EV Charge Point Install - What Went wrong?
I told you it was complicated…
When I installed my EV Charge Point back in March I enlisted the help of both an electrician and also a professional charge point installer. I posted a video of it here, but within a matter of minutes I had comments to say the charge point installation was non-compliant and therefore in breach of electrical regulations.
I will explain and update you on a few other things that have happened since the video.
breach of electricity regulations
The video went live 11 March and pretty much minutes after a couple of eagle eyed viewers were commenting about a problem - Mick and the guys at EFixx pointed out that the RCBO connecting the charger needs to disconnect the live and neutral conductors - essentially double rather than single pole. As Mick pointed out, my install didn’t comply with BS7671 Reg 722.531.3 which requires the RCD to disconnect all live conductors, including the neutral.
In essence, the RCBO that I showed you in the first video should have been a double rather than a single pole. Mick went on to recommend Fusebox or Lewden who both produce consumer units with double pole RCBOs.
The point here is (which I didn’t realise before we embarked on this process) that the manufacturer of the consumer unit also needs to supply the internal components - principally the RCDs, and/or the RCBAs. I think it’s a breach of electrical regs to not to, because there can be incompatibilities that could render the unit unsafe.
So a couple of interesting things came out of this. The first thing I did after discovering this was to contact my electrician. He’s not a charge point installer so can’t really be blamed for this problem, and in fact told me the wholesaler who supplied him with the live consumer unit supplies several of these each week to charge point installers. So you would assume from this that charge points are being installed with single pole RCBOs incorrectly. But the point he made was that all we were doing really in supplying the new consumer here in the garage and house was getting the job ready for the charge point installer. We were doing as much prep work as possible because my install was quite a unique one, with a 65m cable supplying the consumer unit in the garage from the house.
The next thing I did was contact Charged EV to tell them we had a problem. Their Head QS guy got in touch with me a few days later to say he’d found a double pole live RCBO and would come round personally to install it. That’s exactly what happened, the QS’s of both the North and South divisions of Charged EV visited this week - I’ll let Simon explain what he’s done:
“Effectively we converted the single pole RCBO into a double pole isolator at one end, still an RCBO so it’s 40amps. It comes off the buzz bar, so if we remove the cover of the buzz bar all the way through to live terminal, and then neutral loop back to the top neutral bar. The cables are then fed from there down to our charger.”
So that’s all well and good. But you might say why was this missed?
You can’t really blame Charged EV completely for this for a couple of reasons:
Firstly, the Indra charge point that I’ve had installed here is, I understand, the only charge point that doesn’t have a double pole Type A RCD built in. If it did have a double pole Type A RCD in, does that follow that you wouldn’t have to be so worried about having a double pole RCBO in the DB supplying the charge point? I don’t know. Seems to be that way to me but let me know in the comments if you know more.
There’s nothing on the RCBO itself to say whether it’s a double or single pole. Now it’s more obvious where you’ve a double pole RCBO in a double module like this, but some manufacturers produce double pole single modules which makes identifying it more problematic for EV installers.
You have to sympathise a little bit with installers here, as you remember the point I made at the start that all of the RCDs and RCBOs in the consumer unit need to match the manufacturer of the unit itself. A lot of charge point installers are turning up onsite with an existing consumer unit where customers are reluctant to change it. This means they have to try to find RCBOs that are compatible with those units, unless of course they are putting a new distribution board on the outside of the meter box.
But there remains a beady question which a couple of people brought up…
Whatthedeuse on YouTube pointed out that by having a 30mA time delay on both the house and garage RCBO, and therefore no selectivity or discrimination between the two, you could get nuisance tripping on the garage board. So on a sub main like mind fed from a TT (earth spike system) it’s best practice to fit a 100mA time delay RCBO at the house supply end to resolve this. Robert chipped in to say as long as my electrician hasn’t exported the earth to the garage I should be fine, but the problem is I think he has because he’s earthed the armoured cable metal sheaf to the boards in the house and garage - I think as added protection should anyone accidentally damage or cut through the cable. So this hasn’t been resolved yet and I’ll update you in the comments section when I’ve sorted it.
