EV home chargers - where to start?

There are no grants for home owners anymore.

You can't have more than a 7kW charger unless you have 3 phase electricity.

They can split the cables coming out of the electricity meter and avoid changing your existing consumer unit entirely so if the electric meter is in a more accessible position that would be the way to go.

so if the electric meter is in a more accessible position that would be the way to go.

nope the elec meter is right next to the consumer unit in the middle of the house, so its no easier to get to.

Yes, as above. You can have a separate mini CU but there still needs to be cable going to where you want the charger. If you're fussy about appearance then go with a electrician who can offer some creative options on how to run it rather than one of the fixed price merchants.

The chargers all have to be smart these days but the other factors these days are if you'll be wanting to integrate with solar (look to something like Zappi) or if you want to use smarter tariffs like Octopus Agile or Intelligent (so something like Ohme). Else just get the one you dislike the looks of least.

Ohme, from Octopus. It will give you smart charging with most cars on Intelligent Octopus which is the super cheap one.

Absolutely no reason to go with anything else.

Another vote for Ohme and Intelligent Octopus, and when you set it up refer to this facebook group:

On this subject, I just got a call from Northern Powergrid about "an application to install a charge point". I said OK but they already installed the charge point. She said, "yes, that happen a lot, but they should get permission first so we have to come to your house to check it's OK". So we'll see what happens !!

Our CU is at the front of the house ,in the hallway.
Cable runs up into the corner of the youngest’s bedroom , then is chased into the wall up into the loft , over to the back of the house where it pops out under the eaves and runs down the wall to the charger. Quite a cable run.
Charger is an Andersen A2 which although expensive, looks good when the cable is wound up as you don’t see it

I tend to charge at work but I have a 'Granny lead' to charge at home occasionally and a 3 pin plug at the end of my garage. They're really slow though, think it charges at 2kw an hour. I was empty on Saturday morning (4% remaining, 60kw battery) and wasn't using the Megane over the weekend so plugged it - was fully charged by lunchtime on Sunday. So just the 27 hours! Usually use it to just top up if I've got a big journey the next day so I'm generally charging from 70 or 80%.

Looks somewhat similar to this one but is Renault badged, more expensive and came from the dealer.

Granny charger

Avoid Podpoint. Their chargers are centrally managed so if they ever go under, you’ll lose the ability to control the charger.

Zappi for me.  6 years old and still going strong.  

Installed a few different brands but like the Zappi the best, seems the best option for future integration if that’s something you’re thinking about.
I always use EV ultra cable now, it’s a cat 5 inside a 6mm flex so makes the install easier for the CT clamps too. Loads of ways to get a cable outside, up to the floor above and through the joists, up the airing cupboard and through the loft, basically there’s always a way it’s just a case of how much time you want the electrician doing it

Does your usage mean having a home charger definitely makes sense? You would need a smart meter and tariff to make the most of one. I do a 40 mile daily commute and have done without for 2.5 years.

Loads of ways to get a cable outside, up to the floor above and through the joists, up the airing cupboard and through the loft, basically there’s always a way it’s just a case of how much time you want the electrician doing it

Thanks for that, I just don't know what a good electrician can do with regard to runni g cables unobtrusively and cost effectively.

Does your usage mean having a home charger definitely makes sense?

That's a very good point, is there a rule of thumb as to how many miles you do per day when it makes more sense to get a proper EV charger rather than just use a 3 pin plug?

Does your usage mean having a home charger definitely makes sense? You would need a smart meter and tariff to make the most of one. I do a 40 mile daily commute and have done without for 2.5 years

How do you charge then? With a 2kw jobby or on public chargers? (And wouldn't that get expensive?)

Sorry for the silly question, I don't own an ev, but am considering whether not being (reliably) able to charge at home would be a major barrier

I went with Podpoint just within the grant period. 7Kw is you max as mentioned, it’s fine as I charge overnight so always plenty the next morning. Mine goes out from the meter into the garage and outside. 

I work for a company manufacturing EV chargers, so you should buy one of ours!
We retail a 7KW charger for £478 inc UK delivery. Can't really help you with electricians but the unit can be fitted in about 1/2hour. You need someone qualified:
https://www.gov.uk/electric-vehicle-chargepoint-installers
In terms of installation (as per the above), there will be a cable from the CU (sounds like you will need a larger one, unless there are spare slots or some circuits can be consolidated). This would be on a separate circuit, similar to that of an electric shower. Things that will increase the cost are - length of cable needed + amount of time to make the circuit at the CU and fitting the cable from CU to chargepoint. This could take a few hours.

