Making the switch to an electric car raises one practical question above all others: what do you actually need at home? For most drivers, the cheapest and easiest charging happens on their own driveway, overnight. Here’s what we tell customers across Dover, Deal and the surrounding villages — speeds, the installation itself, tariffs, and how it all fits together with solar.
7kW vs 3.6kW: what the numbers actually mean
Home chargers in the UK generally come in two speeds: 3.6kW and 7kW (sometimes badged 7.4kW).
The difference is easy to picture. According to Pod’s charging guide, a 7.4kW charger adds up to 30 miles of range per hour, while a 3.6kW unit adds up to 15. For a typical 60kWh battery — the sort of size in a mid-range family EV — that’s just under 8 hours for a full charge at 7.4kW, or around 16 hours at 3.6kW.
Why that matters becomes obvious when you look at off-peak tariffs. The EV tariffs below each give you a six-hour cheap window overnight. Six hours at 7kW puts up to 42kWh into the battery; six hours at 3.6kW manages barely half that. A 7kW charger fills most batteries inside the cheap window. A 3.6kW charger often can’t.
A 3.6kW unit can still make sense for a plug-in hybrid or a genuinely low-mileage driver, but for a full EV we’d almost always recommend 7kW.
What the installation actually involves
A proper installation is more than screwing a box to the wall. Here’s the typical sequence.
The survey. Before anything is fitted, an installer should check your electricity supply, the condition and capacity of your fuse board (consumer unit), where the charger will sit relative to where you park, and the cable route between the two. This is where complications — an older fuse board, a long run to a detached garage — get spotted and priced honestly, rather than appearing as surprises on the day.
The install. The charger needs its own dedicated circuit from the consumer unit with the right protective devices, a weatherproof mounting position and a tidy cable route. A straightforward domestic install is normally completed within a day, finishing with electrical testing, certification and a walkthrough of the app.
The paperwork you shouldn’t have to think about. Every home charger connection must be notified to your local electricity network operator — for Kent that’s UK Power Networks — through the Energy Networks Association process. Your installer handles this, but it’s worth asking to confirm they have.
One more piece of regulation works in your favour: since 30 June 2022, any home charge point sold in Great Britain must be a smart charger under the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 — meaning it can connect to the internet and schedule charging, rather than simply drawing power the moment you plug in.
Smart charging and off-peak EV tariffs
That smart capability is where home charging gets genuinely cheap. EV tariffs give you a low overnight rate, and the charger (or the car) schedules itself into it.
Two real examples at the time of writing:
- Intelligent Octopus Go — smart charging from 8p/kWh, with an off-peak window from 11:30pm to 5:30am. The clever part: Octopus schedules the charging for you, and smart-charge slots can fall outside the core window when cheaper, greener energy is available.
- E.ON Next Drive Smart — 8p/kWh off-peak from midnight to 6am, and the cheap rate applies to your whole home during those hours, not just the car.
Rates vary by region and change over time, so check current pricing before switching — and you’ll need a smart meter for either. But the sums are compelling: a full charge of a 60kWh battery at 8p/kWh costs £4.80 — a fraction of what the same electricity would cost at daytime rates.
The chargepoint grant: who still qualifies
The current EV chargepoint grant doesn’t cover owner-occupied houses — but it is available if you rent your home, or own and live in a flat, with private off-street parking. It covers 75% of the cost of buying and installing a chargepoint, up to £500 (raised from £350 in April 2026). An OZEV-approved installer claims it for you, and it comes straight off the invoice.
Pairing your charger with solar panels
If you have solar panels — or you’re considering them — choose a solar-compatible charger. Units such as the myenergi zappi offer charging modes (ECO and ECO+) that put your surplus solar generation into the car instead of exporting it to the grid.
A word of honest advice, though: if the car sits at home during the day, diverting surplus solar into it is excellent value. If you commute daily, most of your charging will happen overnight on a cheap tariff anyway — in which case a home battery may put your solar surplus to better use. Because we design and install solar, batteries and EV chargers as one system, that’s a trade-off we work through at the survey stage of every EV charger installation in Kent, not after the kit’s on the wall.
The short version
Go 7kW unless you have a good reason not to. Insist on a proper survey, certification and network notification. Get on an EV tariff the week your charger goes in — that’s where the real savings live. And if solar is in your plans, pick a charger that’s ready for it from day one.
