The arithmetic, in miles per pound
A typical EV covers three to four miles on a kilowatt-hour. Charge at a standard home electricity rate and that puts home charging comfortably below the cost of public charging and of petrol for the same miles. Charge overnight on an EV tariff, where the off-peak rate drops to a fraction of the daytime price, and the cost per mile falls to a few pence.
Public rapid chargers sit at the other end of the scale: convenient on a long trip, but several times the cost per mile of a home socket on a cheap overnight window. The pattern that follows is the one most EV households settle into fast: fill up at home overnight, and treat public charging as the motorway exception rather than the routine.
What the smart charger contributes
Every chargepoint sold for home use must be smart and schedulable, and the schedule is where the money is: the charger waits for your tariff's cheap window, charges through it, and stops. Set it once and the saving repeats every night without you thinking about it.
Above that baseline sit features worth having in the right house. Load balancing keeps the charger within what your supply can spare while the rest of the house is running. Solar matching diverts your panels' spare generation into the car instead of exporting it, which is a natural pairing if you already have or are considering solar.
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Compare EV charger quotesGetting the setup right
The order matters: pick the EV tariff first, then let the charger's schedule serve it. For nearly every home a 7kW unit fills the battery comfortably inside the overnight window, which is why paying more for speed rarely buys anything in practice, as covered in 7kW or 22kW.
The install itself is a few hours' work, typically £700 to £1,200 fitted for 7kW, and the sooner it is on the wall the sooner the overnight rate starts paying it back. Compare quotes from trusted chargepoint installers and mention your tariff: a good installer sets the schedule up as part of the handover.
Compare EV charger quotes
Up to three trusted chargepoint installers quote for the work. Free, no obligation.
Compare EV charger quotes