How to Choose the Best Home EV Charger in the UK

There is no single best home EV charger for every UK driveway. The right one for you is a smart charger of around 7 kW that is legal to sell in Great Britain, suits your car's connector, has the safety protection your supply needs built in, and has a cable arrangement you'll be happy using every night. Get those right and most reputable makes will serve you well.

That is why we don't publish a brand league table. Round-ups rank chargers on app design and looks, which matter, but they can't see your consumer unit, your earthing or how far your car sits from the house. Those decide what the installation costs and whether it is safe, and they are what we look at first on every home EV charger installation we quote. Below are the criteria we use when we help customers choose.

1. Power: 3.6 kW, 7 kW or 22 kW?

For a typical UK home, 7 kW is the ceiling. Which? puts the maximum for a typical home at 7.4 kW, because most houses have a single-phase supply. A 7 kW charger adds roughly 7 miles of range for every 20 minutes plugged in, by the Energy Saving Trust's rule of thumb, which covers most overnight needs.

A 3.6 kW charger costs less and may suit a plug-in hybrid or a low-mileage driver. A 22 kW charger needs a three-phase supply and a car that accepts 22 kW on AC charging, and Which? notes that most cars top out at 7 kW to 11 kW on AC. Buying 22 kW for a single-phase house gets you nothing extra.

2. Tethered or untethered?

A tethered charger has its cable permanently attached. You pull up and plug in, but the cable hangs on the wall and has to reach your car's charging port from where you park. An untethered charger has a socket, and you use the lead that came with the car. It looks tidier and lets you swap leads if you change car, but you get the lead out of the boot every time.

If more than one household car will use it, or you might change to a car with a different connector, untethered is more flexible. If one car uses it every night, tethered is more convenient. Most cars in the UK now use the Type 2 connector for AC charging.

3. Smart functions the law requires

Since 30 June 2022, chargers sold for home and workplace use in Great Britain must meet the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021. A compliant charger must be able to send and receive information and respond to signals by changing its charging rate or timing. It must keep charging if it loses its internet connection. It must come with default charging hours set outside the peak periods (8am to 11am and 4pm to 10pm on weekdays), which you can accept, change or remove. It must also apply a random delay of up to 10 minutes by default when charging starts (which the owner can cancel), and meet security requirements such as unique passwords and secure software updates.

Any charger sold new by a legitimate UK supplier should comply. The point to check is the unusual case: grey imports, second-hand units or anything bought from a marketplace listing.

4. Safety protection built into the charger

This is the criterion round-ups most often skip, and it has the biggest effect on the installation.

Open-PEN protection. Most UK homes use PME earthing. BS 7671 restricts using that earth for a charger used with a car parked outside, because a broken supply conductor upstream could put a dangerous voltage on the car's bodywork. The IET notes that many popular chargers now include open-PEN detection, which disconnects the car if the supply voltage goes outside set limits. A charger without it may need a separate device or an earth rod.

DC fault detection. Each charging point needs its own 30 mA RCD that can deal with DC fault current. A charger with built-in 6 mA DC detection can be protected by a Type A RCD. Without it, the circuit needs a more expensive Type B RCD.

Both features cut installation cost and complexity, so they're worth more than a nicer app.

5. Load management

Load management lets the charger measure what the rest of the house is drawing and turn its own rate down when you're running the oven, the shower and the tumble dryer at once. On a house where the supply is tight, this can be the difference between fitting a charger now and waiting for the network operator to upgrade the supply. The IET Code of Practice for EV charging installations covers load curtailment, and your installer should allow for it when working out the house's maximum demand.

6. App, tariff and scheduling support

Most of the savings from home charging come from charging overnight on a cheaper tariff. Check that the charger's app lets you schedule charging, that it works with the tariff you use or plan to use, and that the maker has a track record of software updates. If you're eyeing a particular smart tariff, check which chargers it supports before you buy.

7. Solar matching, if you already have panels

Some chargers can divert surplus solar generation into the car instead of exporting it. If you already have solar panels, this is worth having, and it usually needs an extra clamp or sensor wired in. We don't install solar panels or batteries, but we can fit a charger that works with an existing system. If you don't have panels, don't pay extra for the feature.

8. Weatherproofing, cable length and warranty

Look at the charger's ingress protection rating for an exposed wall, the cable length on tethered models (it has to reach without being stretched across a path), the warranty and who honours it, and whether spare parts and support are available in the UK. Electrical Safety First's advice is to use a dedicated charge point from a reputable manufacturer, register it with the maker, and have it fitted by a registered, competent electrician trained to install EV charge points.

Types of EV charger in the UK

It helps to know where a home charger sits among the options:

• Portable 3-pin leads. Plug into a normal socket, charge at around 2.4 kW, and suit occasional or backup use on a socket in good condition (a granny charger is not built for nightly use).

• Home wallboxes. Fixed, on a dedicated circuit, usually 7 kW on a single-phase supply. This is what most drivers mean by a home EV charger.

• Public fast and rapid chargers. Rapid DC chargers of 50 kW and above can't be installed at home, as the Energy Saving Trust notes.

How we help you choose

We fit home EV chargers from a range of makers and we don't rank them. Before recommending anything we look at your supply, earthing and consumer unit, because those tell us which built-in features will save you money on the installation. If your board has no space or unsuitable protection, a consumer unit upgrade may be needed first.

Home charging is one part of a wider change in how homes use electricity, which we cover in our look at UK home electrical trends. If you're choosing a charger for a home in Wolverhampton, Telford or Shropshire, we can survey first and tell you which features matter for your house.