Electric car charging at your rental property
One of the most substantial electrical challenges that landlords will have to face over the next 10-15 years is how to handle the more widespread use of electric cars.
As tenants upgrade their vehicles, or expect sole-use EV charging as part of the all-round package, a matter of course, pressure will grow on landlords for provide charging points. If your rental property its own drive you won’t need anyone else’s permission to install a charger. However, if your property is in a managed block, you will be more dependent on the freeholder or management company as to whether EV charging can be provided.
The first thing you should know as a landlord is that an electric car is power-hungry. If you run an EV charging point from your existing installation, the demands of the car could well knock out the entire electrical capacity of the property. So you will have to provide a dedicated circuit for charging the car.
You will need a qualified electrician both for installing the new circuit, routing the cabling to the appropriate outside wall and installing the charging point or socket. Harland & Voss can advise on all these items.
There’s also a decision to be made about whether to use a 13 amp socket or dedicated car charger as a power outlet. A 13 amp socket is always the cheapest to install, although the tenants might complain – with some reason – that it does not charge their car quickly enough. If you opt for a 13 amp socket, you will need to obtain one that is suitable for car charging: not all of them are.
Chargers take much less time to charge a car. For example, at the time of writing, slow charging using a standard socket will take 27 hours to charge a Nissan Leaf and up to 44 hours to charge a Tesla model S. Fast charging could reduce that time to 10 hours for a Nissan Leaf and between 11-25 hours for the Tesla. The costs of the power used remains the same, regardless of the charging speed.
Harland & Voss can undertake all aspects of socket or charger installation, from upgrading your cabling to installing the charge of your choice. You do not have to accept an installation package from the manufacturer or dealer of the tenants’ car, or the manufacturer of the car charger you select. These are priced to be profitable “add-ons” for the dealer/manufacturer with no ongoing relationship after the job is done.
If we can help you plan your charger installation, please call us on 020 8451 0345.