Our website

We have an Easee charger, as it was supplied and installed by Tusker as part of a salary sacrifice lease scheme through work.  We are also on intelligent Octopus and it all works seamlessly. It does appear that there is a fair number of charger/car combinations that won’t work with IO. Neighbour has a Peugeot and a PodPoint and cannot access IO. 

You need a smart meter for Ohm etc don't you? That would be a consideration if so.

13A cable out the window will do fine for starters. That's what we've been using up to now, though we did melt a plug recently which gave me pause for thought...faulty fuse I think, hard to be sure.

You need a SMART meter to get the SMART tariffs. The meter sends usage info to the supplier every 30mins, so they can match supply/demand. This usually means cheaper charging overnight, when demand is lower. Our charger will do this - you can set the charge times (it is preset to charge overnight)

An EV charger install should cost no more than £1k all in.

There are several other SMART tariffs which are compatible with a wider range of chargers than just Ohme or Zappi. E.g. Octopus GO which is 9p/kwh overnight instead of 7.5p/kwh for Octopus intelligent

"How do you charge then? With a 2kw jobby or on public chargers? (And wouldn’t that get expensive?)"

Granny charger plugged into the shed. Yes, public charging would definitely be prohibitively expensive. I reckon I can add about 80 miles of range on an overnight charge, car uses 3-3.5 miles per KWh.

The real benefits of the 7Kw charger are they enable you to access the split rate electric for more charge. As Molgrips said, the Ohme Pro makes sense as that will work with Intelligent Octopus no matter what the vehicle.

But you need a Smart Meter installed to make that work, which might not be an option for me (limited o2 signal). Without that, I don't see any point in having a charger fitted. With, there could be use cases where it might not be cost effective to have a charger - but probably not that many, it would just be the timeframe to recoup your install cost.

It might be worth considering a Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) bidirectional charger, which would allow you to use the car battery to store electricity for the house. I haven't looked into them as my car doesn't do reverse charging but I understand it will be be introduced on more cars. I'm not even sure if I'd want one; would I want to use up the battery life on the car, or a stand alone battery which would be cheaper to replace?

I have a hypervolt charger which was £900 installed, after the grant which I got just in time.

I don't use any of the smart features, Intelligent Octopus talks straight to the car, so if I was doing it again I'd get a cheaper charger.

The other thing to consider is what it looks like, and does it have a way of keeping the cable tidy.

just use a 3 pin plug?

Long term this is a bad idea, as is using an extension lead - you’ll almost certainly cause thermal damage to the socket and the extension lead. A decent granny charger will monitor the temperature of the plug and limit current if it gets too high, but that can’t account for anything in between or the wiring to the socket.

The electrical work in my own house was top notch but the previous owners still managed to melt the socket by the front door charging their Mini with an extension cable.

I bought a cable tidy bracket for £10 from eBay, for my Ohme as I needed untethered 10m cable.

Easee One. It’s the standard charger in Norway (from a Norwegian company) and they are WAY ahead of us on the EV front. Brilliant, simple, compact charger, with a great app interface. Untethered but got the right length cable and bracket for an extra 120.

I did some rough calcs on how long it would take to pay back the cost of an Ohme on Intelligent Octopus vs just charging via the granny cable and IIRC it was 18-24 months. What actually swung it for us was the fact that IO optimises the charging to make use of lower CO2 electricity and part of the motivation for getting an EV was to reduce emissions.

The process with Octopus was pretty good. We completed a bit of a self-survey then the electrician came around the day before the install to check our assumptions were right (they weren't). Rest assured yours will not be the most complex install they've done.

Quite a few people at work who have Tusker EV's use Octopus and mix of chargers but they all use/recommend Costelloes for the actual install of the charger, looks like they are north west and north Wales so depends where you are.

Granted, the Easee look good, but having seen inside them, our FastAmps charger has better design and build quality - much more durable.

