Service
EV charger installation
Level 2 home charging, wired properly, with the load calculation done before anything is ordered.
In any EV charger installation the charger itself is the easy part. The question worth answering before you buy one is whether your house can feed it.
A Level 2 charger needs a dedicated 240 volt circuit, sized to the unit and protected accordingly. Whether your service can carry that depends on what else is already on it, which is why the first thing we do is a load calculation rather than a quote.
What decides the cost of EV charger installation
Three things, in roughly this order.
Distance from the panel. A charger on the garage wall directly behind the panel is a short run. A charger at the far end of a detached garage is a very different job, and the conduit or the trench is usually the largest line on the estimate.
Whether the service has room. If the calculation says the existing service cannot carry the load, the honest options are a service upgrade or a load management device that shares capacity. Both are real answers. Guessing is not.
The unit. Hardwired against plug-in, indoor against outdoor rated, and whether it needs a network connection all change the work.
What we will not do
We will not put a charger on an undersized service and hope. The failure mode is not a nuisance trip; it is an overloaded service, and it is exactly the kind of thing that shows up in an insurance investigation after something else has gone wrong.
Two cars, or a car later
If a second EV is plausible within a few years, say so at the quote stage. Running the right conduit once is far cheaper than running it twice, and the decision costs almost nothing while the wall is open.
If the load calculation comes back tight, the honest options are a panel upgrade or load management. If a heat pump is also in the plan, work both out at the same time rather than one after the other.
Common questions
Do I need a panel upgrade to install a Level 2 charger?
Sometimes, and the load calculation is what tells us. A 200 amp service in a house with a gas range and no heat pump usually has room. A 100 amp service already running a heat pump and an electric water heater often does not. We work it out before you buy anything.
How fast is Level 2 compared to a normal outlet?
A standard 120 volt outlet adds a few kilometres of range per hour, which suits a plug-in hybrid and frustrates everyone else. A Level 2 circuit at 240 volts typically fills a battery overnight, which is why almost every home installation is Level 2.
Can you install a charger I bought myself?
Yes. Tell us the model before we quote, because the circuit size and the mounting depend on it.
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