Everything You Need To Know Before Installation of an Electric Vehicle Charging Point

hello and thanks for watching in today's video i'm going to explain the exact process that takes place before you have an ev charge point fitted at your property if you stick around till later on in the video as well i'll also be going through some other things like the types of connectors pen protection rcd protection and other issues related to ev charge points my name is gary from abc electric let's get straight into it now before i get into it i'm going to explain what the dno is the dno is the distribution network operator they supply the cables and the infrastructure to get the electricity to your property they are not the people that you pay the bill to when you contact me with an inquiry about having an ev charge point fit at your property the first thing that i will do will be to contact you or arrange an appointment with you to do what's known as a pre-installation survey the pre-installation survey is to assess the suitability of the electricity supply at your property prior to the day of installation i'll also be looking at other parts of the electrics at your property to check that they are suitable for the installation of an ev charge point so let's look at these items more closely and break them down one at a time the first thing that i'll be looking at is the dnos intake equipment commonly known as the service head this comprises the incoming cable the cutout or fuse and the connections to the electrics at the rest of your property i'll be assessing the type of supply at your property which is normally either tns or tncs i'll be seeing if i can establish the fuse rating i'll be looking to see what condition the intake equipment is in and most importantly i'll be looking to see if you're on what's known as loot supply a loop supply is normally not good news because that means that you and one or more other properties are sharing the same supply cable from the road in which case this will have to be upgraded the next thing that i will be assessing is the earthing and bonding arrangements at your property the main earth comes from the supplier generally and it's very important that this is around 16 millimeters squared then i'll also be looking at the equipotential bonding which connects any metal service pipes together such as gas and water if they come in metal and this conductor should be 10 millimeters squared now not every property has equal potential bonding because if your gas and water coming from the road in yellow and blue in those orders of plastic or mdpe then you don't need equal potential bonding i'll also be looking at the size of the main cables that go from the dnos cut out to your electricity meter and from there to your consumer unit these are normally called tails and should be around 25 millimeters squared sometimes if the 16 millimeters squared they may need to be upgraded next i'll look at your consumer unit inside the property to see if there's a spare way that we can connect the ev charger to i'll also be checking whether you have the correct type of rcd fitted in that unit which is a type a if you don't have a spare way or you don't have a type a rcd fitted there are ways that we can get around this first of all i can fit an upgraded rcd which is the correct type i may be able to juggle things around in the consumer unit so that we can create a spare way or what happens on a more regular basis is to fit a new sub consumer unit or sub distribution board which is just for the ev charger and this is the ideal solution fitting the new mini consumer unit for the electric vehicle charging equipment is usually the best option and this eradicates the need to make any improvements to your current consumer unit or the rcd within that finally we'll look at the location of the charger on your property and we'll work out the best cable route for your particular installation now the cable for an ev charge point is normally quite big it's a black circular cable about the diameter roughly of a 10 pence piece and this has got to get from the sub distribution board or your consuming unit all the way around the property to where your ev charger is actually being located one of the main variables with an ev charger installation is actually the cable route and the length of cable so as a general rule of thumb the longer the cable the longer the route the more expensive the installation will be well that for the most part pretty much wraps up what the pre-installation survey is about the next part of the process will be where i do your written quotation and then you decide if you want to go ahead okay assuming that you've received the quote and that you're happy to proceed then we'll move on to the next stage of the process the next part of the process then is that i'll send you a digital survey via a text link the survey is mainly for the ozef grant claim it just requires some basic information to be completed regarding ownership of the car and the electrical usage at your property there's nothing difficult on there at all and most of it can just be done by taking photographs with your mobile phone and entering some information which you should know straight away the survey will also ask for a thing called your pan number m pan stands for meter point access number and this is required for the dno notification to ask for permission to install an ev charge point your mpan number can normally be found on your electricity bill or statement and it's a 21 digit number it's usually in two rows preceded by a large capital s and it's actually the last 13 digits which are the most important and which