10 Things You Need to Know Before Getting an Electric Vehicle Charging Point Installed at your Home

Hi Jordan, here from crafts

electric

s, welcome back to the channel, today I want to make a little video for you about the 10

things

you

need

to

know

if you want to install an

electric

vehicle

charging

point

because we get customers coming to us all the time. time and want to install a

charging

point

but just don't

know

where to start so I hope this video is of benefit to you if so don't forget to hit the like button up and subscribe to the channel for more regular videos . updates so we are here today we have been installing this maya uzapi charging point for one of our clients we just finished and one of the first

things

we

need

to know if a client approaches us to have an electric

vehicle

charging point

installed

is what the size of the main cut-out fuse is, so when you approach an electrician or electrical contractor to install a charging point, they will need to tell you what the size of

your

main cut-out fuse is and for most

home

owners , They do not do it.

I even know that they have a main cutoff fuse or where it is, so I'm going to show you where the main cutoff fuse is and how to identify what size it is so you can pass that information on to

your

electrician and potentially you can then send them the photo of what you need to know let's go to the meter box because usually the main fuse is located in the electricity meter box so we will go there so this is the electricity meter box which is usually located on the outside of a house, but sometimes it's inside under the stairs or something, but usually where your meter is is where your main cutoff fuse will be, so this gray box here is called your service head.

All this. This is the incoming supply cable from the electricity supplier. it goes into this service head and it goes through something called a main cutout fuse and it usually has a couple of tags to keep it in place so nobody can take it out because if someone took it out they would cut off all their power, but it has a rating and that rating is in amps and in this case we can see it says 100 fuses

installed

which means 100 amp fuse installed so usually these will be labeled especially if they are new and there is actually a label on the side Also, I don't know if you can go in and see it, but right inside is this blue label that identifies the fuse that's inside the fuse holder.

Now you might be wondering why we need to know what the size of the The main cut-out fuse is fine, it's all about the load that the EV charger will put on your system because a seven kilowatt EV charging point places a load of 32 amps into your electrical system constantly while the vehicle is charging and that's a lot of energy when maybe your house would only have a 60 amp main fuse, that EV charging point will consume half of all your electrical capacity immediately and there's a risk that if you had a lot of other things going on in the house, you could end up exploding. the main fuse cutting out and losing power throughout your house and having to have the distribution network operator come and install a new main fuse, so as a qualified electrician and vehicle charging point installer electrical, we must verify the size of your main fuse.

This is and generally what we will do if it is not 100 amps we will recommend that you contact your dno or your distribution network operator and ask them to upgrade you to 100 amps that is something they usually do for free , it's a pretty easy job. for them, but for them to do that they're going to have to do a couple of things, so let me tell you about these things, these brown and blue wires are what are called meter tails, so they have meter tails that come from the network major. cut at the meter, off the meter, at a main isolator switch that serves to cut power to the entire house so that if someone is working on the consumer unit they can do so safely and then from this main switch, goes to the consumer unit, all these tails must have a cross-sectional area of ​​25 square millimeters, so the cross-sectional area of ​​the copper inside the wires must be 25 square millimeters if your fuse is only 60 amps and is an older property, it is very likely that these tails will only be 16 millimeters square and that means that you will need to upgrade the tails before the main cut-out fuse can be upgraded to 100 amps, so that is something that UK electrical networks or whoever your name is can verify. that or you can have an electrician look at it and often your electrician, if you send him a photo of this, will be able to identify from the picture the size of the main tails and tell you if they need to be upgraded or not, so that's a stuff. size the main cut-out fuse, you should provide that information to whoever is planning to install your EV charging point, and if it no longer has 100 amps, it is worth trying to upgrade.

The other question you will be asked is if you have a loop service. and again, most people like what the hell a loop service is. A loop service is where the supply cable comes in here and then potentially another one goes out to the property next door, so you would have one cable coming in and one cable going out. it would mean your house and the neighbor's house share the same main supply wire and if you have a loop service that may mean there is a limit to how much power it can actually take and they may not be able to upgrade your main fuse , so when your electrician asks if you have a loop service, it's worth checking whether you have one wire coming through the cutout or whether you have two, if necessary.

You're probably on a loop service, but you might be at the end of the line, so you might have one incoming cable, but your house next door might have two because you might be at the end of the line, so you won't necessarily know with certainty if you have a loop service or not. by the number of cables but it gives a good indication and you can ask your UK mains or whoever your distribution network operator is, you can ask them and they will know from their records if you have a loop service or not, other information that what you need to give your electrician to register your installation with the distribution network operator is your m pan number which is mpan and what is is the access number to your meter point, i think the a is I'm not sure, sometimes they call.

