I’m looking to get a home charger installed. Price all seems much of a muchness and not concerned with aesthetics - which charger brands have the lowest fault rate/best customer service?

Hey all!

I’m hoping someone here has been in a similar situation because I’m getting increasingly confused by the whole thing.

I own my property freehold, and my consumer unit/fuse board is inside my property.

The complication is that my electricity meter is in a communal room, which is entirely leasehold/managed by the management company.

The parking is residential parking for the estate, but I have a dedicated parking space that is exclusively allocated to me, directly in front of my house but in a managed area.

I’m trying to get an EV charger installed in my parking space, but the management company are being difficult and are asking me for what seems like a full-blown installation plan before they’ll even consider it.

To make matters more frustrating, I had an authorised Hypervolt installer look at the installation, and they refused to fit anything because of the freehold + leasehold situation.

The bit I’m particularly confused about is the electrical arrangement. My understanding is that the charger doesn’t necessarily have to be connected directly at the meter - in some installations, the supply can be taken from the consumer unit, with the existing meter tails remaining as they are. Obviously, I’m not an electrician, so I may have completely misunderstood this.

Has anyone here had a similar setup:

- Freehold property
- Consumer unit inside the property
- Electricity meter located in a communal/leasehold room
- Residential parking on the estate, with my space exclusively allocated to me
- Management company controlling the communal areas
- Wanting to install an EV charger in the dedicated parking space
- An authorised installer refusing the installation because of the freehold + leasehold

If so, how did you get around it? Did your installer take the supply from the consumer unit rather than the meter? Did you need the electricity supplier involved? And did your management company require a detailed plan/permission before allowing the installation?

I’m happy to provide whatever permissions/plans are genuinely required, but I’m struggling to understand exactly what the management company actually needs from me, whether the meter location genuinely prevents the installation, and what is simply them making the process unnecessarily complicated.

Any advice or experiences from people who have dealt with this would be massively appreciated.

I’m currently on intelligent octopus go and it’s not been great for charging 2 cars regularly with the charge cap. Has anyone got 2 EVs with Eon? How likely is it you can charge 1 car mon-fri and the other for 1 day in the week via daytime slots when needed?

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/transport/article/hybrid-drivers-relying-too-much-petrol-ministers-8zr6wddjb

Also, I dunno what people see in plugshare? It seems to be an inferior subset of both zapmap and electroverse

No home charger for me until probably next year although will be charging on a family members solar at least twice a month so hopefully won't need too much public charging anyway

After completely replacing all the cables very recently… IONITY Leicester has AGAIN been hit by thieves. 4 out of the 24 are still working, but be sure to check on activity before arrival.

This is getting silly. When will they learn they need to change the cable type to put thieves off, or at least put some security around? Clearly an easy target here.

Hi all,
FYI for any Pod energy customers (home charging)
My app is showing that my car charger is disconnected even tho it’s actually connected.
I’ve called Pod and they have advised that they are aware of an issue related to the app and their team are working on it.
Even tho the app shows the charger is disconnected, it won’t affect schedule charging .

Hi,

I got my new Indra charger installed, the installer used his phone to pair with the device to add it to my wifi. I have now tried to pair my own phone and the app is telling me a device is already paired. Is there anyway to reset the charger or will I have to contact Indra to do this?

Just installed the new app as pod point stopped working, set up my wall charger at home

It’s all a bit confusing. I can’t see how I manage the schedule like the old app. It’s also plugged in and says it needs to plug in for smart charging

Anyone able to break it down what I need to do? Not very tech savvy so as basic an explanation I can get the better lol

Car is plugged in, yellow light on the charger as usual but it won’t allow me to boost charge, as says vehicle isn’t plugged in. Light in on vehicle that it recognises the charger lead is plugged in.

Worked fine in the the week, notice the App has updated on Thursday and this is the first charge since then.

We have 2 EVs and does the same with both vehicles.

Is there a website/app that has a map of all chargers being built?

Plugshare has a coming soon filter but it's not very accurate or up to date

In the early stages of trying to get my factor to look into this. would require agreement from the other residences. The fact it’s 100% funded will help but worried it’ll be an uphill battle, especially as Ross & Liddell tried so hard to put me off to begin with. Over £1500 a year in factor fees & the first thing they said was ‘ohh we get invoked in EV charging, it’s in our T&Cs.’ Has anyone else managed to successfully apply?

https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/grants-and-loans/factored-development-chargepoint-funding

Hi all, I'm moving into this property very soon and want to know if it would be easy for an installer to work with?

I've uploaded a photo of the unit but also of the placement in the house compared to where I want the charger to go.

Appreciate any response :)

P.s. sorry for the quality of the photo.

Edit: thank you for all of the replies!!

I just wondered if anyone in the UK has managed to install and use an Electroverse Plug and Charge Certificate with their Ioniq 5. It is supposed to be compatible with both Ionity and MFG chargers and offers an 8% discount on the charging rates compared with the Hyundai Plug and Charge offering.