'Long term this is a bad idea, as is using an extension lead – you’ll almost certainly cause thermal damage to the socket and the extension lead. A decent granny charger will monitor the temperature of the plug and limit current if it gets too high, but that can’t account for anything in between or the wiring to the socket.'

Is this actually true? I fitted a pretty heavy duty ring out to the garage so I could run tumble driers, big tools, and so it's rated for well over my granny charger? So......?  It doesn't seem to have happened to anyone I know doing this

Zappi in our house. Fitted a new mini consumer unit next to meter and charger is on the wall next to the meter box. We wanted the solar integration (this summer our car was almost exclusively charged from the sun!).

Only issue we have found is it occasionally needs a reset (turn it on and off) seems to be every 4-6 months. I can live with that.

Is this actually true?

The melted socket I removed says “yes”.

I think you won’t particularly trouble modern wiring but the connection between the plug and the socket isn’t guaranteed.

Alternatives are sockets rated to the new “EV” standard which apparently are tested to a higher standard, or swap the end with the 13A plug to a 16A commando socket.

But then you’re into the joy of PEN fault protection which a decent charger takes care of for you.

I have a knackered old Leaf with about a 35 mile range that I use to go to the train station, local shops, bottle bank run etc. It is charged from a 3 pin socket in my garage. The electrics in my garage are on their own 'box split from the main house supply at source. There is a seperate circuit for the hot tub, sauna, sockets I use for the welder, car socket and then the lights and other sockets. I suspect this is neither normal car use or normal electrics but all works fine for me.

I would think about how you really use the car. I assumed that a 35 mile range would make the car almost unusable for much other than the station and back but it was cheap and I was curious so I went for it. Throughout lock down it was pretty much the only car we used. You unplug it, drive it, park back home and plug it in and it is normally charged enough for the next quick trip. This has lessened since then as we do more frequent trips during the day but I was stunned by how useable it actually was. If you can leave your car on charge overnight and charge up from time to time during the day then you might not need to get the charger from day one.

Live with the car for a few months and see what you actually need perhaps?

I had a dumb untethered ev charger installed in 2018, quite a few months before I got an ev. Then in Jan 2020 I bought a smart Ohme cable to convert the dumb charger into a smart charger. I went down the route of ev cars that included public charging in the monthly price, so never used the home charger option I'd invested in. I think I'd still go down the Ohme charger route even tho I've fallen out with them over them cancelling my SIM card after 3 yrs (I suspect they did this due to it not being used) and they're now wanting to charge me to upgrade it (ie replace the SIM card they probably cancelled). There are others supporting Agile Octopus now like the Simpson and Partners charger. You defo need to look at ev specific electric tariffs and then look at ev chargers that support it. Altho one of my pals who has a big house and doesn't do many miles in his ev decided an ev specific electric tariff was more expensive, so do your maths first.. I use about 2000kwh in the home and 4000kwh of the car so an ev orientated electric tariff will be best for me when I buy an ev and have to charge at home. I believe someone is now doing a cheaper EV tariff than Octopus (OVO and/or British Gas??) but Octopus were long ago first to market with a number of ev tariff options, so maybe they should be supported if there's not much in it. look into Agile Octopus, Octopus Go, Intelligent Octopus etc and OVO and British Gas. Then choose a home charger that will best support the smart tariffs.

I have a Hypervolt, mostly based on a quick google at the time suggesting it was highly rated + looked decent and fitted in the small amount of wall space I had available. The app is decent and reliable, you can remote lock it to (prevent the charger from working rather than securing the cable) although I've never felt the need. I think it was around £1200 installed (post-grant)

That said, if I was planning to switch to Octopus, it makes sense to get a charger they support/supply (I haven't switched to them as when I last looked, for the little amount of EV charging I did, the added cost to all my other electricity usage meant it would be more expensive - that might have changed now though).

It seems impossible to get a ist of what chargers/cars are compatible with octopus go...they keep pushing me (following various links on their website) to get an ohme charger fitted by them, but there seems to be no definitive list of compatible cars or chargers. I must be missing something - can anyone point me at such a list?

I seem to be the odd one out but I’m on OVO charge anytime. All electricity charged at their standard price then the following month you get a credit for the ev part. EV charge now down to 7p. EV usage comes from a smart charger  or some cars work with a dumb charger. They still want a smart meter though. I went with an untethered Ohme as I needed a 10m cable. Installed by Charged EV with a £70 OVO discount. 

