EV Charger Installation in Sandleheath

How the job went

1. 1

   The brief

   The charge point was to go on a detached garage at the bottom of the garden, at a property near Fordingbridge. We do not connect a charge point to whatever installation happens to already be in place. The supply and the existing electrics are assessed first, because a charge point adds a sustained load to a system that was not designed with one in mind.

2. 2

   What we found

   The supply running down to the garage was suitable for a charge point, so no new cable run was needed. That is usually the expensive part of a job like this, and here it was already in hand.

   The consumer unit was another matter. It carried non-compliant work left by a previous contractor, which had to be put right before a charge point could be added to it safely.

   There was also no data cable to the garage. A charge point has to be able to see what the rest of the property is drawing, so without one it could not monitor the load.

3. 3

   What we did

   We corrected the previous contractor’s work before going any further, so the charge point was added to an installation that met current standards rather than one that did not. Surge protection was fitted while the board was open, protecting both the charger and the rest of the garage circuits from spikes coming in on the supply.

   We then ran an armoured data cable down to the garage to carry the CT monitoring signal. That lets the charge point see the demand on the property and reduce its own output when the house is drawing heavily, so the incoming supply is not overloaded. The garage consumer unit is monitored as well, so the charger cannot overload that either.

4. 4

   The result

   The customer has a 7kW tethered Zappi at the garage, running on the original supply, connected to a consumer unit that has been corrected and surge protected. Load monitoring covers both the property supply and the garage board, so the charger manages its own output rather than depending on there being spare capacity.

   The remedial work was not part of the original enquiry. It came out of assessing the installation before anything was connected, which is how we approach every EV charger installation.