How to install an EV charger at your home or rental property

Kya deLongchamps offers an introduction to installing an EV charger at your home or rental

Fri, 16 May, 2025 - 07:00

Kya deLongchamps

One of the greatest deterrents to going electric driving remains the poor, if developing, infrastructure of public chargers in Ireland. You can pay a fraction per kw/hour to charge your personal or company vehicle, with prices including VAT as low as 8c per kW/hour. With a massive 77kW battery capable of 500km plus per full charge, this equates to just over €6. Do you have to have a home charger installed? Granny cables (EVSE) are available for all EVs but can only download 2.3kW per hour through a 13A three-pin plug. That’s horrendously slow, and a potential fire hazard used long-term.

Plans and grants

When planning to install an EV charging point, you don’t have to have even bought a BEV (fully electric battery vehicle) or a PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric/petrol vehicle) to avail yourself of the SEAI funding. Grant or not, building new or doing renovations to outbuildings and surrounding grounds, the installation of an EV charging point (even just having the cabling put in place for future use) makes sense.

Without last-minute foot-to-the-floor reverses across the European Union, in the 2030s, the sale of fossil-fuel cars will be banned.

The €300 EV charger grant is attached to the property via its MPRN — the number identifying your meter point as installed by ESB Networks. If you have used the grant in the past, and moved, if there’s no EV charging point installed at your new home, or there was a previous installation without SEAI grant aid being used (requiring an upgrade) you can apply. The charger can be used by residents and visitors, including renters, if you are a landlord. Third-party applications will need to supply their CRO number to the SEAI.

SEAI grants are only based on “off-street parking”. If you have only on-street parking on the far side of public pavement, talk to your management company or local authority about potential solutions. Don’t assume you can run or suspend a charging cable across a public pavement, installing a charger on a public kerb. Get advice from suppliers on what’s permissible using buried conduits, operation codes, and then approach the planning office yourself. You will generally require either full PP or a declaration that this is an exempted development once you go over your own garden wall. Using the Apartment Charging Grant, 80% of the infrastructure costs, plus €600 per charger, can be awarded by the SEAI for chargers on the grounds of a residential development.

Dedicated apps

The new Shared Charging Pilot Scheme is on the way, and this will mean drivers will be able to book a charging slot through a dedicated app in exchange for a fee for more cost-effective charging when you don’t have a home charger on hand. On The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk in March, motoring expert Ger Herbert said the Department has yet to fully publish details of the scheme. “It is basically like an Airbnb in the sense that it gives drivers more places to charge and homeowners a chance to earn extra income,” she said.

Current private models of charger offer full app operation, delaying or starting charges to take advantage of cheap time-of-use tariffs, and solar gain if you have PV-solar. Some homeowners utilise their Wi-Fi network, while others prefer to operate their charger via a 3G/4G SIM card. We have a Zappi here at Castle Kya. It has proved reliable and idiot-proof, and the quality of the interface on the unit is very user-friendly.

A smart home app can be used to integrate your EV charger into an interface showing various appliances in action, monitoring their performance and tweaking their controls as needed using Google Home or Alexa. Your choice of charge is 3.6kW per hour or around 7kW per hour, with most drivers opting for faster juice. Talk to your supplier about the benefits of a tethered or untethered charger (sometimes chosen for a family with multiple, different models of EV).

Where to put an EV charger

So, where should the EV charger go? Any reputable company will offer a complimentary survey, but you can expect to supply some photographs and measurements. Ideally, the charger installation will be close to where the car is parked and the main fuseboard in the house if it’s accessible, leaving many installations on the house (as that’s where the car is parked most of the time). We preferred to have the EV charger at the back of the garage, out of sight, and taken through the ESB meter point, as that’s where our cars already are.

Where wall mounting is not preferred, a charger can be mounted on a pedestal rather than a wall. Pedestals range somewhere around €400, depending on their design and any challenges on site. There should be some sort of electrical survey done before installation of the EV to ensure your meter board, for instance, is suitable and safe to include the charger.

An integrated demand management switch in a modern EV charger will ensure you don’t exceed the 12kWh most homes can use before tripping the electrics of the whole house.

Protection and certs

Every charger that’s grant-aided through the SEAI will be installed by a Safe Electric Ireland-registered electrician (RECI) and sourced from a reputable maker and supplier as standard. If you decide to upgrade or install new without grant aid, follow the same protections promoted by the SEAI. You have six months from the SEAI letter of offer to have your installation completed, and don’t start work before that’s received. For a swift grant payment, ensure your RECI electrician completes the Installation Details form completely, including the test record sheet, and Certificate No.3 (for Safe Electric Ireland). Copies of invoices and some photographs will also be forwarded to the SEAI. Most suppliers will walk you through the process. On your side, ensure that you have completed the Request for Payment form in full.

My three top tips

As an early adopter of a fully electric BEV, I have three key pieces of advice to share. Firstly, keep an eye on that regular three or four-hour overnight charge pf 7.4kW/hour. If you take an extra-long journey, you may want to charge for longer than the EV-boost period of your power supplier in the early hours of the next morning to truly top up.

Finding you have half a battery charge at 7.30am when you’re rushing to work and know you will be doing an extra school run? Disaster in a car with a moderate range under 300km, even at full charge.

Secondly, if you have solar-PV, manage expectations when it comes to charging your car directly from the roof or a ground-mounted array. Bar high summer and long days with the car parked up, the actual solar gain is paltry for most users. I would be delighted to get 4kW/hour into the jalopy in August. If you’re able to make 20c-plus from the Microgeneration Support Scheme per kW/hour, dropping excess units created in high summer into the car doesn’t make any sense.

Finally, with any EV charger, take a glance at the operating pad to ensure it’s actually up and running when you plug in, or you could be walking to the dawn bus.