I've got a dumb charger from being an early adopter with a plugin hybrid and got a grant. It is generally fine but the car's onboard charging scheduler sw (full EV now) is a bit flaky so makes you distrust it to start when the low rate starts at 12-5 (BG EV tariff). Ideally I'd replace it with a smart charger for this and also to move from 3.2Kw to 7 in order to maximise low tariff time, but can't quite bring myself to spend ~£900 and completely wipe out any savings for a couple of years.

For Octopus Go, you just need a SMART meter and a charger with the ability to preset a charging period (0130-0530 I think). Octopus intelligent is the tariff where you need a specific charger (ohme/zappi). On that tariff, octopus will control the charging.
Note that these chargers are about £800+ and you only save 1.5p/kWh.

^^^ appreciate that you work for a charger supplier :

finephillyFree Member<br />I work for a company manufacturing EV chargers, so you should buy one of ours!

so may have a bit of bias.  Re your above comment re Octopus Intelligent, it is not limited to those 2 chargers at all, there is a long list of car makes and models it will work with, with a variety of other chargers..

I use IO with an Easee charger and a BMW i4.  I pay 7.5p/kWh, compared to 32p/kWh on most standard tariffs.

This has been a very useful thread, I'm actually wondering whether for our typical use its just more cost effective all round to use a 3 pin plug charger, it's only when I would do back to back 60+ mile days where I wouldnt have enough time to be able to replace the charge witha 3 pin plug, and 60+ mile days are few and far between.

I pay 7.5p/kWh, compared to 32p/kWh on most standard tariffs

And what do you pay during the day? I've had trouble getting an EV tariff out of EON, but that's not surprise given their track record on customer service. I'm debating getting one for my PHEV.

And what do you pay during the day?

standing charge is 60p and price p/kWh is 30p from 0530 till 2330, 7.5p during the night, for anything that is using power, not just the car charger

I installed an Ohme 7.6kW at home five years ago for £200, there were grants galore at the time. It's never missed a beat and ties in well with Octopus, 6hrs at 7.5p, delivers about 25mph so fills the car over two nights if needed. Prior to that I ran the granny charger under the garage door for three years with no bother, that added 7-8mph. It worked comfortably with the PHEV but was more challenging with the full EV but workable. At work I bought two Zappi 7.6kW from Midsummer and our fitters installed them with no bother. We installed them a year apart, the first one went faulty after 12 months and Zappi initially tried updating over the air to fix it but then later replaced for free with no hassle. I resisted the three phase 22kW as most cars are sat on the car park for 8 hours every day anyway. these serve three vehicles five days a week. If I could make do with a granny charger in your situation I would, in my opinion bi-directional charging will become the next step and I would hold out for that style of charger. There doesn't seem much option at the moment other than a couple of American designs. Octopus recently ran a trial called Powerloop so I imagine UK will catch up soon.

that was precisely our logic julians. We actually get about 80-100 miles per overnight (7h at 3kW). That covers the vast majority of our use and for really long trips I need to charge on the road anyway.

Ideally I would turn our charger down to 10A or thereabouts to reduce the strain on the circuit, in principle the charging cable can do this but only if it's set when it is turned on and prior to plugging in to the car. Which doesn't really work with our time switch approach.

Looks like OVO charge anytime is slightly cheaper than IO at the moment. My standing charge is 56p, standard rate 29p and ev smart charging is 7p. (Credited as difference the following month).  Smart period is usually enough to fill my 80kwh battery in one night. 

I’ve had trouble getting an EV tariff out of EON, but that’s not surprise given their track record on customer service.<br /><br />

I was previously with them and only mention on website was of one coming soon. Day after I put in my application to switch, they phoned up to ask why I was leaving and only then offered me one to stay with them. Didn’t bother any went ahead and switched to Ovo, who so far at least have been very easy to deal with. Set up standard account first then once charger installed, a 5 minute phone call set up the ev tariff. 

Do not use a 3 pin plug, its a quick way to burn your house down.

You have absolutely no idea how tight the connections are in that socket, and in every break in that cable right back to and including the board.

