San Marcos runs its own electric utility, which makes it the third municipal provider in this service area. It also has an unusually large rental market, and that changes what people need from an installation.
A city-owned utility
San Marcos Electric Utility supplies the city. There is no retail provider to shop and no separate delivery company — the city supplies the power and sends the bill.
For a straightforward charging circuit that changes nothing. For anything touching the service itself, it means the city is the party arranging the disconnect and reconnect, on its own schedule.
It also means the Austin Energy rebate does not apply. Different city, different utility, different programme. We do not quote a San Marcos incentive figure unless we have confirmed a current one directly.
Renting, or letting? The advice differs
A large share of housing here is rented, and that reframes the installation.
If you rent, a hardwired charger is generally the wrong purchase — it stays with the building. A portable unit on a properly installed 240-volt receptacle is the sensible arrangement, and it goes with you when the lease ends. That is genuinely the main argument in favour of a receptacle over hardwiring, and it applies here more than anywhere else on this site.
If you own and let the property, the questions are different: whether the circuit is metered to the unit or to common supply, whether the equipment is yours or the tenant’s, and whether an assigned parking space stays assigned. Those need settling before the design is fixed, because they determine what should be installed.
Either way, permission from the property owner comes first, and we will not install on a rented property without it.
Housing stock varies widely
The near-campus housing includes older stock with modest services. The newer development on the edges — Kissing Tree, Whisper and similar — is modern with 200-amp panels and headroom already there.
The load calculation is doing real work on the older addresses, and on some of them it turns up adjacent items alongside the charging question.
Ground
San Marcos sits on the escarpment, so the ground changes across the city. West and north of the river there is limestone close to the surface; eastward the cover deepens. A run leaving the building gets surveyed rather than assumed.
Commercial and multi-family
With the student population and the associated apartment density, multi-family charging comes up frequently here. Those projects start as service capacity questions and quickly become questions about metering, billing and who owns the equipment — worth answering before hardware is specified.
Permits
The City of San Marcos issues the permit and schedules the inspection. Surrounding unincorporated addresses go to Hays County.