The metering point reference number is basically the identification number of your electricity supply and it will be on your electricity bill and it is a number that is like in a rectangular box divided into smaller boxes, it is like an 18 digit number or something like that and it's quite long. is the number you need, so if someone asks you for a mpan number, just take out your electricity bill and take a photo of the number which is on your electricity bill in the rectangular box and then send it to your electrician and that will satisfy That requirement, the next thing we need to talk about is grounding and bonding, because any good electrician adding a significant load to your

home

will need to do some safety checks to make sure it's safe to plug into the existing installation and one of those. things is that we need to make sure the main connection is installed on the water and gas pipes and any other incoming services, so I'll show you how you can identify that now so we can make the long trip to the gas meter.

We're just going to open this door here and open this gas meter box because we need to check if you have gas on your property, if the gas has been consolidated and the simple answer here is yes, so this is what we mean. Using a gas union connection, you have this yellow green wire that is quite thick, has a square cross-sectional area of ​​10 millimeters, and has what we call a grounding clamp or bonding clamp installed to attach to the pipe. main just after it leaves the gas meter. sometimes it's done in the box here or sometimes it's done right where you enter the property on the inside of the house, so you'll need to check that and the best thing you can do to help your electrician is just take a photo of it. and has it delivered to you, then you know you don't have to worry about installing the gas connection while you're there because that can add significant cost to the installation if it has to be done at the same time as the charging point.

Another service that needs linking is water so we will go in and I will show you the water link so now that we are inside we are going to look for the main water stopcock which is the internal one inside the house where you turn off all the water in the house and in this house it's in this closet, so you can see down here, this is the main shutoff valve, it's even very well labeled on this new construction property, which is pretty rare. Look at the main water shutoff valve open so you can know that if you turn that off, the water will be shut off to the entire property.

Now, in this case, it comes in a blue Alcathean plastic pipe that goes all the way here and then it goes to copper and we can see here that there's a main union connection for the water, which is exactly what we'd expect to see and it's nice, airtight. and it's done correctly so that's really good so that's another box ticked that everything is safe here so we add a new circuit for an electric vehicle charging point now your main water shutoff valve is usually under the sink. In most houses it's under the sink, so you'll probably have to clean everything up and take a look, but somewhere about a meter from that pipe there should be a connection like this. and you just need to check that and send a photo to your electrician, so the next thing we need to check is your consumer unit, which people might know as a fuse box, it's basically where all the electrical circuits in your property come from, so in this case we have the corrective unit here in the same closet where the electrical was where the water valve was and we can lift the lid and just take a look now what your electrician will want to know is if you have a free way . on your consumer unit, so if you look here, this is the main switch, then you have several circuits here and at the end here we have one that says spare and it just has a small blind piece, which means that in this case there is a free way in the consumer unit, sometimes they are completely full, they are all labeled with various things and there is no extra space and that will make it a little bit more difficult to install a charging point now, in this case.

We've already done the installation, we've been able to mix things up a bit here to create an RCD-free way to the EV charger drawbacks, which is what we needed, we've changed everything and labeled everything is back in order, but there's still an additional way for future capacity, for example if the customer wants to install solar in the future they have an additional way to be able to do so, so it is important to know if there is an additional way on your consumer unit and your electrician will want to know what kind of consumer unit you have, if it is modern or old fashioned, because if it is quite old, if it is plastic, maybe if it has old fuses that are inserted, then you will probably need to upgrade the consumer unit or you will need to install a new unit consumption for the charging point, only now this house is newly built, so it is a perfect example of what we would like to see, which one is yours?

We have a surge protection device here on the consumer unit that will absorb any surges from the main supply and send them to ground, preventing electronic equipment from exploding in the event of a surge and when you have an expensive vehicle plugged in with an expensive point. You don't want it to explode so having a surge protection device is good and we generally recommend installing one when you have an EV charging point installed if you don't already have one. But what if you don't have spare tracks on your consumer unit? What can be done? Can you still install a charging point?