How easy is it to swap chargers? We have a PodPoint installed (we didn't pay for it, it was a deal with the dealership). It does sometimes work with Intelligent Octopus, sometimes it doesn't.
Can I (with basic electrical ability) pull out the PodPoint and replace it with a Smart Ohme charger, or will I need a sparky to do it?
Obviously at the moment the PodPoint is all wired into the main meter / consumer unit and has its own separate circuit breaker.

In case it helps anyone I recently used this company for fitting a Ohme Pro. Unlike the old days, when it seems you could it done for buttons, it did cost me £1,200. Octopus had quoted me £975, but had at least 5-6 week lead time. Cawoods were able to turn round the fitting in 3 days. The technicians who came out to do it were very impressive in their knowledge (as were the office staff I spoke to) and they happily came back a couple of weeks later to alter the load limiter after my mains fuse was upgraded from 60A to 100A. They would have also taken on organising the fuse upgrade with the network, but I had put that in motion myself already. 

Do not use a 3 pin plug, its a quick way to burn your house down

We have one of these installed in the garage: https://www.cwberry.com/bg-masterplug-evh132s1sp-mode-2-electric-vehicle-charging-point

I'd imagine that will be much better than a standard wall socket.

How easy is it to swap chargers?

Straight swap I'd imagine as the ohme has the earth protection so no requirement to add a ground earth (if you didn't have that already). Things have to be tightened up correctly tho so I'd always use a pro.

I am also EV curious (my company does Tusker salary sacrifice) and looking at charging options.  We don't have off road parking so from what I can tell we would not be able to get a discounted/free install via Tusker so would be looking at getting a local electrician to install ideally.

My question is, if we don't want/need Octopus or Ovo smart tariffs, what do I get when buying a £600+ charger compared to various 'smart' chargers I can see on ebay and amazon for £200 to £300?  It does seem like a lot of money for some wires in a box 😉

I once bought a cheap UK/US plug adapter off Amazon, which fell apart on the first use and left a metal pin sticking out of the wall socket.

I would absolutely not consider trying to save £300 with off brand Amazon shite for something that chucks 7kW around while I'm asleep!

Point taken, even skipping on the amazon/ebay specials there seem to be legit chargers for under £400 though.

Well, if you buy one from our company, FastAmps
They are under £500 shipped to your door. UK designed and built. Robust and easy to install. SMART tariff compatible. You can set a 'charge-time' e.g. 0100-0500 at night, depending on when your supplier has a cheaper rate.
Ours is a good value product, full tech support direct with the manufacturer (us) , 3yr warranty. Works with the majority of SMART tariffs. Also integrates with Solar panels easily.
The £2-300 jobs from Shenzhen will have lower quality components, less durable construction and build quality and probably no tech support. The charge cable will likely be lower grade copper.

It's also worth pointing out you will need a qualified installer to fit a 7KW charger.

I can't help with any of the questions about chargers but I can recommend a good guy to get a quote or answer questions you have. 

Give Aidan a shout

https://solarsolutionsoxford.co.uk/ev-charger-installation/

We don’t have off road parking

I thought that a lack of off road parking meant that installers were not supposed to install a charger at all, am I wrong?

Law has changed, I think.

Law has changed, I think.

this page

https://www.boxt.co.uk/ev-chargers/guides/ev-charger-installation-requirements-what-you-need-to-know#requirements

states that you need to have off road parking for a charger to be installed. maybe its out of date, I dunno.... its a confusing mess out there though

anyway - having started this thread, we now have the car, and we're using the 3 pin plug to charge it for now, and we'll see how it goes. I suspect the 3 pin plug will do just fine most of the time, but a dedicated charger would allow a more adhoc approach to longer trips.

I've got the charger plugged into a socket in the garage with the cable coming out under the garage door. the charger is on a timer so we can time the charger to use the cheaper octopus go electric rates. I've fixed a small hook outside the house to coil the cable up when not in use, this setup seems fine, but means we have to plan further ahead if we know we're going on a long trip and therefore need the car at 100% charge.

Will see how it all goes.

this page

https://www.boxt.co.uk/ev-chargers/guides/ev-charger-installation-requirements-what-you-need-to-know#requirements

states that you need to have off road parking for a charger to be installed. maybe its out of date, I dunno…. its a confusing mess out there though

There's a house near me (we're all on terraced streets) which has a charger but no off-street parking. So some people are certainly doing it!

