EV charging
For any household with a legal off-street parking space, a clean cable route from the consumer unit and daily driving under about 200 miles, a 7 kW smart charger with a CT-clamped load balancer and solar-diversion capability is the right answer at £900 to £1,400 fitted; the 22 kW upgrade is niche, the £700 quotes usually skip the load balancer, and staying on a flat-rate tariff after commissioning is what actually decides whether the EV is cheap to run.
The 'EVs are cheap to run' story is built almost entirely on home charging on a time-of-use tariff. Public rapid charging at 55 to 85p per kWh works out at roughly petrol-parity per mile in a 50 mpg car; a flat-rate home tariff at 28p per kWh lands around 8p per mile; an overnight 7p per kWh window drops it to about 2p per mile. The tariff switch is the lever, and it only works if a home charger is installed. Once the case for charging at home is made, three specification decisions carry the outcome. First, 7 kW single-phase is the right size for essentially every UK home; a 7 kW charger adds 25 to 30 miles of range per hour and refills any realistic day's driving overnight with margin. Second, a CT clamp on the incoming supply is what keeps a 32 amp continuous EV draw from tripping the main fuse when the oven, shower and kettle land on top of it; skip it and the charger becomes a future trip-the-house event. Third, solar-aware hardware costs a modest premium now and roughly £200 to £400 in a second visit later; specify it up front even if solar is 18 months away. Everything else (tethered versus untethered, brand of unit, cable length) is preference; these three are the real decisions.
Public rapid charging keeps costing roughly as much per mile as petrol, and the EV's running-cost promise never quite lands.
No driveway or no clean cable route rules out a home charger; the whole ownership case shifts to public and workplace charging, and the EV decision itself needs revisiting rather than the charger one.
Intelligent Octopus Go, EDF GoElectric or OVO Charge Anytime turn a 3.5p-per-mile cost into a 2p one on a car you already have. Worth switching to now and proving the household actually shifts loads before spending on hardware.
If you've considered these and a home charger is still the right answer for your home, here's how to choose well.
A CT-clamped 7 kW unit fills any UK household's daily need overnight, integrates cleanly with solar now or later, and refuses to trip the main fuse when a shower joins the party. £900 to £1,400 fitted is the standard range; anything below skips the load balancing and anything materially above needs a specific reason.
The decision, in six questions
Six questions decide whether a home EV charger is genuinely the right answer for your home, worth serious consideration, or a distraction from a different decision.
Do you have a legal off-street parking space with a route from the consumer unit to a parked car?
The physical prerequisite is in place; the ownership case can be made properly.
Strong candidate
No driveway or no cable route rules out a home charger; revisit the EV case itself against public and workplace charging.
Probably not for your home
Is your daily driving pattern under about 200 miles, returning most nights to the same parking space?
The overnight charging window fills any realistic day's driving with margin.
Strong candidate
Multiple back-to-back long trips shift the case toward faster public charging and change the answer; the charger decision isn't the binding one.
Worth considering
Is the incoming supply at least 60 amps single-phase and current-rated?
A load-balanced 7 kW charger sits comfortably within the supply headroom.
Strong candidate
Older or downrated supplies may need a DNO upgrade before the charger goes in; get the supply confirmed before signing quotes.
Worth considering
Will you switch to a time-of-use tariff on commissioning day and actually shift loads to the cheap window?
The £400 to £800 annual saving that makes the ownership case real turns on this behaviour.
Strong candidate
A home charger on a flat tariff halves the case for owning the EV in the first place; either commit to the tariff or reconsider the whole decision.
Probably not for your home
Do you have solar now, or a serious plan to install it within about 18 months?
A solar-aware Zappi-class charger is the right specification; retrofitting the integration later costs £200 to £400 in a second visit.
Strong candidate
A standard smart 7 kW unit with load balancing is enough; the solar-aware premium isn't earned without solar in scope.
Worth considering
Are you comfortable insisting the install certificate documents the CT clamp fitted and the load-balancing configuration tested?
The single largest correlate of a happy long-term outcome is this discipline at commissioning.
Strong candidate
Quotes under about £900 often skip the CT clamp; refusing the sign-off without documented load balancing is what separates the good installs from the ones that trip the house in three years.
Worth considering
What usually changes the answer
Change one of these and our recommendation often changes with it.
Solar is going in within about 18 months.
What changes
The household has genuine three-phase supply and a documented fast-turnaround use case (two EVs, short charging windows, courier or taxi work).
What changes
The incoming supply is under 60 amps or the DNO has downrated the connection.
