Electric car charging at your home

Car ownership is changing as the dominance of petrol and diesel cars comes to an end. Whether you already have an electric vehicle, or whether you’ll upgrade later, the issue of charging the car is crucial for everyone.

We’ve all heard stories of public charging sites being far apart, unavailable or out of order. So if you have the space to charge your car at home, it’s a vastly preferable option. However, installing an electric charger needs some forward planning.

The first consideration 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 it may not charge your 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.