I just rang the first Google hit for local installers, and the chap was nice and helpful. He recommends OHME chargers and he said the typical cost was £750 minus a £350 grant.

What do I need to know before accepting the first quote I get?

Do you have solar PV on the roof?
If so you may wish to consider a charger which can use solar generation to charge.
We have a Myenergi Zappi charger and are very happy with it.

I went for Pod Point they all seemed to be much the same. Pod point app now has the ability to set the charging times.

Why are they called chargers? The charger is in the car. It’s a really expensive box with a set of contactors in.

Having said that, I’m also interested to know who is good and who is bad.

I went with an EO Mini Pro through Octopus. Cost me £100 (Scotland).

Some of the prices are crazy. I chose it because it was cheap and it’s also the smallest neatest one.

Don’t get a charger installed. Get your electrician to install a 32amp outside socket (often called a Caravan plug, the round white n’blue 3 pin plugs you see at camping and caravaning grounds).

That means you can then just buy a cheap charger, and simply plug that in.

For example, openEVSE chargers are as little as £200 if you build the charger yourself (not hard)

This also means you can simply use a caravan plug to 3 prong 13amp socket adpator to charge multiple EVs off your 32A socket if you need to (obviously at a rate not exceeding 32a in total)

They are not actually called “Chargers” that just what people call them!

They are actually Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment, EVSE’s!

Mine was installed through work and it’s a Pod Point.

I chose one that had good enough smart capabilities and didn’t look like it was designed by a GCSE IT student.

https://andersen-ev.com/products/andersen-a2/

Really nice piece of kit, extremely well made from high quality materials. Tethered cable is completely hidden away inside the unit when not in use. Excellent install by Andersen’s own installer. He did a great job, real attention to detail over the cable routing, with the extra consumer unit beautifully fitted.

Far from the cheapest at £1045 all in (including grant) but I’m very happy with it stuck on the front of my house.

(Now I just need BT to finish installing the Gigabit fibre that looks untidy beneath it!)
(And weed the drive)

Also following, but any suggestions for two charging points (I’m guessing we’ll need this in the next couple of years)?

Don’t get a charger installed. Get your electrician to install a 32amp outside socket (often called a Caravan plug, the round white n’blue 3 pin plugs you see at camping and caravaning grounds).

That means you can then just buy a cheap charger, and simply plug that in.

For example, openEVSE chargers are as little as £200 if you build the charger yourself (not hard)

This also means you can simply use a caravan plug to 3 prong 13amp socket adpator to charge multiple EVs off your 32A socket if you need to (obviously at a rate not exceeding 32a in total)

How does that comply with the regs for sockets used to charge electric vehicles especially in relation to open neutral protection and simultaneous contact issues ? What sort of RCD are you installing to cope with the DC leakage requirements in the regs ?

EV chargers are a proper rip off aren’t they?! I’m looking at the moment. £900 (minus grant) to spend 2hrs installing £300 worth of equipment. Time >2hrs is chargeable (no pun intended)!

Grant is clearly lining the pockets of the installers rather than incentivising take up from PHEV users

Really ? I own a company that installs EV charge points, commercial only and we do around 1000 a year.

The home charge market is saturated and pays peanuts, with each install there are around 40 pages of forms and certs to fill out to claim the grant back. A couple of errors and you get limited chances before the grant is declined and the contractor loses out. You have to factor this form filling and admin in to each install. An average install has a charge point which if you are claiming a grant has to be a communicating unit so starting at £300, add in if needed an open neutral device £149, add in mains tails and Henley blocks and a cable run of no more than 15m then a basic install is £550 plus labour. At 2 installs a day the labour and travel to a company as is around £225. So that’s £775 with no profit. We did 100 of these installs to trial it in January and made no profit at all. We now stick to commercial installs.

We sat down and analysed the whole month and had it gone perfect with every person being in when they said and every install being simple we would have made £26 per install. But one failed grant claim or non standard install and it makes no sense. There is no company making a killing installing home charge points.

I’ve got Ohme and would recommend it. It’s on the cheaper end of chargers and can work with time of day tariffs like Agile Octopus, cherry picking the cheapest times to charge your car. There’s not really much I can think of you need to know, just choose the most convenient location, but it’ll be cheaper the easier the install is from consumer unit to siting of charger, so try and make it’s cable routing as simple as possible for the installer. I presume you might need to have space in your consumer unit, but the installer will sort that out if necessary.

Fair enough Couchy, I stand corrected.

Don’t get a charger installed. Get your electrician to install a 32amp outside socket (often called a Caravan plug, the round white n’blue 3 pin plugs you see at camping and caravaning grounds).

That means you can then just buy a cheap charger, and simply plug that in.

For example, openEVSE chargers are as little as £200 if you build the charger yourself (not hard)

32a Sockets seem to be around £160 plus fitting, plus £200 for the openEVSE doesn’t look like you’ll be saving much.

We have a pod point installed.

Had a few problems with it not charging for a couple of weeks and after trying to contact them repeatedly they just ignored the issue.

They only came out to fix it when they wanted my signature so they could claim grant money for the charger.

It works fine now and would recommend the charger but the customer service is terrible.

