UKC

Hi,

Looking at changing my wife's company car for an electric one and they will pay for the installation of a charging point (up to a fixed value).

If we do this, how do you go about hooking that into the house electrics? Does it need it's own circuit and fuse on the consumer unit?

If it does, then we will need to get the whole consumer unit replaced, as it doesn't have a spare slot.

Thanks,

You can split the meter tails and install a second consumer unit.

Had ours installed last summer, and it was all done from the meter cabinet. The supply is split immediately after the master isolation switch, and there is a dedicated RCBO fitted in the cabinet for the charger. Armoured cable runs externally from there to the charger. They didn't need to come in to the house or touch any of the household electrics. 

I would say though, there is some uncertainty/controversy regarding installing what is essentially a mini 2-gang consumer unit inside the meter cabinet. Opinions (including responses from DNOs) vary from "you shouldn't put anything in there, all that space is reserved for supplier equipment" to "it's fine". That said, this seems to be the normal way it is done.

check out https://www.speakev.com for lots of charger install advice

At our old house we had a new fuse switch thing in the meter box, in the new house there is nothing in that box but there is a whole new 'mini' consumer unit next to the main one, just for the EV charger.

One thing I would say - having been through this with a company lease car is: the lease car company threw in an EV charging point installation for something like an extra £6 per month.... , which felt 'cheap' and benefitted from the government grant (I think).

When we moved house, leaving the charger behind, I bought the cheapest EV charger I could find off amazon (£300), it's very small and neat/simple, and paid an electrician £120 to install it.

Not saying either option is better just saying you don't have to go with the what the company car company is offering you, and if it's going to cost something like £600-1000 (which is what some of the larger companies charge) then it's definitely cheaper to get it sorted independently.

Depends on the size of charger you want.

 I'd imagine the usual ownership split applies with all space not covered by the DNO backboard the electricity company backboard being fully available to the property owner.

I was hoping someone would have weighed in by now with a definitive answer!  The easiest way to add more circuits to our property for a 32A EV charger and some other stuff is by moving the supplier kit to an external box, and it would also include a 4-way distribution board and a changeover switch owned by us.  If some of the DNOs have a downer on consumer gear in the box, that's a hassle.

In reply to elliot.baker:

Totally agree - I use a 3rd party charge cable from a company called "Zencar".  It's on a 16A blue commando outdoor socket and has a 10 meter bright green cable to the car which gives us a lot of flexibility.  Way cheaper than a fully installed charger, and I can take it with me on trips.  Also has options to charge at 6A/8A/10A/16A which lets me make effective use of local solar-PV power by using a lower setting when we have the luxury of time.

Nothing "should" be put in the meter box that doesn't belong to the DNO or supplier. The meter box is owned by the DNO and as such if it get damaged in any way, the DNO will replace it. If there is other equipment inside the meter box, then the DNO cannot swap the box over because they are not able to work on this equipment. 

I know car chargers are put inside meter boxes, but they shouldn't be.

All you have to do is drill through the wall where your neighbours consumer unit is and wire it up. Make sure you hide the wire so nobody trips on it.

Yes, this. There is quite a bit of expertise on speakev about this topic. Much better to ask there rather than UKC.

You are definitely not supposed to route it through your usual consumer box because it can generate quite a bit of heat at 32A for long periods. It should be in a separate mini one. In our house this is adjacent to our main consumer unit on the wall in the cellar.

Depending on the type of charger you are fitting, there can be additional requirements such as earthing, PEN fault protection.  I understand there is a set of regs specific to fitting of EV chargers.