If you’re thinking about installing an electric vehicle (EV) charger either at home or at work, you need to know THIS about new changes to the legislation.
As of Thursday 30th June 2022, each and every EV charge point for private use - whether it’s at your home or workplace - must be a ‘smart’ charger.
What that means is that the smart charger must have the capability of ‘allowing the charging of an electric vehicle when there is less demand on the grid, or when more renewable electricity is available’.
Rather than charging your car whenever you plug it in, a smart charger will hold-fire until the electricity is cheaper - typically at night.
The new rules - which fall under the ‘Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021’ - don’t apply to charging points sold before 30 June 2022.
And as David Lewis, Head of EV & Energy at Select Car Leasing points out, the move should be a beneficial one for all, both in terms of lowering your charging bill and reducing the strain on Britain’s electricity network.
He explains:
“The main factor to consider here is that with a smart charger, off-peak charging is set as a default. So, the smart charger will automatically charge your vehicle at night when grid electricity is cheap, rather than charging from the minute you plug in after arriving at your destination - whether that’s work or at home.”
According to David, the other big change the new regulations will prompt is to convince EV owners to check their electricity tariff and to consider moving away from a flat, fixed electricity rate, 24 hours a day.
If you’re on a flat tariff, you could switch instead to a dual rate tariff that has both a day rate and a cheap off-peak rate.
Charging at home via an off-peak rate can cost as little as 7.5p per kWh. Peak home tariffs, on the other hand, are around 30p per kWh. That difference between those two could save you hundreds of pounds in charging costs annually.
For all the details on how to keep your EV charging costs down, check out our Guide to Electric Car Charging Costs here!
David adds:
“Grid electricity might be cheaper at night, but you might not be on a tariff that offers cheap night-time electricity. In that scenario, smart chargers are great for the grid but won’t offer any advantages to you. So, when using a smart charger, it’s advisable you have an off-peak tariff in place with your supplier if you want to make EV charging as cheap as possible.”
If you absolutely need to charge your vehicle right there and then, you can simply override the automated charging times on your smart system.
There’s another small thing to be aware of, and that’s the tendency for smart chargers to jump the gun slightly - by around 10 minutes - when it comes to start times. .
David reveals:
“It means that if your cheap off-peak electricity slot starts at 12:30am, for example, your smart charger might come on ten minutes early, at 12:20am - i.e. before the cheap slot starts.
“In the grand scheme of things, the tiny extra charge you would incur from charging at peak rate for 10 minutes would be barely noticeable on your bill. And this 10 minute period of wriggle room is there to avoid overloading the grid if thousands of cars all started charging at exactly the same time.”
There’s another important thing to know about the new legislation governing EV charging points - it’ll improve safety and security for users, too.
The guidance - which you can read on the Government website points out that all new smart chargers must meet strict requirements, including for ‘safety provisions, preventing the user carrying out an operation which could risk the health or safety of a person’ and ‘security requirements consistent with the existing cyber security standard’.
We’ve also got a series of guides detailing how to reduce your EV charging costs on our Select Electric pages.
And remember that by working directly with the leading charging companies, we've secured discounted prices on a variety of high spec chargepoints. You can enjoy preferential access to the UK's top nationwide installer networks, ChargedEV and Egg.
You can also take advantage of the Egg charger subscription service. For £30 a month, you can have a state-of-the-art smart charger installed, and that price also includes free maintenance call-outs within two working days.
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