Charging an Electric Car at Home

Most drivers tend to charge their cars at home, overnight whilst they sleep. This is as easy as plugging in your mobile phone – your car will charge until full, and then switch off.

The safest and easiest way to charge at home is by using a dedicated homecharge unit. These can be installed in a few hours by a number of approved providers, and the cost of the installation is partially covered by a Government grant of up to £500. Most cars also come with a charging cable you can plug into a standard domestic 3-pin socket, however these are not recommended for regular use as they are not as weatherproof, and they take much longer to charge the vehicles.

The best thing about charging your electric car at home whilst you’re not using it is that it’s always ready to drive its full range when you set off.

3-Pin Plug-In

You can use a normal 3-pin plug socket, although we’d recommend that you use a dedicated circuit for charging your car, as some home wiring isn’t designed to cope with such heavy loads. The 3-pin EVSE cable is supplied with the LEAF, and is limited to 10 Amps current, which means that it will take 12-15 hours to fully charge from 0-100%.

Home Charger Installation Point

A better, and possibly tidier solution, is to get a dedicated Home Charge Point installed. These are supplied by various companies, such as Pod-Point, Chargemaster, The Phoenix Works and Rolec. The advantage of a dedicated car charger, is that they can operate at either 16A or 32A, which reduces the time required to charge the vehicle to around 4-5 hours (if both the vehicle and charger can operate at 32A / 6.6kW).