Yes you can, but probably what will have to happen is that the electrician will need to install an additional consumer unit, maybe just a small one next to your existing consumer unit, so the question I would ask is do you have space near the existing consumer unit to add a new consumer unit and in this case you can see that actually there is not much space because the space here is Too small, there are pipes here on the other side. We'd probably have a hard time putting anything under it. Maybe we can put something on top, but what your electrician will probably want to see is a good wide angle view of this entire area where the consumer unit is located. so you can see if there is enough space to add an additional consumer unit there and if there isn't you may have to think outside the boxcommon and try to find a different location to put the new consumer unit, but that's important to give it that kind of space. of photos or obviously when you come to do the survey, if you come to do a physical survey, they will be able to take a look at it and tell you what is possible and what is not possible, once we have figured out all the electrical side of things, Another important thing to know is where you want the charging point to be located, so we're going to go back outside and talk about that now, so we go back out here and the question is where.

Do you want your charging point to be located for the most people? They have their own driveway or parking space and they have a wall and they think that's okay, like the spot on the wall. Should I place the charging point to plan the correct location? What you really need to know is what your vehicle will be and where on the vehicle the charging port will be located. For example, in this job, if you know what the vehicle is, it's a Tesla Model 3 and the customer will probably be reversing their vehicle like this into this parking space.

I have my Tesla here right now because I've been working on it today and I parked it in another direction so the charging point is right on the other side. but if we turn it around and reverse it, the tesla's charging point is on the rear left, which is here, so it's perfect for us to put the charging point here and then all we have to do is relax, We probably won't. We even need the full twenty-foot length of cable and can simply plug it into the vehicle's left rear charging port, so it's ideal. What you need to think about is where the cable will go when you connect it. in the vehicle because ideally it should not be dragged anywhere where someone could trip over it, so you want to think about that and ideally keep the length of the cable as short as possible from the charging point to the vehicle so that there is a You have to think a little bit behind it, but you also have to think about the aesthetics, so where is it going to look good?

In this case, we have aligned it with the house sign so that it is directly below the house sign. There is a rule about how tall it should be, so your electrician will have to fix it at a certain height. You're not going to be able to put it super low like this or super tall because that's not acceptable under the regulations, so it's about how tall it needs to be. It needs to be installed according to the regulations, then once you know where you want your charging point to be, you need to think about the electrician's cable route, how you will get the cable from the consumer unit to the charging point, so we can talk. of that next, so the electrician will have to figure out how to run a new cable from the consumer unit to the charging point and that varies greatly from installation to installation.

This is probably one of the easiest we've done. Because the consumer unit is right behind it, it's about two or three meters of cable and we were able to drill through the wall at an angle to come out exactly where we wanted, right under the consumer unit, but most installations are not that simple and there is a lot of thought that needs to be put into the cable routing to make it as tidy as possible but also compliant and safe, so often what is needed is for the cable to be attached directly to the surface, for which we would probably cut back. here and then along the outside of the house to where the consumer unit is and then we would drill down and go into the back of the consumer unit or into the room where the consumer unit is and your electrician, ideally if you want to do the easiest life. and make him love you to pieces what you need is to make a small drawing of where you think the cable route should go and say take some photos of the outside of the house where the route would pass or of the inside of the house if necessary. runs internally and that will give you a very good idea of ​​how much cable is needed, what the route is like, if you need any additional conduit or channel to hide the cables, what type of cable you need, what size cable you need, all of these things have to be done. be taken into account and that will affect the price of your installation, so it's really good if you can provide as much information and as many photos as possible that will really make your electrician's life easier.

I have many customers who tell me they want a 22 kilowatt charger. I want the fastest possible charge for my home because I have a Volkswagen e that I want to charge in 10 minutes and realistically, most people don't need super fast charging. This is a seven kilowatt charger. So it will charge my Tesla Model 3 performance overnight from zero to a full 300 miles of range. It will charge in about 10 hours, so 30 miles per hour is about what you get between 28 and 30 miles per hour charging with a 7. kilowatt charger now, unless you're doing hundreds of miles a day and coming back and have to charge very fast and then start again, you won't need a 22 kilowatt charger or even an 11 kilowatt charger because most people only do 30 to 40 miles.

Let's say and then they come back and charge overnight, so you'll actually recharge for an hour or two overnight with a seven kilowatt charger and you'll be absolutely fine, but you need to know about your vehicle, what? The capacity that the onboard charger has because the actual vehicle can only receive a certain charging speed, no matter how fast your wall charger is the vehicle is limited so for my Tesla model 3 it is limited to 11 kilowatts , so even if you had a three phase charger here of 22 kilowatts, the vehicle would only charge at 11 kilowatts and most vehicles can only charge at a maximum of 11 kilowatts.

