Home Charging Unit?

Are you going to install a home charging unit at home and/or work?

If you are then make sure yoou do some research beforehand. The early EV owners were persuaded into buying a Home Charging Pod from British Gas at nearly £1000! This price was probably the going rate for an installed Home pod at that time but now much cheaper solutions are coming.

As a Nissan Leaf owner I do wholly recommend installing a home charging solution rather than relying on using the cable supplied by the manufacturer. Firstly, that cable is not really intended for everyday charging. Secondly, it will only charge at 10A maximum and whilst that may be adequate for most people most of the time I have found that having a faster charging solution means that you can get more miles more quickly when you need them.

Having said that, the Ampera will perform happily when the battery is not fully charged by virtue of the petrol range extender so it is much less important to be able to charge quickly.

perhaps the best solution for Ampera owners is a dedicated 13A socket. It must have its own RCD at the consumer unit. It is not a good idea to use sockets on a ring main for EV charging. The currents are high and continuous and whilst a ring main socket should be up to the job occasionally to do it regularly will be a risk.

What are you going to do?