What changes
The parking space is a shared driveway, communal car park or on-street bay.
What changes
The household is unwilling to move off a flat-rate tariff.
What changes
The daily driving pattern is genuinely low-mileage under 5,000 miles a year.
What changes
If this were our house
For a 1930s semi with a driveway, a new EV on order and solar coming next spring
We would fit a Zappi-class 7 kW tethered charger with a CT clamp on the incoming main and solar diversion capability enabled. Total fitted cost would land between £1,200 and £1,800, and we would refuse any quote that didn't itemise the CT clamp and the commissioning airflow test on the certificate. Intelligent Octopus Go would go live the day the charger was commissioned; the £400 to £800 a year saving is the whole point of the exercise and shouldn't wait a fortnight.
We would not fit the 22 kW three-phase upgrade; the supply doesn't exist and the £3,000 to £8,000 to get it isn't earned by our driving pattern. We would fit the solar-aware unit now rather than a standard smart charger with plans to upgrade, because the £200 to £400 second-visit retrofit cost eats most of the initial saving and disrupts a wall we've already drilled through.
When we'd say no
We would rather lose the sale than take you somewhere the numbers don't stand up.
The household is unwilling to move to a time-of-use tariff. A home charger on a flat rate gives away half the reason for owning the EV; either commit to the tariff or reconsider the whole decision.
There is no legal off-street parking. Trailing a cable across a public footpath is illegal in most local authorities and unsafe everywhere; the case is public and workplace charging, not a home charger.
The quote is £700 fitted with no CT clamp itemised. The saving is £200 the first year and a tripped house for the next fifteen; refuse the shortcut.
The installer offers 22 kW without a three-phase supply. The upgrade cost is £3,000 to £8,000 where it's possible at all and the use case rarely justifies it; a 7 kW single-phase is the right answer.
The parking space is on-street or communal without a Local Authority EV Homecharge Scheme (LEVI) route open. Fit-then-hope on shared land is a two-year dispute waiting to happen.
The household is buying a plug-in hybrid with a 30-mile battery. The charger case still works but the tariff saving shrinks; a basic smart 7 kW unit is enough, and a solar-aware Zappi is overreach.
What most people get wrong
The trade at a glance
A five-step editorial scale, not a rating. Green weight is a gain; grey weight is a cost you carry.
Up-front cost
£900 to £1,400 fitted for a 7 kW smart charger with load balancing; £1,200 to £1,800 for a solar-aware Zappi-class unit. Standard install is a half-day, single electrician.
Running cost per mile (time-of-use tariff)
Roughly 2p per mile on Intelligent Octopus Go or equivalent; about a third of public rapid charging and a fifth of petrol.
Running cost per mile (flat tariff)
Around 8p per mile at 28p per kWh flat rate; still meaningfully cheaper than petrol but half the case for owning the EV.
Speed (7 kW single-phase)
25 to 30 miles of range per hour; fills any realistic day's driving overnight with margin.
Speed (22 kW three-phase)
Roughly triple the rate; useful for two-EV households with short charging windows, niche for everyone else.
Solar integration (Zappi-class)
Diverts excess solar to the car rather than exporting at 5p per kWh; genuinely free EV miles when the sun is out.
Install disruption
Half a day, single trade, one wall-mounted unit and a short run to the consumer unit. No structural work in almost any case.
Maintenance burden
A firmware-updating smart unit is largely fit-and-forget; cable wear is the failure mode at year eight to ten.
Applicability across UK households
About two-thirds of UK homes have off-street parking; the other third need a different solution.
What it costs
Fitted with CT clamp load balancing; the mainstream answer for households without solar in the immediate plan.
Fitted with load balancing and solar-diversion capability; the right specification for any household with solar planned within about 18 months.
Legitimate premium where the routing genuinely needs more copper; ask the installer to walk the route before signing.
Sometimes required in pre-1990 stock; the DNO check is what flags this before the day of install.
The rare case where the supply cable to the meter is undersized; the DNO does the work and the timeline can stretch to weeks.
Niche; where the supply doesn't already exist, rarely earns its keep for a UK household. Only where three-phase is on the street and a genuine fast-turnaround case applies.
Up to £350 off the fitted cost for eligible tenants and flat owners; owner-occupiers of houses lost eligibility in 2022.
At about 3.5 miles per kWh and 7p per kWh in the cheap window; roughly 2p per mile.
The counterfactual that makes the tariff switch worth £400 to £550 a year on typical mileage.
Roughly petrol parity in a 50 mpg car; the number that makes home charging the whole ownership case.