I suspect what I’ve got to do is change this RCBO in the house board for 100mA time delay. The problem is I’ve looked on the live website and there doesn’t appear to be one, so this problem is going to run for a little while!
bulb
So let’s just move on to a couple of inaccuracies in my original video.
The first point I made is that the supply that I had at the time bulb had gone bust. Well, a few people have pointed out to me that the bulb hasn’t gone bust, because technically it’s in administration at the moment, fully operating. I did actually find out that even though a bulb is in administration you can switch tariffs to, for example, an EV tariff should you wish to do so.
is it worth it?
The next question a few people have asked - is having a charge point installed and buying an EV actually worth the cost?
Simon said what are the savings? Is it just too much effort with huge limitations?
Well, a bit of an update, since I did the initial video I’m now on the Octopus Go tariff which gives me electricity at 7.5p per kwh at 12.30am to 4.30am in the morning. I’ve set my charge point to only charge up the EV during that period where I get 7.5p per kwh.
If you look at the Indra app charging history since I did that, on a typical off-peak four hour period like Sunday 26th, four hours took on 27.3kWh at £2.
So if you look at the month in total, filling the car up four times 309kwh for a 78kw battery cost £21.90
Given it costs over £100 to fuel up a car right now due to extortionate prices of petrol and diesel, I think it is worth it if you can find a good deal on an EV.
dno fuse switch
The other point I made which was inaccurate was I said that DNOs will upgrade your fuse free of charge. My Western Power did, but it depends who your DNO is, and Lee made that point here that he got charged.
installing solar
The final point I wanted to mention was solar. In the charge point install video, I mentioned that having installed the charge point it made sense to start thinking about whether I should have installed solar panels and battery storage.
Well, since I did the video I have spent the last 30 days or so stripping the roof down because all of the tiles were disintegrating.
I’ve replaced the roof membrane and all of the batons and tiles. You may have seen my last four videos documenting this. Then a couple of weeks ago I installed solar panels and the company I got them from have since visited to hook up the inverter and battery storage.
So that’s pretty much all I’m going to say about solar. The only thing I would add is that the Indra app has a micro-generation function where you can pass surplus electricity into your car, but as the inverter itself is limited (I think mine is 3.3kW) you’re only really going to be charging the car at just a little bit more than the power of a standard 3 pin plug. I give a bit more info on this in the solar video, which you can watch here.
wrong gland
Now, the eagle-eyed of you looking to poke holes in my video/blog will have probably noted the plastic gland - I don’t know why my sparks installed that - he knows he’s got to change it, but I thought I’d mention it incase anyone has an issue with it.
Again, there’s a great video by the guys from eFIXX on how to correctly gland an SWA here.
So that’s it for today!
See you soon! Once again, massive thank you for reading and watching. Feel free to leave a comment below and let me know how you get on with your own project.
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Weshop
Just wanted to quickly mention WeShop ….
Well, please hear me out on this one. WeShop got me involved a few months ago as a founding influencer. What’s quite cool about this platform is that you get shares when you buy things - they’re giving away 90% of the company to people who shop on it. Most of the major retailers are signed up - and what I personally like about it, is experimenting with it. I’ve bought everything from dishwasher tablets to nail guns. I’m now supporting a lot of UK retailers that we tend to forget were out there before Amazon came along.
You get 20% of the value of what you buy in shares, and if you post about stuff that people then buy themselves, you get 10% of that value, and if you bring people onto the platform you get 1% of what they spend.
You can do all of this by downloading the app here and signing up, and you can put in my username charliewhite (you can’t just sign in randomly). Then you can have a look at my profile and where I have a load of wishlists that mirror the store I have got on Amazon, alongside posts and video clips of things that I’ve bought. It’s a bit like exclusive content you’d get from me on Patreon, but here, you get shares every time you buy!
Now the reason I’m a bit loathed to push this as a hard sell to you on my videos and blogs is that I don’t know what will happen to the WeShop platform or how well it will be taken up by the British public. But I’m buying things I would be buying anyway, I’m supporting British retailers, and getting a potential nest of shares. Have a play around and let me know what you think.