EV home chargers – where to start?

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.

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!