UKC

I'm thinking of getting a car charger installed.  In some ways it's straightforward, we've got a drive, a place to install it that doesn't involve directly fixing to the house and fairly easy access to electricity but (thread title was a spoiler), the house is listed.

Has anyone on here got experience of going through the application process for this?  At a minimum it seems I'll have to pay £270 to put in a planning application as it's not permitted development on a listed building.  The council conservation team are generally helpful, but I'd be interested to hear first-hand experience of similar applications elsewhere including do's and dont's.

Genuine question but why not just fix the charger to some sort of robust but discrete, free-standing post, which presumably would mean you don't need planning approval at all? (assuming it's just the house that's listed, not the grounds too) In other words.... are you over-thinking this?

Edit: I should add that I've no idea how large these things are so could be talking rubbish!

Edit 2: aah, looks like you do: https://wepoweryourcar.com/do-you-need-planning-permission-for-ev-chargers/....

I have my EVSE ( "charger" ) in my garage, with a long tethered cable that I hang on a hook outside. Could you do something similar? I've got the Ohme unit with a 32A commando plug on it, so it's very compact and not permanently wired in.

Hi, have you spoken to the planning department?  In the past I’ve been given the go ahead with out having to make an application..  sometimes it’s just about keeping them informed.

Yes, try this if you can. In the days before austerity planning departments were always happy to give free pre-application advice. Some still do. Worth an email/call.

Would an outside 13A plug socket slip underneath the threshold for needing planning consent?  Still needs to be properly earthed and protected, of course.

Interesting - someone up the street has just had one installed on the front of their house that seems to fall foul of "must not - face onto and be within two metres of a highway".

Definitely worth a shot but in my recent experience L.A.s are so under-resourced, they'll just tell you to make an application and it'll be processed in the usual way. There's simply no longer the opportunity to have an informal chat in advance to sound them out.

I'd just go ahead and do it. Who's going to complain? A council which were to remove EV chargers in such a circumstance would attract ridicule.

I would do the same, but two things come to mind.

1. Issues when selling (could just remove it before selling).

2. Home owners being told to remove solar panels: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/dec/11/homeowner-told-to-remove-sola...

Thanks for the replies.  I'll try giving the planning department a call, but I'm not holding out much hope.  I find it a bit frustrating, normal listed building applications are free, but the rules on chargers have been written so you have to put in a (chargeable) planning application too.  I'm sure this is deliberate, but seems backwards if the government want to encourage the use of electric vehicles.

Not a high enough current for fast charge unfortunately

That's true, but it'll still charge at 2.2kW.  I've had EVs for seven years now and have always charged then from a dedicated 13A socket. Unless you do lots of big milage days back to back it's perfectly adequate.

And if it saves the OP a planning application it might be worth the inconvenience!

The rules on chargers are the same as putting any free standing structure in the curtilage of a listed building, planning permission is needed. It's not a conspiracy to rinse you of money. The application fee will be the smallest part of the cost of fitting a charger/ buying an EV.

From my experience of being an EV owner, I don't think the government has any particular strategy for encouraging the use of electric vehicles. They probably understand that if every petrol car was replaced with an EV, we would still have a massive environmental problem, but improving public transport is not a very Conservative thing to do so....

As someone who works in the world of listed buildings, just position the charger in a way that reduces the visual impact on the house and choose the least ugly charger you can find. It would be pretty unreasonable to refuse permission if you've actually put some thought into it.

We live in a Grade II listed farmhouse and installed a small Easee charger on the side elevation of our house next to the garage, we didn't seek permission and I don't expect if we did that it would be refused anyway given where it is, the size it is, and the type of fixings used. 

I'm an architect and planning departments have been cut to the bone over the past decade, I doubt they'd have anything like the capacity to keep on top of charger installations as well as everything else they do.

might just be easier to charge of a 2kw three pin socket? much more discrete and would charge a approx 25% of a full car battery if plugged in overnight. would that be enough for you?

If you're going to the trouble of installing a proper outdoor 13A outlet for for vehicle charging, why not install a 32A outlet and charge at 7kW?

because you'll need to run a 7KW cable from the fuse box and the charger is very visible. A 2 kw socket is within the capacity of the existing ring and the box is no bigger than a three pin socket. Very much cheaper to install and unlikely to raise the hackles of the planning department. and you can plug the mowing machine into it too,

it’s worth doing it properly, paying for planning application and having a 7kW charger installed. If you do any reasonable mileage on a regular basis, the 2kW is a pain, esp. if something comes up and you need to get out. Also if you have solar panels, it makes the most of what you’re generating. £270 isn’t a big proportion of the cost of charger, fitting and EV.

