Another convert
Are you ready to let the power of the EV into your life? And more to the point, is your fusebox up to it?
Hallelujah! My days of arriving at the o ce chilled to the marrow from a heater-free commute, nerves shredded by range anxiety (closest shave: eight miles and four per cent charge remaining) are over. Today, BP Chargemaster fits my 7kW ‘socketed’ smart home charger!
It’s taken about a month to get to Installation Day, because BP has to assess the suitability of your property, veracity of your claim to own an electrified car, and complete some paperwork to unlock the government’s £500 subsidy. Typically this is done by the applicant sending photos of their home fuse board and its location plus the point to install the charger, and sharing their car’s V5c document and household electricity Meter Point Administration Number (find it on your electricity bill, if you’re feeling MPAN curious!).
Though largely common-sense, this is a task that differs at every property, so Chargemaster is trialling a concierge home visit service. This did not go exactly to plan, largely because I was laid up in bed with an illness and felt somewhat aggrieved to be repeatedly bothered by a smartly dressed couple knocking on my door, presumably to enrol me in a religious organisation.
After a few choice words suggesting other households might be more amenable, I was delighted to have my misconception challenged and welcomed in BP Chargemaster’s technical and home charging experts Andrew Stead and Elaine Butler.
Other big learnings were that my electricity supplier would have to fit an isolation switch to neutralise the circuit during the install, and that it would be a real squeeze to get the home charger’s circuit breaker into my fuse locker. The team also scoped out my appetite for heavy-duty electrical items, such as a hot tub, underfloor heating or a shed of power tools for dismembering Jehovah’s Witnesses. With the answer ‘none of the above’, BP were satisfied my single-phase power supply would be su cient, and checked the smart charger’s SIM card would have su cient signal connectivity. One month and one isolation switch later, BP Chargemaster engineer Colin Fountain is parking his Transit Connect on my drive. The installation is incredibly thorough, effectively including a survey of your household’s electrics to check the wiring is sound and the system is safely earthed. Fountain reveals the biggest stumbling block is typically the wiring between fuseboard and charger – if the two are far apart, the cabling can cost extra and be impossible to hide from snaking alongside skirting boards or coving. No such problems in my house, so the ex-renewable electricity engineer drills through the wall, hammers in an earthing rod and wires up the charger.
It’s serious stuff, with a chunky cable externally and no room to hide the circuit breaker inside, and five hours of work. All that’s to be expected, though, given the i-Pace will be more power hungry than this year’s Democratic National Convention. Finally the work is done and Fountain talks me through how to use it. I connect the Jag to the home charger, and both parties glow green at their first union. It costs £449 after the subsidy – and worth every penny.
The installation includes checking the household’s wiring is sound