a round closes as soon as the money is committed.
• Most of the work that makes you eligible can be done before a round opens.

What is Oregon’s Community Charging Rebates program?

Community Charging Rebates is a cost-share program administered by the Oregon Department of Transportation. It reimburses part of what a business spends to purchase, install, and maintain EV charging equipment at a property in Oregon. The mechanics are straightforward: you fund the project, put the equipment into service, submit the documentation ODOT requires, and ODOT reimburses you against eligible costs.

ODOT has run the program since 2023 using federal funds, and it is built to place charging in locations the private market has not reached on its own. That intent shapes everything downstream; which properties qualify, how the funding is divided, and how quickly a round closes.

The program funds Level 2 charging, the standard commercial charger you see in parking lots and garages. It runs on a 240-volt circuit and adds roughly 25 miles of range per hour, which fits any site where people park for a few hours at a time. Highway fast charging is a separate category with separate funding.

Three property types qualify:

• Publicly accessible parking. Lots and garages open to the public at least 60 hours a week. Retail, hotels, restaurants, parks, transit stations, tourist destinations.
• Workplaces. Parking that mainly serves your employees or your fleet. Office buildings, manufacturing plants, hospitals, schools.
• Multifamily housing. Apartment buildings, condos, and co-ops with five or more residences. Chargers have to be shared among residents rather than assigned to individual units.

Eligible applicants include businesses, non-profits, and state, local, and Tribal government entities licensed to do business in Oregon. One detail worth settling early: the rebate is paid to the entity that incurs the project costs. A partner can prepare or submit the application on your behalf, but payment follows the party funding the work.

Why does ODOT pay businesses to install EV charging?

Transportation is Oregon’s largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions, at about 35% of the state total. The state set vehicle electrification targets in Senate Bill 1044, and in 2021 ODOT published an analysis of what it would actually take to hit them. The finding was that Oregon needed five times more charging ports by 2025 and twenty times more by 2030.

That same analysis found something more specific, and it’s the reason this program is shaped the way it is. Charging companies build where EV adoption is already high, because that’s where the usage is. Which leaves large parts of the state waiting a long time for infrastructure. So 70% of the program’s funding is reserved for what ODOT calls priority communities; census blocks that are rural or predominantly low-income.

The money comes from a federal grant Oregon received in 2024. Oregon DEQ won $197 million from the EPA through its Climate Equity and Resilience Through Action (CERTA) program, and $10.9 million of that was routed to ODOT to run this program. Earlier rounds, going back to 2023, were state funded; the federal money is what shaped the current rules.

The practical read for a business: ODOT is trying to buy charging capacity in places the market hasn’t gotten to yet. If your property is in one of those places, you’re the customer this program was built for.

How much is the ODOT EV charging rebate?

ODOT’s most recent round paid $8,000 per Level 2 charging port, up to 80% of eligible project costs.

A few limits sit on top of that:

• $249,000 maximum per project site
• $1,000,000 maximum per company, across everything
• Minimum of two ports at a workplace or public site, four at multifamily housing

Worth knowing that a port is one vehicle charging. Most commercial chargers are dual-port, meaning one unit charges two cars, so a four-port project is typically two physical chargers.

What does a commercial EV charging project cost after the rebate?

ODOT runs two calculations and pays whichever is smaller. First, $8,000 times your port count. Second, 80% of your eligible costs. You get the lower number.

The practical effect is that you always cover at least 20% of the project yourself. There’s no scenario where the rebate covers the whole thing.

Where the two calculations cross over is $10,000 per port. If your project comes in under that, the 80% figure is the one that governs. Above it, the $8,000 per-port cap takes over and the share ODOT covers starts dropping as the project gets more expensive.

Say you’re putting in four ports and the project comes to $50,000. Four ports times $8,000 is $32,000. Eighty percent of $50,000 is $40,000. ODOT pays the smaller one, so you’d see $32,000 back and carry $18,000.

What moves a project from one side of that line to the other is almost always the electrical work. Two buildings can want the identical number of chargers and land in very different places depending on how far the chargers sit from the electrical room, whether there’s capacity in the existing panel, and whether the utility service needs to be upgraded. That’s the part worth understanding before you settle on a port count.

One more thing that surprises people: If you reserve funding before you build, ODOT calculates the reservation on your port count. When the job is done, they recalculate against your actual costs and pay the lesser of the two. So the final check can come in below what was reserved. It won’t come in above.

Is this the final round of ODOT rebate funding?

