As the number of electric vehicles continues to grow, so does the charging stations’ demand. As a result, more and more homeowners find it fit to install EV home chargers to make it easier for themselves or minimize the hassle of driving to the pumps for charging. Installing a home charger isn’t problematic, but there are some things you should know before getting started. This article covers an essential step-by-step guide about installing an EV charger at your home.
Find An Electrician Or DIY?
There are two options you can opt to pursue while installing an EV charge, either hire a qualified electrician or do it yourself (DIY). If you are conversant with electrical connections especially EVs DIY. However, you should first confirm your home’s EV installation eligibility with your Technical safety BC or the regional municipality. Then ensure that the electricity flow in your home can support an EV charger. If so, follow your EV manufacturer’s installation guidelines to do the installation yourself. If not, upgrade your service before installation. Otherwise, outsource a qualified electrician to verify eligibility plus the sufficiency of electricity and perform your installation tasks at a low cost.
Obtain Permits To Install An EV Charger
Upon verifying the eligibility and doing some background checks on whether your current flow of electricity at home can allow EV charger installation, you must have come up with either of these two deductions: your current electricity flow can support it or not. If it cannot support it, upgrades are needed. These upgrades require you to obtain a permit from your local electricity department, similar to when installing an AC for surplus power consumption in homes. Thus, it would be best if you had an electrical permit. Another essential permit for rare cases, such as newly constructed homes, is the building permit.
Confirm Your Electrical Panel Has Space
Through the help of a qualified electrician, ascertain that your home’s electrical panel has adequate space to hold circuit breakers for the EV charger. If it’s full, installing sub-panels can be an option.
Purchase An EV Charger
Choosing the best EV charger manufacturer can be challenging; thus, you require comprehensive market research to identify a well-established EV charger brand. Preferably, please select from the Chinese market since they offer a variety of EV chargers for homes with safety features. Besides, opting for locally made EV chargers can save you upfront costs but is problematic since many of them come with safety issues. Hence, to counter safety and quality issues source your EV charger from a well-established Chinese EV charger manufacturer.
Install The EV Charger
If you have opted for DIY, follow the EV manufacturer’s installation guideline and ascertain that the charger is functioning appropriately. In addition to your inspection, invite a technical safety technician to help you verify if the EV charging station works perfectly. If you have a technician source, they should also run tests to ensure that everything works properly.
Apply The Energy Rebate
Rebate is a partial refund made to EV car owners for the amount of power utility they have paid for to run an electrical vehicle. The energy rebate gives you energy credit for a definite cost or bill equivalent, say, up to $180, to ensure that you are always connected to power therefore encouraging you to use electric vehicles as opposed to other car variants. However, to apply for this, you should check for its eligibility requirements in your region and then make an application that should be approved if you qualify.
Conclusion
In summary, if you are conversant with installing an EV charger in your home, you can follow installation guidelines from your manufacturer after confirming that your electrical panel has some space and obtaining the required permits. Later apply the energy rebate to ensure continuous connection. On the contrary, if you are unfamiliar with electrical connections, hire a certified electrician to perform all the installation tasks and related work for you at a considerable price.