Ranges are triangulated from OZEV-approved installer quotes across five UK regions in 2025 to 2026, the Zap-Map monthly public-charging price tracker, and published tariff data from Octopus, EDF and OVO. EV efficiency of 3.5 to 4 miles per kWh reflects mainstream 2026 stock (Kia EV3, Renault 5, VW ID.3, Tesla Model Y). Load-balancing guidance follows ENA Engineering Recommendation G100. Refreshed each spring.
You've got the answer
For a household with off-street parking, a route to the consumer unit and daily driving under about 200 miles, fit a 7 kW smart charger with a CT clamp and solar-diversion capability, switch to a time-of-use tariff on commissioning day, and refuse any quote under £900 that skips the load balancing. Where there's no driveway, the answer is public and workplace charging, not a compromised home install.
You can stop here if you're still deciding. The rest of this page is for readers who have already committed and want to spend the money well.
If you're going ahead
This half of the page is written for the reader who has decided. It reads in the order the decisions come at you.
Which version
The mainstream answer. A wall-mounted 32 amp single-phase unit with a CT clamp on the incoming main to prevent overload, tariff integration for the household's chosen supplier, and app-based scheduling. Tethered or socket-only both work; tethered is more convenient for daily single-household use.
When we'd choose it
Any UK household with off-street parking, single-phase supply and no solar in the immediate plan.
The same functionality plus solar diversion: when the solar array is generating more than the house is using, the surplus goes to the car rather than exporting to the grid at 5p per kWh. Cost premium of roughly £200 to £400 over a standard smart charger.
When we'd choose it
Any household with solar fitted, or a serious plan to install solar within about 18 months. The retrofit cost to add diversion later is roughly the same as the up-front premium; specifying at install is the honest answer.
Roughly triple the charging rate on a three-phase supply. Useful for households with multiple EVs and short overnight windows; requires the supply to already exist or to be upgraded at £3,000 to £8,000.
When we'd choose it
The narrow case where three-phase is already on the street, the household runs two EVs, or a genuine fast-turnaround use case (courier work, taxi work) applies.
A Type 2 socket without an attached cable; the driver plugs the car's own cable in at each use. Slightly cheaper, tidier when not in use, and allows the same unit to serve multiple cars with different connector arrangements.
When we'd choose it
Households where the unit is on a shared driveway or visible street elevation, or where multiple different cars use the same charger.
The emergency cable that ships with the car; plugs into a standard 13 amp socket at 2.3 kW. Not a home charger; a fallback for occasional use or trips away.
When we'd choose it
Never as the primary charging solution; the socket, the cable and the household electrics all suffer under continuous 13 amp draw over years.
Your house
The hard prerequisite. A legal off-street space, a cable route from the consumer unit to the charger location, and no requirement to cross a public footpath or pavement to plug in.
Where the driveway is long or the consumer unit is deep in the house, expect £200 to £500 in additional cable and containment; walk the route with the installer before signing.
A 60 amp single-phase supply is the practical minimum for a 7 kW load-balanced charger; 80 to 100 amps is more common in modern stock and gives the CT clamp comfortable headroom.
Older or downrated supplies may need a DNO upgrade before commissioning; the DNO check is the installer's job and should happen before the quote is signed, not on the day of install.
Modern RCBO split-load consumer units accept the tapered EV load without modification; pre-1990 wired-fuse boxes typically need replacing before a charger is added.
Expect £400 to £700 for a consumer-unit upgrade where required; the installer should identify this at survey stage.
Solar-aware chargers cost £200 to £400 more than standard smart chargers; retrofitting solar diversion to a standard unit later costs roughly the same in a second visit and disrupts the wall that's already been drilled through.
If solar is anywhere in the plan, specify the solar-aware unit up front; if solar is definitely not coming, a standard smart charger is the honest answer.
In use
A CT clamp fitted around the incoming supply cable measures the whole-house draw continuously. When the oven, shower and kettle add up to more than the main fuse allows minus the EV draw, the charger throttles automatically rather than tripping the fuse.
This is what makes a 32 amp continuous EV draw compatible with a 60 to 80 amp house supply that has other appliances competing for headroom. Skip the clamp and the charger becomes a future trip-the-house event.
The unit integrates with the household's chosen tariff (Intelligent Octopus Go, EDF GoElectric, OVO Charge Anytime) and schedules the charge to start in the cheap window automatically. The driver plugs in on returning home; the car charges overnight at 7p per kWh rather than immediately at 28p per kWh.
