Discussion
Hello,
Dipping my toe into the EV world with a PHEV (XC60 T8 of you're interested). I don't have power to the garage at the moment but I'm going to put some in and get a charger installed.
Two questions:
The 11 point something kW/h battery can only take a 3kw input so can I just charge using a long granny charger?
Can I buy a charger and have an electrician fit it or do I have to go through these places where it costs around a grand to install (Podpont/ Eon)?
Dipping my toe into the EV world with a PHEV (XC60 T8 of you're interested). I don't have power to the garage at the moment but I'm going to put some in and get a charger installed.
Two questions:
The 11 point something kW/h battery can only take a 3kw input so can I just charge using a long granny charger?
Can I buy a charger and have an electrician fit it or do I have to go through these places where it costs around a grand to install (Podpont/ Eon)?
I had a T6 (company car) with the 18.8kWh battery, but still the 3kW charge onboard. I chose to have a Zappi charger fitted.
My thinking was that it would pay for itself in 10 months given the comparable saving on petrol, but would future proof me.
Turned out to be a sensible option as we got my wife a full EV six months later, and I changed the Volvo for an i4 halfway through a 4 year lease period when the option came up.
Yes, you can granny charge it, but longer term thinking might pay off.
My thinking was that it would pay for itself in 10 months given the comparable saving on petrol, but would future proof me.
Turned out to be a sensible option as we got my wife a full EV six months later, and I changed the Volvo for an i4 halfway through a 4 year lease period when the option came up.
Yes, you can granny charge it, but longer term thinking might pay off.
My reading of https://www.carparisonleasing.co.uk/blog/drive-wit... is that the car should come with a three-pin charger. As that will fully recharge the battery in five hours, you're unlikely to see any tangible benefit from spending a grand on a hardwired charger to shorten that to three hours (unless you have a very specific usage pattern).
We've been charging our XC60 using the supplied granny charger quite happily for the past couple of years. Bear in mind that it's slow - 2.4kW - which means that when most EV tariffs give you 6 hours of cheap electricity, you won't quite manage a full charge in the cheap period. We just time our charge to start when the cheap period begins, and end a few hours after the cheap period finishes. Guarantees a charge back to 100%, even when fully discharged.
You may want to swap to an EV specific tariff, although do the maths first: if you don't use the car every day and don't charge very often, you might not use enough cheap rate electricity to justify the slight increase you'll be charged for daytime electricity.
You can get an electrician to install and EV charger, but they'll still need to conform to regulations and inform/get permission from the DNO. We had to upgrade the ECBs on our consumer unit when we started using the granny charger - something to do with the earth leakage from the PCs in the house and the charger taking the older circuit breaker beyond what it was happy with. Garage and car charger are now on a separate earth breaker now.
You may want to swap to an EV specific tariff, although do the maths first: if you don't use the car every day and don't charge very often, you might not use enough cheap rate electricity to justify the slight increase you'll be charged for daytime electricity.
You can get an electrician to install and EV charger, but they'll still need to conform to regulations and inform/get permission from the DNO. We had to upgrade the ECBs on our consumer unit when we started using the granny charger - something to do with the earth leakage from the PCs in the house and the charger taking the older circuit breaker beyond what it was happy with. Garage and car charger are now on a separate earth breaker now.
If you are going for the granny charger, I've one of these as it was initially the way I was going to go.
Still boxed, never used. I'm sure we could come to some arrangement and if your profile is up to date you're not a million miles away from St Neots.
Masterplug
Still boxed, never used. I'm sure we could come to some arrangement and if your profile is up to date you're not a million miles away from St Neots.
Masterplug
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