If you’re buying or leasing an electric car and you have off-street parking, investing in a home charger will not only bring huge convenience benefits, but it could help slash your driving costs.
Most EV owners who charge at home find they rarely have to use the public charging network. They don’t have to charge their cars every day and, if they want it, they have the benefit of never having to leave home without a ‘full tank of fuel’.
It’s possible to charge an EV from a standard 13-amp three-pin socket at home with the proper connector, but these ‘granny chargers’ are slow. With EV batteries growing in capacity, getting a full charge overnight might not be possible for everyone.
The best bet is to invest in a dedicated home charging point or wall box, and there are plenty on the market from a variety of suppliers with different speeds, functionality and styles.
The latest wall boxes charge at a speed of 7kW, which simply means that a car with a 70kWh battery would take around ten hours to charge fully – although charging tends to slow as a battery gets full, as it does with your mobile phone.
Just like you’d never get down to an empty tank of petrol before refilling, EV drivers don’t let their car batteries run down completely. Unlike petrol however, you might not always need to completely recharge an EV either. Because of the physics of battery charging, many EV makers recommend you only charge your battery to 80 per cent to improve battery life. That’s why the common standard for quoting charging times is 10 to 80 per cent.
What that means is that even cars with bigger batteries – and a 70kWh battery is a big battery that will likely give most electric cars a maximum claimed range of between 250 and 300 miles – could get a decent charge overnight, giving you a good range when you wake up in the morning.
If you are charging overnight, you really should consider a specialist EV tariff from an energy supplier. As there’s surplus power in the grid in the small hours of the night, you can buy electricity from around 7p per kWh from some suppliers – the normal rate is currently likely to be more than 25p per kWh.
Getting on the right tariff can truly slash your running costs. 100 miles could potentially cost you less than £2 in your EV, whereas the same distance in an average petrol car could cost you around £13 at current fuel prices.
Choosing the right home charger comes down to several things. You can buy them for less than £400 plus fitting. Then you need to think about whether you want a tethered charger – one that comes with its own cable – or untethered where you have to use the cable that comes with the car. Tethered is definitely easier to live with, rather than having to get a cable out of the boot every time you want to charge (although the new Fiat Grande Panda actually has a retractable cable in the nose of the car).
There are a host of different makes of charger to choose from. Hypervolt’s Home 3 Pro wins the best charger award at the What WallCharger awards, the Andersen A3 wins awards for the most stylish charger (with a range of finishes to match your home or car), Ohme has an excellent range of chargers and PodPoint offers free installation.
If you’re buying your first EV, there may well be an EV charger deal on offer from the car maker – it’s definitely worth checking, as some electric cars come with a free or heavily subsidised home charger.
Talking to your energy supplier is another option, particularly if you’re about to switch to an EV tariff. Most energy suppliers have their own branded home chargers and, again, there are deals to be had.
Be mindful, though, that some of the better low-cost EV tariffs rely on the right connectivity between the wall box, your electricity provider and the car – not every wall box works on every tariff.
Connectivity is another thing to think about. To get the most from your EV and wall box, a reliable internet connection is important – and that might require fitting a signal booster to make sure the signal reaches the outside wall where you fit your home charger.
Having your wall box connected to the internet means you can set charging times to coincide with the cheapest off-peak energy rates, you can start and stop charging remotely and you can even keep an eye on charging costs.
Many EVs themselves also come with apps that help you set a timer for charging as well as controlling other things in the car, including pre-heating or cooling.
Choosing the right place to put your wall box is another important consideration. Think about where you park your car and how easy it’s going to be to run the cable to your car’s charging socket. And, of course, you’ll also have to think about the aesthetics of putting a wall box and its cabling on an outside wall of your house.
Think about lighting, too – having good lighting outside where you plug in can be really useful when you’re plugging in at night.
Charging boxes can be installed in a garage if you park your car inside, although they are watertight so there’s no need to worry about wall boxes outside in the worst of British weather.
When it comes to the installation of your wall box, we would recommend getting a qualified electrician to do the work for you. You’ll need to have a survey done first to make sure that your home electrical system can cope with an EV – most houses with modern electrics should be okay, although some older houses may require an upgrade to their electrical infrastructure.
An electrician will also be able to advise on where to install the wall box, where to run the cables for minimal disruption and visibility, and any upgrade work that will need to be done to your electrical distribution board or fuse box to be able to fit the isolation switch for the charging system. Installs tend to take between two and three hours to complete.
Most people will opt for a 7kW system at home, but faster 22kW chargers are possible. They require a bit more work, and a fair bit more cost to install a professional three-phase electrical supply.
Even if you don’t have off-street parking, a home charger might not be out of the question. If you can park outside your house and you have an EV-friendly local authority, you might be allowed to run a charging cable either across the pavement (with suitable protection) or even through the pavement with clever solutions such as Kerbo Charge (which secured the backing of Deborah Meaden on Dragons’ Den) that will hide the cable through a gulley leading to the road.
Many EV owners also start to think a bit more about using power smartly and reducing costs once they get their cars. This might include solar power and a battery system to store power that’s generated during the day that can be used to top up the car at any time.
We’re also seeing some EVs that come with V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid) capability. That means the car can act as a battery to power your home. With an average home using around 8kWh of power a day, that’s a small proportion of most EV’s batteries. So if you buy a car with V2G capability and your home system is compatible, too, it could be cost effective to charge up overnight on a cheap tariff, use your car during the day and then let your home use your car’s battery in the evenings.
The best advice – as with buying your electric car – is to futureproof yourself. You really don’t want to be buying a wall box every time you change your car. So make sure that it has the power you need and the connectivity you need, and that it will work on the energy tariff that’s right for you. As always, shopping around and doing your homework is key.