For smaller vehicles like the vw e up for example, and quite a few other vehicles, they are limited to three and a half kilowatts, so even with a seven kilowatt charger you will only get a three and a half kilowatt charge because they have a small battery. and they don't need to charge very quickly. I recommend most people that you choose a seven kilowatt home charger, that way you are prepared for the future, even if you have a vehicle that can only charge three and a half kilowatts, if you ever change that then you will have your seven kilowatts of capacity, but you generally don't need more than that unless you're doing a lot of miles, so it's good to estimate your daily mileage and figure out how long it will take to charge if you charge it overnight.

Seven kilowatts is good for most people. So another question that a lot of people want to know and that is important to know before installing is what features do you need with your EV charger because there are many different charging points and they have different functionalities. what we call dumb chargers and there are what we call smart chargers, a dumb charger is basically like a plug that provides power but has no internet connection, no no, it has no smart capabilities of any kind, there is no app, none of that , you just plug in your vehicle and Oops, those chargers are not available under the grant scheme now because the grant calls for smart charging, but for some people it is a cheap way to do it and they don't want to claim the grant, however, have a charger smart as a zappy for The example gives you additional functionality that could be useful, for example it has solar integration, so if you have solar panels you can set it to charge exclusively with green electricity that exceeds the capacity of your house and Instead of selling it to the network, you can use it to charge your vehicle for free, which is a really cool feature.

You don't need to have solar power to have a zappy because it has many other amazing features, so we incorporate this as standard for most of our customers, but it is good to know what the functions are, for example, if you need scheduled charging, if Your vehicle does not have a timer system set up so you may want to have a charging point that can do scheduled charging so you can set it to charge at certain times. Some of our customers are on the Octopus Agile tariff and want to be able to setting up the charging point to sync with the cheap electricity that Octopus Agile provides and being able to charge at those really cheap rates, so there are multiple charging points. that allow you to do that, including my Energy Zappy which recently joined that as well, so that's another thing you might want to think about what functionality you need.

Do you want an app that can monitor how much electricity? that you've been using to charge your vehicle, my Energy Zappy does that too, in fact it acts as a smart monitor for your entire home, so you can see how much electricity your entire home is using and how much of it is being used. aimed at your vehicle, so smart functionality, what features you want, those are the kind of things you need to decide before you go ahead and book an installation, so what fit and finish you want, let's take a look, so this is the uzapi charger of the miner.

It looks quite smart, as you can see, it's not the most beautiful charger on the market, there are more beautiful ones, but it's quite smart, quite neat and comes in black or white, with or without tethers, so there are four options basically for a seven kilowatt charger. The black option has a black cover here and a black plug, so you may want to choose a black one if you have a lot of black fixtures in your house or a white one if you have a lot of white fixtures of your choice and there really isn't much difference in the price of installation, the other options are connected and non-connected, now connected means you basically have one cable connected, so all you need to do is uncoil it, plug it in and you're done. untethered is where you have a plug in the front with no cable so you have to buy it or use it, use your separate electric vehicle charging cable and plug it in, the downside of that is every time you stop you have to take the cable from the trunk, plug it in at both ends and then you can charge unless you leave it lying on the ground or hang it or something, but often the color of the cable doesn't match the charging point and so it's a bit tricky to do , it just makes life a little more difficult, so what I recommend as a standard is to just find a belt charger, then you just rock into the vehicle, uncoil, plug it in and go. to go and if it's raining or something, you don't have to try to get the cable out of the trunk and waste time with it.

Now there are many other options in terms of fit and finish, for example, if you want a beautiful charging point that matches the colors of your house there is the Anderson A2 which is like a rectangular box the cables hidden inside and the front panels and side are customizable so you can choose different colors there are about 10 different colors and four different wood finishes and you can mix and match them to get something that matches the front of your house. It's a bit more expensive but it's good for maybe listed buildings or houses where aesthetics are really important then if you don't really care.

As for how it looks, you can go for a much cheaper charger that looks pretty horrible if you want, but we generally recommend zappy or andersons are the best options out there at the moment, so I hope that answers all your questions. and you. Learn a little more now about what to give your electrician in terms of information when you want to install an electric vehicle charging point. All of these things are really important to plan your installation and do it correctly and safely. If this video has been of benefit. Share it with someone else who might also enjoy it.

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