EV charger installation in Uttoxeter and the surrounding area

An EV charger is a dedicated circuit. It doesn't share with anything else in the house. The work is: check the incoming supply and fuse board can take it, run a new cable from the board to wherever the charger is going, mount and connect the unit, then test, commission and certificate it.

The part that varies from house to house is the cable run. That's what decides how long the job takes and what it costs, not the charger itself.

• Survey: supply type, main fuse rating, existing board, earthing arrangement, and where the car actually parks
• Cable route, agreed with you before anything is drilled, clipped and dressed so it looks deliberate
• Installation, dedicated circuit, correct protective devices, charger mounted at a sensible working height
• Testing and commissioning, the charger is proved, the app or network is set up, and you get shown how it works
• Certification, an Electrical Installation Certificate, plus notification of the work under the Building Regulations

Because charging at home on an overnight EV tariff is by a distance the cheapest way to run an electric car, and because a three-pin "granny" lead was never meant to be a permanent charging solution. A 13A socket run at full load for eight hours a night, every night, is exactly the kind of thing that finds a weak connection in an older circuit.

A proper 7.4kW charge point will typically add somewhere in the region of 25–30 miles of range an hour, so most cars go from a working-week state of charge to full overnight. A three-pin lead is around a third of that.

1. Site assessment

Usually a short visit or a few photos and questions. We need to know what your main fuse is rated at, what the earthing arrangement is, how much spare capacity the house has, and where you park. That last one matters more than people expect.

2. Choosing the charger

Tethered or untethered, and whether you want the manufacturer's app, solar matching, or load balancing. All new domestic and workplace charge points sold in Great Britain have to be smart under the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021, so scheduling and off-peak charging are standard rather than an upgrade.

3. The electrical installation

A dedicated circuit runs from the consumer unit, or from a small separate enclosure next to it, out to the charge point. Cable is sized for the load and the length of the run, clipped neatly, and taken through the wall in the least conspicuous place that still makes sense electrically.

4. Testing and commissioning

Continuity, insulation resistance, earth fault loop impedance, RCD operation, and a functional test of the charger itself. You get the certificate, the work is notified, and you get a run-through of the app before we leave.

It's a common finding and it's rarely a dealbreaker. There are three usual outcomes.

1. The board has no spare way, or is an older type that can't accept the right protective device, a consumer unit upgrade or a small dedicated enclosure alongside it solves it.
2. The main fuse is only 60A or 80A and the house already has an electric shower and hob, load management (a current transformer clamped on the incoming tails) lets the charger throttle itself so the main fuse is never at risk. That's usually cheaper and quicker than a supply upgrade.
3. The supply genuinely needs uprating. That's a job for the network operator, and we'll tell you that's what you're looking at rather than quietly ignoring it.

Tethered means the cable is permanently attached to the unit. Untethered means a socket on the wall and you use your own cable.

• Tethered is quicker day to day. Get out, plug in, done. It's the better choice if you park in the same spot every night and you're not planning to change to a different connector standard.
• Untethered is tidier on the wall, easier to live with if two different cars use the same charger, and means a damaged cable is a cable replacement rather than a charger replacement.
• Cable length matters more than the debate does. A 5m tethered lead that won't reach the far side of the car is a daily irritation.

Almost every home installation in the UK is a single-phase 7.4kW unit, because that's what a standard domestic supply will give you.

• 3-pin lead (about 2.3kW), roughly 8 miles of range an hour. Emergency use.
• 7.4kW single phase, roughly 25–30 miles an hour. Full overnight for the vast majority of cars.
• 22kW, needs a three-phase supply, which most houses don't have. Common on commercial and workplace sites.

Your car's own on-board charger also sets a ceiling. If it only accepts 7.4kW AC, a bigger charge point makes no difference at all.

The point of a smart charger is that you plug in when you get home and it decides when to actually draw power, normally in the cheap overnight window on an EV tariff. That is where the running-cost saving comes from, so it's worth setting up properly on day one rather than leaving it on defaults.

If you have solar PV, most current chargers can be set to use surplus generation rather than importing, either topping up only from what the panels are exporting, or blending the two. It needs the right metering at the consumer unit, so mention the panels when you enquire and we'll allow for it.

You need somewhere off-street to park, the charger has to reach the car without a cable crossing a public footpath. Beyond that, most layouts are workable.

• Driveway alongside the house, usually the simplest job. Charger goes on the house wall nearest the car's charge port.
• Attached garage, often the tidiest result, with the cable run internally and no external clipping at all.
• Detached garage or outbuilding, fine, provided there's an existing supply out there that's up to it, or we run a new armoured cable. That's the main thing that moves the price.
• Parking at the far end of a long drive, perfectly doable; cable size goes up with distance to keep voltage drop within limits.

On the aesthetics: a well-planned run follows existing lines, under a soffit, behind a downpipe, along a mortar course. It's worth two minutes of discussion before we start.

EV charging installations have their own section in the wiring regulations (Section 722 of BS 7671) because a car being charged is a large, earthed metal object that someone touches outdoors, often in the wet.

• RCD protection with DC fault detection, a Type B RCD, or a Type A plus a 6mA DC detection device, because EV charging can produce smooth DC residual current that would blind an ordinary RCD.
• Open-PEN protection on PME supplies, either an earth electrode, or a device that disconnects the charger if the supply voltage goes out of range. Most current charge points have this built in.
• Correct external influences rating for an outdoor unit, and mounting height chosen so the connector isn't sitting in a puddle.

Any of that being missing is a genuine safety issue rather than a paperwork one, which is why the testing at the end matters as much as the wiring.

The wiring principles are the same; the planning is different. Workplace and small commercial sites are usually about how many sockets the incoming supply can support, whether they need load management across a bank of chargers, and whether usage needs to be metered or billed back.

There is also grant funding on the commercial side that doesn't exist for a standard house, see the section below.

The honest answer is that the charge point is often the smaller half of the bill. What moves the price is everything around it.

• How far the charger is from the consumer unit, and whether the route is internal or external
• Whether the run needs armoured cable, a trench, or to cross a driveway
• Whether the existing board can take a new circuit, or needs upgrading first
• Whether load management is needed because of the main fuse rating
• The charger itself, tethered units, longer leads and solar-capable models cost more
• Access: a first-floor flat roof or a two-storey run is a different job to a garage wall

We'd rather look at the actual house than give you a headline figure that changes on the day. Send a few photos of your fuse board and where you park and you'll get a proper number.

Not for a standard owner-occupied house with a driveway. That scheme closed some years ago. Grants do still exist for other situations.

• Flat owner-occupiers and anyone renting a residential property with off-street parking, the EV chargepoint grant
• Households with on-street parking only, towards a cross-pavement solution such as a cable gully
• Landlords, and businesses and charities through the Workplace Charging Scheme, per socket