Electric Car Prep - Home Charging Points!

Matt406

Hi Folks,

I’m looking at replacing my wife’s car in the coming months and will most likely go with a used Nissan Leaf. Currently we are running a diesel Skoda Superb and a petrol Citroen C4, so the Leaf will be our first electric car!!

My query isn’t in relation to the car itself – it’s related to home charging points.

I live in rural Ireland and currently have 1 standard outdoor power socket close to my back door.

We’re planning to resurface the area around the house before the end of the summer and I want to ensure that I leave the necessary cables buried so that I can add addition power points in the future i.e. I want to add a charging point at the front of the house.

Is there a specific type of cable that I need to lay for this? Do I just need a standard 4 or 5 core SWA cable? Forgive my ignorant here but does the type of cable used influence charge potential?

Thanks for any feedback.

KCross

How about just put in conduit for now. Pull whatever cables you need after.

You need to put in cables suitable to carry 32A. Your electrician should be able to advise you but that would typically be 6mm2 twin and earth cable from the location of the charge point back to your distribution board in your house (not the meter box).

macnab

Run at least 6mm SWA. Plenty of discussion on this topic in past posts.

Do it once do it right, pull 80 amp cable or 2 x 40 amp cables.

If in the future you have 2 x 7 Kw electrics charging you'll be glad you did. But you'll need to upgrade your single phase supply.

insular1

Sorry to hijack the thread but have a related questiin. I'll (hopefully) be building from scratch in the next year and I'm wondering if I should go with an upgraded supply from the start? I have already requested the 16kva supply from ESB but anyone think three phase connection is worth the extra money? I know a farmer down the road had it installed recently and he recons it'll cost 2 to 4grand extra over the standard connection.

I eventually want to be a two ev car household but kind of thought the 16kva supply with a load sharing charger like the Tesla model would be enough?

KCross

insular1 wrote: »

Sorry to hijack the thread but have a related questiin. I'll (hopefully) be building from scratch in the next year and I'm wondering if I should go with an upgraded supply from the start? I have already requested the 16kva supply from ESB but anyone think three phase connection is worth the extra money? I know a farmer down the road had it installed recently and he recons it'll cost 2 to 4grand extra over the standard connection.

I eventually want to be a two ev car household but kind of thought the 16kva supply with a load sharing charger like the Tesla model would be enough?

If I were you, I'd get a quote for 3-phase and see from there. If the farmer has it then the cost to the ESB to give it to you will be lower than normal and since you will be paying close to €2k anyway for a new connection it might not cost much to get 3-phase. The cost is usually prohibitive if the 3-phase is a long way away from your house but thats not an issue for you so worth asking.

However, I think whats highlighted above will be more than enough (~88kWh's per day on night rate). Thats about 600km's of range every day. I reckon it will be hard to justify the extra cost of 3-phase unless you also have other devices requiring a lot of power.

reboot

Make sure you have a good earth, several problems relate to EVs being fussy about resistance to earth.

reboot

Make sure you have a good earth, several problems relate to EVs being fussy about resistance to earth.

Matt406

Thanks for the feedback folks.