Additionally, you can expect a standard installation charge to include around 10m of cabling from your mains consumer unit/electricity meter, to the exterior wall where your charger will be fitted. We were lucky, as our household consumer unit was already in the garage, and cables only had to be run across the ceiling and through the opposite wall where our charger was sited. Matthew told us there can be complications if electricity meters and consumer units are located in the middle of the house, or under the stairs, some distance from the chosen charger location. Some customers may opt to hire electricians to move things around in advance of the charger installation, but even if you do need to carry out works the average additional costs are relatively limited, typically running to less than £500.
Using our new EV charger at home
The wallbox is impressively painless to set up – there are a few steps involved as you have to first pair your smartphone app to the charger, and then connect the charger to your WiFi, but it’s achieved very simply thanks to the clear and concise instructions in the Pod Point app through which you do it.
Using the charger is also simple. Just plug in to charge in ‘manual’ mode, or use the app to remotely set scheduled times during which the unit will charge the car. We schedule charging between 12.30am and 5.30am to take advantage of the cheapest rates on our Octopus Intelligent electricity tariff, but on a couple of occasions have needed a boost during the day and switching charge modes is handled very simply by a single ‘charge now’ button on the app – which of course you can do from wherever your smartphone has an internet connection.
Enter your electricity supplier’s kWh cost – on and off peak – into the app, and it will also show you how much your charging has cost on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. There’s even a tab that shows the current CO2 emissions state of the national grid, so you can charge at the lowest levels if you want to minimise your footprint.
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