Residential · EV chargepoint
Residential EV chargepoint installation — frequently asked questions
Straight answers to the questions we hear most from homeowners installing an EV charger. For anything specific to your home or vehicle, ask Current — our AI adviser can talk through the right setup for your circumstances.
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Is my home suitable?
- Can I have a chargepoint if I don't have a driveway?
- Off-street parking (a driveway, garage, or dedicated space) is the standard setup, since the cable needs to run safely from the house to the car without crossing a public footpath. Without one, on-street solutions are limited and depend on your local council — worth checking before you commit to anything else.
- Does my electrical supply need upgrading?
- Sometimes. A charger draws significantly more continuous current than most household appliances, so your consumer unit and incoming supply capacity need checking before install. Older properties or homes already running heavy loads (heat pump, electric cooking) are the ones most likely to need work first.
- Will a chargepoint work with my electricity tariff?
- Yes, but the tariff you're on determines how much you save. An EV-specific or time-of-use tariff, paired with smart charging, lets you shift most charging to cheap overnight rates — the charger itself works on any supply, the savings depend on what you're charging from.
Choosing the right charger
- 7kW or 22kW — which do I need?
- Most homes are single-phase, which caps practical home charging at 7kW regardless of the unit's rating — 22kW chargers need a three-phase supply, which is uncommon in UK homes. Unless you already have three-phase power, 7kW is the realistic choice and is more than enough for an overnight charge.
- Tethered or untethered?
- Tethered chargers (built-in cable) are more convenient day-to-day. Untethered units (you supply your own cable) are more flexible if you might change vehicles or want to use different cable lengths — slightly less convenient, marginally cheaper.
- Do I need a smart charger?
- For most people, yes. Smart chargers let you schedule charging for off-peak hours, cap usage, and track consumption — and from 2022, in-scope new domestic chargepoints in Great Britain are required by law to have smart functionality. A non-smart unit is rarely the cheaper option once you account for missed off-peak savings.
Installation & compliance
- Do I need planning permission?
- Almost never for a standard wall-mounted home chargepoint — it's normally Permitted Development. The main exceptions are listed buildings, conservation areas with specific restrictions, or chargepoints installed away from an existing driveway.
- What certification should my installer have?
- Look for an installer certified under the relevant electrical safety and EV-specific standards (the same body that certifies solar and battery installers also administers EV chargepoint approval). This certification is usually what any available grants or warranty-backed guarantees are conditional on — confirm it before booking, not after.
- Does the installer need to notify anyone before fitting it?
- Yes — chargepoint installations are notifiable electrical work, and depending on load, your installer may also need to notify your electricity network operator, particularly if it pushes your total household demand up meaningfully. A competent installer handles this as standard; it shouldn't be something you have to chase.
Supply, load & distribution board suitability
- What is my incoming supply rating, and why does it matter?
- Your incoming supply rating (typically 60A or 100A on a single-phase domestic property) sets the total electrical headroom your whole house has to work with — everything you run, including the charger, has to fit inside it. A 7kW charger draws around 32A continuously for hours at a time, which is a much heavier and more sustained load than almost anything else in the home. If your existing demand is already close to the supply limit, adding a charger without addressing this risks nuisance tripping or, in the worst case, an overloaded supply — this is one of the first things a proper survey should establish, not something to discover after install.
- What is load management, and do I need it?
- Load management is a control system that automatically reduces or pauses charging when your total household demand gets close to the supply limit, then resumes once headroom is available. It's how you can safely fit a charger — or more than one — onto a supply that couldn't otherwise support full-power charging running alongside everything else in the house. For most homes without a supply upgrade, some form of load management isn't optional extra — it's what makes the installation safe and compliant in the first place.
- Can I install more than one charger at home?
- Yes, but it changes the calculation significantly — two chargers running at full power simultaneously can draw more current than most domestic supplies can safely provide. This is almost always solved with load management that shares available capacity dynamically between the chargers rather than upgrading the supply outright, though a supply upgrade is sometimes the better long-term answer depending on your other electrical loads. This needs to be scoped explicitly if you know a second vehicle or charger is coming — it's a different design exercise from a single-charger install, not just a repeat of it.
- How do I know if my existing distribution board can take a charger?
- Your consumer unit (distribution board) needs a spare way of the correct rating, adequate protective devices for the charger circuit, and confirmation that the board itself is in safe, compliant condition — older boards, particularly ones without RCD protection throughout, often need remedial work or a partial or full replacement before a charger can be safely added. This is one of the most common reasons a quote changes between an initial estimate and a post-survey price, so it's worth having this checked early rather than assumed.
- What is "suitable control gear," and why does it matter for an EV charger?
- Control gear is the collective term for the protective and switching devices — breakers, RCDs/RCBOs, isolators — that sit between your supply and the charger itself. EV charging has specific requirements here beyond a standard socket circuit, because of the sustained high current and the need to detect DC fault currents that ordinary domestic RCDs aren't designed to catch. Using generic or incorrectly rated control gear is a genuine safety issue, not a technicality — it's the difference between a circuit that protects you correctly under an EV charging fault condition and one that doesn't, and it's a core part of what a competent installer's design should get right by default.
Cost & ongoing use
- How much does home charging actually save versus public charging or fuel?
- It varies by tariff and driving pattern, but home charging — especially on an off-peak tariff — is consistently the cheapest way to charge an EV. Public rapid chargers are convenient but priced at a premium; home charging is where the real running-cost advantage of an EV shows up.
- Can I run a chargepoint alongside solar and a battery?
- Yes, and it's an increasingly common combination. A smart charger can be set to prioritise your own solar generation or scheduled around off-peak grid rates when solar isn't available — but it needs to be part of the design from the start, not bolted on afterward, so your consumer unit and load management are sized correctly for all three.
- What does ongoing maintenance look like?
- Minimal. Chargepoints have very few moving parts — occasional visual inspection and keeping the connector clean is normally all that's needed. Most issues that do arise are software or connectivity related, not mechanical.
Still have a question specific to your home or vehicle? Ask Current — it can walk through the right chargepoint setup, sized to your supply, your car, and your driving pattern.