The 3-pin 'granny charging' is typically 3x slower than using a wall charger like the 7.4kw one we have.

We only have a 24kw battery in our little fiat, so to charge it takes like 3.5hours. That battery does maybe 80-90 miles.

Bigger audis etc have a 114kw battery so would be like 15hours on our charger for a full charge, if you're using granny charging you're looking at 45hours.

Also, granny charging isn't very 'clever' so you can't programme it to do it overnight, you'd have to go and plug it in at midnight when the cheaper tarrif kicks in etc. Bit of a faff.

Finally, I don't believe it's recommended to consistently use the 3pin cable.

Well it obviously depends on individual circumstances. If you happen to have a handy ring main near by and the CU is a pig of a run then yes, installing a 32A is more expensive than a 13A. For me the difference between adding a 13A or a 32A was the cost of using 8m of 6mm cable instead of 8m of 2.5mm, so pennies. But even at £500 more, if you're getting 4 hours of cheap electric a night like a lot of us do, being able to charge at 7kW will pay for itself reasonably quickly.

All depends on circumstances.  2.2kw times 4 hours times seven days means you can pick up 60kWh per week.  That's a full 250 mile charge for my Kia, and sufficient to do more than 12,000 miles a year.  You only really need faster if you have to do big drives on several consecutive days.

No, most cars can manage this on board.  I have my car set to charge 0030-0430 via the 13A charger.

There's a lot of discussion around this.  Just sticking the 13A charger on any old plug socket, with god knows what else on the same ring, and leaving it for days on end: probably a bad idea.  OTOH using a dedicated socket, with nothing else on that ring, with proper protection fitted, is fine.  And if this is the difference between being granted and refused planning consent, then it might just be the solution.

We've done a fair bit of work on our house, all with the knowledge of the conservation team.  In most cases I've shared info and they've waved it through as minor works, no formal application needed.  Some bigger work needed listed building permission, which meant a formal application, but no fee.  This is the first job that's come up on our house where we've had to pay for a planning application.

Unfortunately we've not got a garage, so it's going to have to go fully outside.

Given that our local council conservation team are very helpful I do my best to work with them and follow the rules.  TBH, even if I was inclined to ignore all the rules, our house is in a very visible location and I think there's a decent chance somebody would put in a complaint if we just plowed on and installed a charger without permission.

On the 13a socket question - we have occasionally done this, albeit from a socket inside the house.  It was slow, and if we're going to the effort of running the cables outside then I would rather do a proper job of it.  At the moment the main users of the EV charger will be my parents, who often arrive needing to put in quite a bit of power, so the 'little and often' top up doesn't work for them.

That's fair - you need the power for that use case! 

And I'm inclined to agree, don't try to chance getting away with it.  Someone will inevitably dob you in, and it'll certainly be a problem if you ever need to sell.

It doesn't have to be in a garage. It could go in the house, under stairs cupboard maybe? 

The point is that you don't need to have a big lump on a wall to charge your car. You can hide the charger in the house and run a long cable from it to the car. You just need to drill a discrete hole for it to exit the house.

It would be trivially easy to remove.

My dumb question (since I don't have any experience with these things): to charge an EV, why do you need anything more than a 32A IEC socket, and a 32A cable fitted with the appropriate connectors at either end? What else is the 'charger unit' doing?

The chargers are connected to the internet, presumably to manage demand by turning them down / off when the entire country is driving EVs.

Ah right, thanks. I have just looked up notes on the legislation involved. (In case anybody else is interested: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...)

In addition, I guess, there must be some communications protocol between the charging unit and the car, to allow the former to tell the latter what current it's capable of supplying. And I assume that, in the lack of any communication, the car would assumes that it's connected to a 13A socket - so my thinking-aloud idea above regarding the fitting of a 32A socket wouldn't make any difference.

The 'charger' doesn't have to do that much. It sends a control signal to the car saying how much current is available - so a 13A plug charger will advertise that it can only supply 10A, while a 32A charger will advertise 32A. The charger will only switch the power on when it detects a car is plugged in. The charger needs to provide over current and DC earth leakage protection. Most connect to the internet to allow clever charging schedules, but this is not necessary to charge a car.

Ok, thanks.

Ah, but as Andy Hardy has pointed out above, an Internet connection is now mandated by law, for any new installations.

I didn't realise they'd made it a legal requirement for new EVSE installations. It's not a technical requirement though. You could buy an old EVSE or build one pretty easily that would charge a car without any internet connection.