[Paul_Moxhay]

Our Pod Point charging station is on the blink and so I wondered if I would be eligible for a nearly free one from the government under the current scheme.

Has anyone recently had a charging station installed under this scheme... I think it offers 75% of the cost up to £1000 as a grant.

EDIT: I have just looked at the British Gas web site and they are offering a 16A charge point for FREE... 75% from govt grant and POLAR pick up the rest. Anyone had this from BG? How is it?

 

[Paul_Moxhay]

@Brian Matthews I see you got a Free BG charging station on the previous scheme (prior April 2013). How is it going? Any issues?

 

[taylorgx]

Our Pod Point charging station is on the blink and so I wondered if I would be eligible for a nearly free one from the government under the current scheme.

Has anyone recently had a charging station installed under this scheme... I think it offers 75% of the cost up to £1000 as a grant.

EDIT: I have just looked at the British Gas web site and they are offering a 16A charge point for FREE... 75% from govt grant and POLAR pick up the rest. Anyone had this from BG? How is it?

Hi Paul,
I had my charging station installed by BG under this offer, my installation was quite easy, the fuse board is one side of the garage wall and the charge was installed the other side.

The technician was quite thorough, just as you would expect, and the end job was good , in fact that is one of the reasons I chose BG. I also had my solar panels installed by BG and whilst they were not the cheapest I could not complain about the installation. At one time I had five vans parked outside the house all offering assistance!

Nothing was too much trouble and even minor problems were sorted and not bodged!

Then came the after sales, now that is a different story!

Gary
23000 miles 93.4 mpg

 

[Paul_Moxhay]

Thanks. I have applied to BG and we will see after the survey. I assume it will be very straight forward: it is the same as yours... consumer unit on inside of garage wall... pod on outside of same wall. Not only that but I already have a 32A Pod Point pod installed already and that was done properly by an electrician so should be fine. It should just be a case of removing the existing pod and installing the new one unless BG have some additional safety requirements although it has a 32A RCBO on the consumer unit already so that might be OK. It even has a proper heavy duty isolation switch already.

I am not a big fan of British Gas for anything but the 3 year parts and labour warranty clinched it for me on this one. My 2 year old Pod Point pod has failed and so I wanted a 3 year guarantee.

I'll post what happens

 

[Big Paul]

Paul,

I also had a FOC BG / Polar Charge point installed earlier this year (April I think). BG first came and did a survey and had a "bit of a thing" for the installation needing a separate earth spike very close to the cable holder which I was worried about as I'd just had the drive re-done with new pavers!

Anyway, on the install day we discussed where I ideally wanted the thing siting and the BG fitter was great and even drilled right next to the wall/edge of the pavers without any damage to site the long earth spike. There are all sorts of regulations associated with the exact positioning of the unit as it must be a certain height from the ground and distance from the garage door (metal) frame but where it is now is just right.

The only issue I've had is that a record of the useage is supposed to be available on Polar's Chargevision website, along with records of my use of the Polar Charge RFD card when I'm away from home. Unfortunately I've not yet been able to encourage Polar to investigate why the unit is not recording (or feeding the website) my re-charge history at home, but it is picking up all the remote uses I make on their charge points elsewhere.

All in all a good unit I think but not sure about the IT infrastructure links that I think ought to be providing data to the "powers that be" even if not to me, as I thought the government sponsorship of these installations was in return for them getting useage data for future planning!

Regards

Big Paul

 

[Paul_Moxhay]

Thx Big Paul. That is encouraging. I did read about the earth spike and wondered how they did it. Our existing installation doesn't have a separate earth spike and just relies on the existing earth on the consumer unit. It seemed to satisfy our electrician!

You are not the first person I have heard where ChargeVision isn't working. I wouldn't rely on what it showed anyway and I intent to have a proper meter recording my home use anyway.

 

[Geoff]

Hi Paul
1 had a Polar Charging Station fitted in June. It works well it was free and included a Charge Master card which I have yet to try. I hear that Charge Master will start charging next year.
Ours was an easy installation and obviously others are more complicated but it seems hard to justify the £1000 that it cost. It does the job but not appear to be of the highest quality.
I hope to monitor the usage online but so far it says that there has only been 1 charge so far in November 2012.
Geoff

 

[Paul_Moxhay]

Thx Geoff.

If I were to be honest I really don't want to give money to POLAR or ChargeMaster. They have proven time and time again to be rather incompetent and their backend system seems to be riddled with bugs too. I am not impressed with their business ethics either with the way they have gone about things over the past couple of years. However, if I want a free charging station with a 3 year warranty it seems to be BG/POLAR or nothing at the moment.

If anyone has any better suggestions then please say... if I can avoid POLAR/ChargeMaster then I will.

 

[dpeilow]

Had a POLAR one installed. Professional job, the installer had to do a very long cable run but it was all smooth. Two colleagues also went with POLAR.

No issues so far, but I was only using it for about 10 days.

 

[Paul_Moxhay]

I am waiting for the BG install team to arrange a date. Should be up and running inside 3 weeks apparently.

