EV Charger installation. How to?

Here's a few steps in the way we do a survey and set about helping our customers choosing the right EV charger for their needs.

First of all, we have to check the installation is suitable for the addition of an EV charger and it's load of a round 7Kw. The main supply into a normal property is a single supply for each house, but these can be 'looped' meaning that two house shared the same supply cable, so you have to take into account the total load of each property. Some DNO's like SSE may actually give you permission to go ahead with the installation, but limit the chargers capacity to deliver charge to a set amount, which can be done simply in the app. To 'un-loop' a supply the driveway/road will have to be dug up and a new supply installed to your home, which is quite an undertaking.

Your main fuse to the property will be noted and expected total load, things like electric showers are large loads that increase the potential maximum demand that your property will draw. If your main fuse is only 60/80A we will notify the DNO (electricity distributor) to get this upgraded to 100Amps. Most chargers now come with the option to select the main fuse size, and the charger will not exceed this set limit to protect the main fuse to your home.

When altering or installing any new circuit, we must check whether all the metal pipe work, like water pipes and gas pipes are connected to the main earthing terminal as shown in the picture above.

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Now we have confirmed the installation is ready for the addition of an EV charger, how do we go about designing the installation?

The Consumer unit (Fuse board). If your Fuse Board is even only a few years old, the protective devices and design may not meet the new requirements. RCD protection needs to be a minimum of type A protection and bi-directional if the EV is going to feed back power to the house/grid.

A T2 surge protection device will also need to be available, surge protection devices stop harmful voltage spikes (transient overvoltage's) from damaging any electronic devices that are connected to your electrical installation. We usually opt to install a new dedicated EV board that has all the necessary protection available.

Charger connection usually, for us, means using the Doncaster cables EV Ultra, 6mm 3 core with CAT5e embedded inside the cable. The 3 core are your Live, Neutral and CPC (earth) the powering the charger, and the CAT5e internet cable is used to connect the CT (current transformer) which monitors your properties energy usage and uses that to change the power output of the charger depending on load, and the size of your main fuse or settings of the charger. See in the picture above.

A good WIFI signal will also need to be withing range of the charger, you can also use the wired connection.