Yes I've seen plenty of houses with chargers and no parking.  I think perhaps it's just that the big installers and energy companies won't do an install and it would not be eligible for any government grant.

Thinking of getting a Hypervolt installed, any reasons why not ? Currently an Octopus customer.

all charges are pretty much the same now so unless you’re tied in to a certain brand for other stuff like batteries/solar and want to keep it all the same then get the one you like the look of best.

No chance I’d be fitting a charger for someone with only on street parking, far too many different earth paths in fault conditions. lamp posts, next doors charging car, basically anything metal not attached to you’re electrical system. I’ll wait for the clever folks who write the regs to figure out a way around that one.

Surely different fault paths is the reason the Good Lord invented RCDs?

Well we got a quote for installing an Ohme and accepted it, but the electrician has not got back to us for a week.   We did go through the Ohme process of getting a custom quote, but never got one.  Probably too custom a job.

Meanwhile we are enjoying using our new ev but need to find a public charger nearby that works.

It is not particularly easy to get people to do stuff it seems.

Thinking of getting a Hypervolt installed, any reasons why not ? Currently an Octopus customer

Hypervolt have only just started beta support for octopus. They seem to be pushing quite hard though. Anyway I've got one based on I think they look OK. It's fine no problems. Use octopus but it's a compatible car so charger is dumb.

we got a quote for installing an Ohme and accepted it, but the electrician has not got back to us for a week.   We did go through the Ohme process of getting a custom quote, but never got one.

I  had two historical quotes through Octopus and in July they decided they were going to take the payment for both via Direct Debit - about £2000. It took over a week of daily phone calls before they acknowledged an error. No apology for the bother.

I got in touch with 3 local electricians and the only guy who got back to me got the job. He did a lovely job on a tricky install and it all works perfectly. Ohme and Octo Intel Go.

I charged my car up last night and it's reporting a cost of£2.30, saving £4.50. So why wouldn't you?

Also get tethered, it's less bother. Get at least 8m as it's always further than you think.

We were planning on an Ohme, however car lease is through Tusker and included them supplying and fitting charger as part of the deal. Ended up with an Easee, which has been perfect over the year we have had it.

We are on IO with a BMW i4. In hindsight tethered would have been handier.

My experience/mini-review after a couple of weeks with a new electric car and charger (not had electric cars before, so nothing to compare this too).

Charger is a MyEnergy Zappi - installation was by Octopus who were brilliant. Total cost was just under a grand, and installed in 10 days from order. Installation took about 4 hours for 2 guys.

The charger and associated app is very good so far - you can set it to charge immediately, to only charge when there is surplus solar being generated, or a mixture. This can all be changed via the app as well as on the charger. Integrates with intelligent octopus go, so we let it charge via solar in the day, and then fill up over night. So far has been faultless apart from once forgetting to plug the car in!

I am very much liking the cheap driving, and having the car with a full charge every morning. Would definitely recommend the Zappi so far.

I also got a Zappi installed by Octopus, and the installation was done very well. The installer contacted me in advance to talk it through and got me to take a video of the existing electrics and house layout so he could think about options. He did a very neat job on the day (assisted by another installer who was training).

I got a Zappi because all the Octopus offerings were a similar price, and I read it was a good charger for integrating with solar, which I am considering. I'm currently on Octopus Tracker, because when I tried a couple of the comparison apps it looked like it would be cheaper than Go or Agile (we don't do a lot of miles). This means I'm not using the smart charging features at the moment.

I had two historical quotes through Octopus and in July they decided they were going to take the payment for both via Direct Debit – about £2000. It took over a week of daily phone calls before they acknowledged an error. No apology for the bother.

Yes I think I recall you posting about that, it sucks goats.  We went through Ohme (I think that is what Octopus do) and it never got to the stage of giving the custom quote electrician that they use payment details as although they contacted us to say hello, a quote never arrived.  I think the photographs and video of the house may have scared them off, the quote we accepted from a local electrician is substantial, but involves a lot of work. And he has now got in touch to arrange a time for doing it.  But we are off on holiday in a week, so it will be a while I suspect. But then, we won't be using the car much.

It has been a bit of a faff to be honest, and not over yet.

But if you are in the Bury NW area, Hart Electrical will do you a great job!