i'll be looking for once i have all this information i then complete a form on your behalf which is called an application to connect this i issue to the relevant dno or distribution network operator and they will get back to me within 10 days saying whether or not i have permission to fit the ev charge point at your property and this is a standard form from the ena which is the energy networks association who are the governing body for all the dnos or distribution network operators lots of acronyms involved here um so it's the same form for all installers and i complete these on a regular basis it's relatively easy to complete however they've made it so that it's very difficult to complete all the information so in 99 if not 100 of all cases i have to notify the dno before we fit the charger at your property and this process can take 10 working days that's what they say it will take but it can often take longer before they will get back to us and say whether we have permission to install the charger now in certain cases particularly if you have a loop supply and in certain other instances you may have to have some remedial works done by the dno this is normally free of charge and they will contact you directly to arrange for these remedial works to be done sometimes it's something as simple as a fuse change so you might have a 60 amp fuse or less and that's got to be upgraded to an 80 amp or 100 amp fuse this is a five minute job for the dno the problem is that they have to schedule that in and that could take up to a month for them to come out and change the fuse the bigger issue would be if you've got a loop supply or there's a fault with your supply or it's not in a good condition if that's the case it's highly likely that you or possibly one of the neighbours is going to have to have the road took up outside the front of your house possibly even your driveway and a new electricity supply from the road is going to have to be installed at your property now this is done free of charge foc by the dno because the the government can't on one hand say that we've all got to go to electric vehicles and on the other hand say but it's going to cost you thousands of pounds to have your supply upgraded so this is done free of charge by the dno unfortunately this doesn't happen overnight and in certain cases that i've been involved in it's taken up to six months for the supply in the road to be upgraded i think the most important thing to bear in mind here is that from the minute that you contact me and i come to do the pre-installation survey to the point where you have permission from the dno to actually fit the charge point that could be in the best case scenario be about three weeks nearer four weeks normally and if you have to have any remedial works done for instance if you've got a loop supplied then that could take several months so what i would stress really is that seeing as there's a good few weeks or months lead time on an electric vehicle arriving once you've ordered it it's a as soon as you order your electric vehicle then you're in a position to start organizing your ev charge point to be fitted now i'm going to look at charges in particular and the different types of connection that you can have there are only really three types of connection you can have a universal charger you can have a type 1 charger or a type 2 tethered charger a universal charger has a type 2 socket at the charger end and you would plug a lead in which has the right connector at the other end for your car so that could be a type one or a type two type one tethered charger is hardwired at the charger end but at the car end you have a type one plug and a type two is exactly as it says it's hardwired at the charger end and at the car end you have a type two plug now to the best of my knowledge 95 and that number is growing by the day of all uk vehicles have a type 2 connector at the car so really to all intents and purposes most people will have a type 2 tethered charger now i'm going to come into power rating um really there's only two maybe three power ratings that are worth discussing the first one is 7.4 kilowatts or 32 amp the next one is 3.7 kilowatts roughly or 16 amp and the last one is what's fondly referred to as a granny charger which is a three pin 13 amp plug now apart from exceptional circumstances in a domestic property the maximum charge output power that you can have is the 32 amp or 7.4 kilowatt you would need a three-phase supply otherwise and that is prohibitive in a normal domestic property because it will cost you thousands and thousands of pounds to have a three-phase supply to put the numbers on it um a typical say 300 mile charge on say a tesla model 3 or similar vehicle would take 10 hours from empty to full zero to 100 the 7.4 kilowatt charger the 3.7 kilowatt charger it'd be double that time with the granny charger it'll be two and a half to three times as long in reality most people aren't charging the car from zero to 100 every single night you're just topping up for an hour or two so 7.4 kilowatt or even 3.7 kilowatt is more than adequate for most domestic use the next thing i'm going to mention is pen protection sometimes known as o pen protection um and this is a requirement of the marine regulations for all charges in the uk now what is pen protection here you say well pen stands for protective earth and neutral conductor which most suppliers in the uk have this combined conductor without going into great detail if a fault develops on the pen conductor and you've got your car plugged in and charging a dangerous situation can develop because ultimately a car is a large metal box and