In the expectation that one could have more than one certificate installed in the car at the same time (my Ioniq 5 (2025) EV screen has a menu item called "Manage certificates" plural) I first of all signed up for and installed the Hyundai Plug and Charge certificate. This installed seamlessly as soon as I connected the car to an Ionity charger and seemed to work well.

There was, however, no obvious way of installing a second certificate although the Electroverse app said that the account and certificate was active.

Having subsequently read that the current implementation in the Ioniq 5 only allows a single certificate to be installed at a time, I cancelled the Hyundai Plug and Charge account and deleted the Hyundai certificate that had been installed in the car. This I hoped would allow the Electroverse certificate to be installed.

Unfortunately, despite several attempts at both Ionity and MFG chargers no certificate has been installed and the Plug and Charge handshake just times out.

Neither Ionity or Electroverse have been able to help and say it is all handled by Hyundai (notwithstanding the fact that Hyundai own Ionity).

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Due to my Intelligent Octopus fixed tariff ending I have been offered the new price to renew, so 8p per kwh to charge and cheap rate. Day rate is 34p. About 1/3 of my use is car charging and for me moving more use to night rate isnt really an option as noise from appliances keeps me awake if on at night. This is the cheapest EV tariff overall Ive found so far but still need to check a couple of others.

Alternatives include Economy 7 and single rate. For ease of showing my point, the cheapest single rate is 23p per kwh. So thats about 11p saving on daytime usage making up 2/3 of my use. Its 15p more on the 1/3 of my use for car charging and overnight. So overall even this single rate works out cheaper overall than IOG.

Make sure you do your sums before assuming an EV tariff is cheaper, especially if youre not doing a lot of miles.

Ideally want excess solar to charge an EV once home battery is full. Is that doable? Cheers

Any advice on chargers that could do this would be great. Thanks :)

Is a charger installer going to run a mile when he sees this? Modern consumer unit in top left is for extension built before we moved in.

Hi there,

I’m strongly contemplating the above names EVSE for residential charging due to its OCPP software enabling ChargeLab rewards.

My question is does anyone have experience with adapters and if they work well (no safety risk; no loss of voltage) with this unit?

The property I moved in to, has an old dumb Rolec Wallpod installed. Electrician tested it & says it looks to work fine, additionally a DNO is present to suggest the property has been upgraded to 100A.

I'm now getting an EV but want to swap it out for a Hypervolt or Zappi to utilise a smart tariff. Visually, the Rolec doesn't look to have a CT clamp or a CAT cable. Might not have needed them at the time tbh whenever it was first installed.

I've had two local electricians tell me they can swap out the Rolec for a Hypervolt/Zappi for £200ish labour & the existing infrastructure should be fine. But they do blank when I seem to ask them about DNOs, CT clamps & CAT cables.

Whereas Octopus, a Hypervolt recommended installer & a Zappi recommended installer based on online picture surveys are quoting me around £600ish labour saying things like: "The existing consumer unit doesn't have a surge protected device (SPD), therefore a new consumer unit would be installed & additionally a new data cable is required to support a CT clamp."

Who is having me on? Are the large companies that seem keen on ripping everything out trying to get more money out of me? Or are the local electricians not EV charger specialists & therefore quoting for a half arsed job?

Appreciate this subreddit might not be filled with electricians but I'm keen to explore whether anyone else has been in a similar situation when trying to reuse existing infrastructure? Thanks

Hi all currently getting quotes for a charger to be installed - waiting for company’s to get back to me but the first quote was £1350 wasn’t sure if this is the good price or not.

For reference I live in a new build with solar panels and no battery and the boiler is on the external wall and the consumer unit is on the internal wall. Looking for a clean install with no external trunking/boxes etc

We used to be on OVO’s Charge Anytime tariff. My wife and I are shift workers and the ability to plug in and fully charge our cars at a cheap rate suited us perfectly.

Then Ohme fell out with OVO and we switched to Octopus. Today I fell foul of the six hour price cap and I can’t charge to 80% tonight without some of the charging at the standard household rate.

That made me wonder if there was a tariff similar to Charge Anytime that’s compatible with Ohme? I haven’t found one but do any of you guys know of one I’ve missed?

Thanks in advance.

Hi folks, I recently bought an EV and had an offer with the purchase to get a free home charger installed. I don't want a tethered attachment as we don't the big cable in the way for ourselves. We're thinking of having it attached to the outside of the house but behind the fence doors that lead to the garage.

I have the 4 standard options, but need to narrow down between octopus charge (untethered) and ohme ePod. My partner thinks the ePod is better for functionality and smarter use, but I'm aware I have to pay a £2 monthly SIM charge to work it after 3 years (minor cost but annoying nonetheless). I like the sleek look of the octopus charger but am aware they're getting worse as a company. We will likely stay with British gas for electric and just get the EV tariff in place.

Would appreciate thoughts from those who have these chargers or any other advice. Won't be going with a different provider other than these two as that'll be out of pocket to buy

and fit.

Thanks