Charging Your Electric Vehicles

If you’re considering buying an electric car and joining the electric revolution you might have some questions about charging your car. As with electric vehicles themselves, electric car charging is a new and evolving area with many options available.

Home Charging

Charging your electric vehicle at home can be as convenient as charging your smartphone.

Those who wish to charge at home have two options.

• Charging from a socket: Charging your electric car at home is easier than you think. Simply plug the charging cable into the socket and plug the charging connector into your vehicle. Lock your car with the key and the charging process will start straight away. Please remember that this method is not recommended as your primary charging method because standard sockets are not ideally suited to supplying high levels of power for a long time.
• Home charging unit: Thinking about charging your new electric vehicle at home? It is recommended, that if you are going to charge your vehicle at home, that you install a home charging unit. The installation should be performed by a registered installer, who can assess your property and help you to decide the ideal location.

When setting up the charger itself you can be mounted on a wall in your driveway or on a wall on your house. A good idea is to keep the distance between the fuse box and the charger short as the greater the distance the greater the cost to charge the vehicle.

There are a number of providers offering home installation services so make sure to do some research in advance of installing to make sure that you are happy with the service being offered.

The SEAI is also offering a grant for those who wish to do this. Find out more here.

Public Charging

At present, the ESB have 1,100 Charging points available across the Island of Ireland. There are a number of other providers who offer public charging points with rapid, fast and slow charger types available for different requirements.

Click here for a list of public charging points available to electric vehicle drivers.