ODOT has not said this is the last round, but it has said what’s coming. The agency expects to launch the next funding opportunity by fall 2026, using about $5 million from the 2024 federal grant.

The pool did get smaller along the way. To close ODOT’s funding gap for the 2025–2027 budget cycle, the Oregon Legislature redirected money out of several ODOT programs, including $8 million from Community Charging Rebates. ODOT has said that redirection does not affect rebates already reserved or paid, including Round 4 projects.

The program guidelines also say that after Round 4, ODOT will evaluate how the program performed and publish updated guidelines and rebate levels, so the dollar figures in this article are the most recent published numbers, not a guarantee of what the next round pays. The spending caps in the current document run through the end of 2027, or until the funds are used up, whichever comes first.

How long does a funding round stay open?

Every Community Charging Rebates round has a published end date, and that date is a ceiling rather than a schedule.

Applications are reviewed and funding is reserved strictly in the order applications arrive. Funds get committed to approved projects until they’re gone or until the deadline hits, whichever happens first. The most recent round listed the end of March 2026 as its deadline, with the explicit condition that it would close earlier if the money was fully allocated.

There are actually two separate pools running at once; one for priority communities, one for everywhere else. They close independently. So the pool your property sits in matters as much as the overall deadline does.

Once funding is reserved for your project, you have 300 calendar days (or roughly ten months) to get the chargers installed, activated, and the final paperwork submitted. Miss that and the reservation is canceled and the money goes back in the pool.

The guidelines are blunt about the other side of this. You’re allowed to start spending before you apply, but you do it at your own risk, because nothing guarantees funding will still be there when you get around to applying.

How do you apply, and where do applications get held up?

Step one on any ODOT application is the Site Verification Form, filled out and fully signed by the customer. That’s what authorizes our team to submit an application on behalf of the customer the moment the program opens. Everything else can be in perfect shape, but without that signature, you’re stuck.

The piece that makes the biggest difference is the cost estimate. ODOT wants an itemized quote showing exactly what each part of the project costs (materials, labor, and everything outside of it) and it has to match the site design in the application, port for port. Because our Sales Engineers and Project Managers will already have done a site audit, we can have a detailed engineering estimate built before the program even launches. That’s the difference between applying on day one and applying three weeks in while you wait on numbers.

After that, most of the work is on the back end. Permit copies, detailed photos of the installation, certification requirements, and understanding how to stack the ODOT rebate with other incentive programs you might qualify for. There are rules about the order you apply for those, and they affect what ODOT ends up paying. We handle all of that regularly.

Having worked with the ODOT team since Round 1, what’s clear is that they want quality equipment installed the right way. We treat every project as its own thing; what gives this property the best charging experience for the people using it, while meeting the standard ODOT expects. Those two goals line up more often than not.

What do you need in place before applying?

The ODOT application itself isn’t the long part. The work that makes you eligible to apply is, and almost all of it can be done before a round opens.

Here’s what to line up.

• Know your electrical capacity. This determines how many ports you can support and whether you need a utility service upgrade. It’s the longest-lead item on most projects and the biggest driver of what the job costs per port.
• Check your address against ODOT’s priority map. It’s on the program website. This tells you which funding pool you’re in, which tells you how much competition you’re facing.
• Apply for other incentives first. This is a rule, not advice. ODOT requires you to apply for other grants and utility incentives before applying to them, and to disclose it. Awards from elsewhere reduce the costs ODOT counts as eligible.
• Get an itemized quote that matches your site plan. Same port count, same charger types. A mismatch sends the application back for correction, and corrections have a ten-day window before the application is canceled.
• Get the Site Verification Form signed. Especially if you lease your building or the property owner is a separate entity. Chasing a signature is the most avoidable delay there is.
• Confirm your chargers qualify. ODOT maintains a list of approved equipment. Ordering hardware before checking it is an expensive mistake.
• Budget for five years of networking and maintenance. Both are required, both have to be paid up front for five years, and both count as eligible costs, so they need to be in the quote from the beginning rather than added later.
• Plan on a certified installer. The electrical work has to be supervised or performed by an electrician holding EVITP certification or an equivalent approved by the state.

Work with PEC to make It Seamless!

One of the ways we try to deliver a ton of value to our customers is by making these funding opportunities easy and seamless. Instead of spending ours of research trying to get everything in place to capitalize on these incentives, or just skipping them all together, our team will help you every step away of the way, so you can make sure your EV Charging project is done right, on budget, and frees you up to focus on running your business.