 

[MickH]

Glad to hear you've managed to get a free charger installed by BG and it's working ok. Unfortunately I agreed a date to have one fitted and they never turned up or rang to let me know why they never appeared, although I was told someone would ring. Can only presume that because of my remote location they've no one trained to survey/install it but I may be wrong. So my faith in BG is not good. Looking at other alternatives at the moment.
Mick

 

[Paul_Moxhay]

LOL! Well I had decided and I applied. They called me to arrange fitting but I couldn't take the call and they never called back and that was 3 weeks ago. I might cancel BG and go with the ZCW offfering. At least then the profit goes towards the ZeroNet charging network and will benefit drivers.

 

[PRO-AMPERA]

I am having big problems getting a Free Home Charging Station fitted. I have tried 2 companies;

Chargemaster (Polar)= had a survey done. My fuse box is on the opposite side of the house to where I want the charge station fitted and I want the cable to go up the side of the house through the loft and out down the other side of the house. Because I want the cable to run this way and not visible all the way around the front of the house Chargemaster say that they can not install the unit because there instalation teams do not have long ladders!!!!.

Rolec= Then I decided I wanted to go with them because my Dad has a Rolec and is very pleased with it. (he had to pay for his because it was before the Government Grant). I contacted them and was told someone would contact me in the next week regarding a survey. I gave it a month and had not heard from them so emailed them again. Rolec were not happy that there contracted instalation team had not contacted me. They said they would find out what had happened but it has now been another week without contact. :x

I personally think that these companys are not interested in fitting the units with the government grant for some reason. Maybe it is to much hassle for them to claim the money :?

I might now try ZCW like Paul C. When you look at the pictures of these they seem to be re-badged Rolec units anyway.

 

[h8ten]

I had my survey carried out on Friday 16th by SSE to have my charging point installed under the Energy Savings Trust scheme here in Scotland. It comes in at a bit more than EST will pay so I have to cover the difference. My install is going from the inlet feed in the existing consumer unit to a dedicated consumer unit and meter to allow me to keep track of units used, up into the loft (bungalow) cross the loft to the gable end, over a three foot gap to the garage and along the outside of the garage will under the eaves then down near the front of the garage to the unit. It is a Rolec unit and installation is sc=heduled for Friday 23.

 

[Paul_Moxhay]

Given up on British Gas. Applied for a Zero Carbon World one. This is the Rolec unit and is of excellent quality and modular so it should be easy to upgrade or change cables if I change the car.

Plus... any profits go towards building the ZeroNet charging network so benefit all EV drivers rather than swelling the pockets of British Gas.

 

[proddick]

I went direct to Chargemaster and IMO they were very good.

@pro-ampera - I can see that training all the installers for height work is probably not worthwhile when most installations are ground floor. If you want installation at height you may need to get your own electrician to fit the supply to the location and then get the charging company to do the final install. Let us know how you get on.

@paul - I thought ZCW only provided the charger and you had to arrange installation - has that changed?

 

[dpeilow]

Warning

The units ZCW are installing for this scheme are not the Rolec Wallpods. They are a new in house design, meant to be cheaper.

 

[Paul_Moxhay]

@paul - I thought ZCW only provided the charger and you had to arrange installation - has that changed?

It depends which ZCW charging stations you are talking about...

They supply the Rolec units to B&Bs, hotels, leisure locations etc as part of the ZCW effort to get destination charging out there. These are funded by ZCW but the establishment must pay for the installation. This is what ZCW has been doing up to now and this hasn't changed.

However, ZCW has just got approval to provide home charging stations under the OLEV grant scheme. For qualifying homes (must have off-road parking, must have mobile phone signal plus a few more conditions) then ZCW can supply and install a Rolec charging pod under that scheme. It is paid for by the government but the home owner must agree to allow charging data to be collected and used for a period of 3 years. This has previously been available thought British Gas, POLAR etc but ZCW is now approved and accredited themselves.

It is under that scheme that I am applying for a Rolec station, provided and installed through ZCW.

Any profit that ZCW make is then ploughed back into the first scheme to help get more destination charging out there.

See the ZCW web site here

 

[Paul_Moxhay]

Warning

The units ZCW are installing for this scheme are not the Rolec Wall-pods. They are a new in house design, meant to be cheaper.

Can anyone see anywhere that says that they are not Rolec?

I am not doubting you David but if they are not the Rolec units then they have to be OLEV approved and accredited for them to be supplied under the grant scheme.

I know the Rolec units are accredited and I assumed that as everything ZCW have supplied to date were Rolec, and as their web site has Rolec units all over it, and as ZCW (or more specifically Kevin Sharpe) has raved about how good Rolec are, that the ones they supplied under the grant scheme were also Rolec. I haven't seen any evidence though to contradict that.

I also notice that ZCW is not one of the accredited suppliers on the latest list but that list might be out of date already.

If anyone has any further info on this I'd appreciate it. If they are not Rolec or, at least as good and fully compatible with Rolec fittings, then I might go with POLAR instead.

When they contact me I shall ask.

 

[dpeilow]

Go and check the thread at Leaftalk. Kevin said they are not Rolec.