if you touched it you too would be in direct contact with the earth and you could also be wet washing that car at the same time so bad things could potentially happen under a fault condition now this situation apparently happens around 500 times a year in the uk if you're touching the car at that point it would be a dangerous situation so pen protection is required pen protection is done with a device which is normally built into the charge point however quite a lot of charge points don't have pen protection built in protection then has to be fitted externally by the installer and that normally costs in the region of 200 pound plus to fit to bring it up to the uk wearing regulations i've already touched on rcds and all electric vehicle charge points in the uk have to have a type a rcd and at most domestic properties you often find that the rcd on the consumer unit is actually a type ac which isn't suitable the other thing that an ev charge point has to have is what's known as six milliamp rdc dd detection rdcd stands for residual direct current detecting device again i'm not going to go into great detail but this is another form of protection which is necessitated by the wiring regulations and this is usually built into the charger but it isn't in all cases if it isn't this can be accomplished by having a type f or a type brcd but again the downside of these is that they're a lot more expensive than having the six milliamp dc protection built into the charger and it's exactly for these reasons that i recommend two or three different types of manufacturing model because i know that these charge points have got the correct six milliamp dc protection in they've got the pen protection and they either have the taipei rcd built in or i fit it at the front end with the sub ev distribution board as we discussed right at the start of this video and the final thing that i'm really going to mention about ev chargers is load management load management is facilitated by a thing called a ct clamp which is a current transformer this clamps on the main live incoming meter tail and monitors the load of the whole property ct clump and the chargers speak to each other and the charger knows when the incoming electricity to your house exceeds the fuse rating or 60 amps whichever it happens to be and this ramps back the output of the ev charge point so ultimately what it really means is that you can never blow the main fuse into your property one thing i've perhaps forgotten to mention throughout the course of the video is that an ev charge point uh 7.4 kilowatt model will actually pull 32 amps continuously so that will be for up to 10 hours as as we've already discussed so if you're pulling 32 amps continuously and you've only got a 60 amp fuse the charger is pulling more than 50 of the entire uh electricity supply at your property if you're lucky enough and you've got 100 amp views it's still pulling 32 percent of the power at your property so if you've got a lot of other high current devices and at the same time for instance washing machines tumble dryers granddad's got a welding set in the garage uh you've got an electric shower you might have two electric showers you've got turkey another blah blah blah if all these things are going on at the same time then if you haven't got load management or you haven't got the highest fuse rate and you possibly you can have well then there is the possibility that you will blow the cutout or the incoming fuse to your property so for that reason i would always recommend a charge point which has load management built in as standard so to wrap up the video the process really is that you make an inquiry to me i book an appointment with you i come to your property i do what's known as a pre-installation survey we decide on the type of charge point where it's going to go i do you a formal quotation you decide to accept that quotation or go somewhere else obviously if you accept that quotation i then send you a digital survey which helps with the completion of the ozo grant form under the notification for the dno i then submit the dno notification we weigh approximately 10 or more days for for the dno to advise that we're allowed to fit the charge point and off we go in exceptional circumstances you may have to have more remedial work done for instance if you don't fuse upgrade or if you've got a loop supply a new cable laid from the road this can take on average two to three months but can in some cases take up to six months so just to reiterate you really need to be looking at getting your ev charge point installed around a month before your car is due to arrive so hopefully you've got a better understanding now of what's involved when you go through the process of asking it for an ev charge point to be fitted at your property i hope this has been useful uh if you enjoyed the video please subscribe like and share and keep checking back for more videos in the future regarding ev charge points and all things electrical say my name is gary from abc electric thanks for watching bye

Channel: ABC Electric

Views: 20,171

Keywords: ABC Electric, EV Charger, Electricians in Altrincham, Electric Vehicle, EVSE, EVCP, OZEV, OZEV Approved Installer, Electric Vehicle Charging, EV Charge Point, Pod Point, Wallbox, EV Installer, home charger, tesla wall connector, Electrician in Cheshire, Electrician in Greater Manchester, zappi, pre installation survey, ev survey, charger survey, ev charger pre installation, ev charger installation, ev charger survey, ev installer, ev pre installation survey, charge point survey

Id: iKBnKTVAAQM

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 17 2021