Far from the cheapest at £1045 all in (including grant) but I’m very happy with it stuck on the front of my house.

I’m very happy with my £100 box stuck on my house 🙂

Have you decided what car you’re getting then OP?

EV chargers are a proper rip off aren’t they?! I’m looking at the moment. £900 (minus grant) to spend 2hrs installing £300 worth of equipment. Time >2hrs is chargeable (no pun intended)!

I spoke to a local electrician who does these, he said the typical price was about £750 for an Ohme charger installed, then I could take the £350 grant off that.

I’d expect the installation to be easy because the place I’d put it is right next to the meter and on the other side of the wall from the consumer unit.

Have you decided what car you’re getting then OP?

If you’d checked the original thread 😉 you’d see that I have ordered an Ioniq.

Molgrips, if you want to have a play with the Ohme app before committing then download it and if there isn’t a demo feature and you need an Ohme product to get access then you can use my QR code or product code to get access into the app features.

Couchy, the “Outside socket” doesn’t comply with any of the rules for EV chargers. This is because it is an outside socket and not a charger! The loop hole is the fact that the 18th edition compliance ends at the socket, the end of the fixed instalation, ie it does not cover mobile / portable equipment that is plugged into that socket (which is covered by the other regs, such as CE marking, Electricity at work, and the Low voltage directive etc etc).

So what you plug into your socket it up to you, be that a cabled mobile charger, a lawn mower, an actual caravan or next door neighbous cat………

The “DC leakage” requirements are easily, if pointlessly, met with a suitable DC rated RCD

(pointlessly, because the DC traction battery in your car is GALVANICALLY isolated to >3kV continuously by the OBC, so there is no practical DC leakage path, and if there were, then you wouldn’t be able to charge anyway, because your cars BMS includes real time isometry and as soon as the isolation imnpedance falls below around 100kOhm, the battery contactors are disabled)

Grant has kept going down, and the requirement for them to be “smart” plus new regs on earthing etc has pushed costs up. Mine was about £100 after grant years ago but the prices now are eye-watering.

If I was buying today it’d probably be a Zappi, or if it was in a very visible spot an Andersen as above.

Interested, I have a Leaf on order so need to sort this. I want this attached to my garage. The garage has a mains supply from our house, presumably on a long spur(?). There’s a switch inside the house (by the back door, not on the consumer unit) that controls power to the garage. The garage is 20m from the house and we don’t own the in-between land so putting an extra cable in will be difficult.

Anyone know if that is going to cause an issue for an installer?

@phil5556 – was this recent. We have just had EV delivered (there’s free a charger walking distance away but would prefer the option to charge at home for convenience and because one day the free option will go and no doubt there will be a mad panic to install). Looking at switching to Octopus because their tariff is good with the smartest boxes/app (does yours do that)? but considering I’m trying to bring them business they’ve not exactly been rushing to answer me enquiry…

@poly It was July last year.

I’m in Scotland so get an extra £300 off.

When my mate last looked a month or so ago Octopus were still doing that charge point and it was still a lot cheaper than others that he was looking at, although more than it was last year. It is a smart one although I don’t use the smart functions (in fact I’ve just switched off the smart bit, it defaults to always on) and use the car timer to manage the charging.

I’ve just looked it up here https://www.octopusev.com/eo

It’s a lot more expensive now, seems I timed it right!

That octopus one look suspiciously like the sync-ev one I just had put in.

Mine was about £100 after grant years ago but the prices now are eye-watering.

I’m thinking less than 2 years ago an Untethered Rolec was £149 installed after grant. I managed to do mine for £450 (dumb and untethered) without grant, no way I could do that now. There may well be a healthy 2nd hand market on eBay, but it’s a bit of a gamble.

Looking at switching to Octopus because their tariff is good with the smartest boxes/app (does yours do that)?

Poly, Zappi and Ohme do Agile Octopus. as in, they can access the API for your Agile tariff and then cherry pick during the night the very cheapest agile tariff segments

The garage is 20m from the house and we don’t own the in-between land so putting an extra cable in will be difficult.

Anyone know if that is going to cause an issue for an installer?

Where do I start! After 18 months of granny cable charging I’ve bitten the bullet and swallowed hard and I’m getting a Zappi fitted and going through the process at present. I’ve left it as I knew what a challenge getting the cable for the charger fitted at my house would be. The company and their installer not the problem, really responsive and helpful, but my garage is 30m from my consumer unit and has insufficient wiring – a long crappy spur. The main fuse also needs upgrading and Western Power not responsive at all.
I’ve had to think hard about cable route from consumer unit to the charger as though the house is difficult as it’s really old and doing anything involving walls, floors and ceiling is generally a complete mare – large beams, bits of ships masts which have gone like concrete holding stuff up. I’ve decided after much thought to take the shortest route possible out of the house and have some of the drive/garden dug up and 90mm trunking laid between the garage and the house so it’s future proofed if ever need to put more cable in for eg 3 phase or solar/storage battery (hence the Zappi and solar has to be on the garage as is my only option). Now I just need to get it re-tarmac’d and the install done. Going greener hasn’t been straight forward or cheap so far that’s for sure.

Tell western Power that you smelt burning and that you have kids in the house. They will be round as quick as a flash.