Where the tariff supplier owns the charging (Intelligent Octopus Go handing the schedule to the car via the app), the setup is essentially fit-and-forget; where the schedule is set on the charger itself, occasional manual updates are needed as tariff windows change.
A solar-aware charger receives generation and consumption data from the solar inverter or a separate CT clamp on the incoming supply. When the array generates more than the house is using, the surplus flows to the car at the current export margin rather than at the higher grid rate.
The economic value depends on the export tariff; at a 5p per kWh SEG rate, diverting surplus at 7p per kWh (equivalent to the cheap-window import rate) saves 2p per kWh on the car's fuel. Over a year with a typical 4 kWp array, this is £80 to £200 of free EV miles.
Home charging on a flat 28p per kWh tariff costs about 8p per mile in a typical EV; home charging on a 7p per kWh overnight window costs about 2p per mile. The difference is £400 to £800 a year on typical mileage.
The switch takes about five minutes online and typically takes 3 to 6 weeks to activate. Doing it on commissioning day rather than three months later is worth £100 to £200 of the annual saving.
Installation
Pre-install survey, one visit.
The installer inspects the consumer unit, confirms the incoming supply rating with the DNO where needed, walks the cable route and identifies any additional containment or armoured cable required. The quote is issued after this visit, not before; a quote issued sight-unseen is a red flag.
Install day, half-day single trade.
Charger bracketed to the external wall, cable run in trunking or armoured to the consumer unit, CT clamp fitted around the incoming supply cable, dedicated RCBO added to the consumer unit, and the smart charger commissioned via its app. Household walks through the tariff-integration setup with the installer before sign-off.
Certification and MCS or NAPIT paperwork.
The install certificate documents the CT clamp fitted, the load-balancing configuration tested, the RCBO type and rating, and the earthing arrangement. This is the paperwork that matters for building control notification and for any future insurance claim; refuse to sign the final payment without it.
Common mistakes
CT clamp skipped or clipped around the wrong cable; the load balancing fails silently and the main fuse eventually trips under a heavy simultaneous load. The £150 saving becomes an emergency electrician bill inside three years.
Tariff switch delayed for months after commissioning; the household pays flat-rate prices for a year and reports the EV isn't as cheap as advertised. The switch is a five-minute job on commissioning day.
Solar-aware unit specified but not commissioned to divert; the household exports at 5p per kWh and imports at 7p per kWh in the same afternoon. Commissioning the diversion is a checklist item, not an optional extra.
22 kW three-phase fitted where the supply exists but the use case doesn't; the household charges at 7 kW anyway because the car's onboard charger is single-phase. The premium was spent for no benefit.
Cable route chosen for shortest length rather than practical use; the charger is on the wrong side of the parking space and the cable has to reach around the car every night. Walk the route before signing.
Older consumer unit not upgraded before install; the RCBO trips intermittently under EV load and the household lives with an unreliable charging pattern until a second electrician visit.
OZEV grant claimed for an ineligible property (owner-occupier of a house); the £350 is clawed back and the installer's paperwork is a mess. Confirm eligibility before the paperwork is submitted.
Household stays on the granny cable because 'the charger install is complicated'; the 13 amp socket eventually fails, the cable degrades and the ongoing risk is genuine. A proper charger is fit-and-forget where the granny cable is not.
The installer
The gap between the best and worst installer on this list of trades is larger than the gap between products. Judge the person, not the brochure.
Maintenance
Smart chargers self-update firmware in almost all cases; there's no annual service requirement. Check the cable at the charger connector once a year for signs of scuffing or wear at the strain relief; replacements are typically £80 to £150 fitted at year eight to ten. Where a CT clamp is used, an electrician can re-verify its position and calibration on any subsequent visit to the consumer unit; this is a five-minute check and worth asking for at any electrical work in the future. The unit itself is otherwise fit-and-forget.
Real questions
A 7 kW smart charger with a CT clamp and solar-diversion capability at £900 to £1,800 fitted turns an EV from a car that costs roughly what petrol costs to run into one that costs about a fifth as much. The tariff switch on commissioning day is worth £400 to £800 a year and is the reason the ownership case works; without off-street parking and a route to the consumer unit, the answer is public and workplace charging, not a compromised home install.
The generation half of the EV story; a Zappi-class charger diverts surplus solar to the car.
The storage decision that often follows solar plus EV; sizing depends on the tariff spread.
The lever that turns a 7 kW charger into a 2p-per-mile ownership story.
The other big time-of-use load; often installed alongside EV charging on a Cosy or Agile tariff.
The whole-house context that decides which order to spend on solar, battery, heat pump and EV.