Home EV charger questions, answered.

Yes, subject to capacity. The constraint is your supply rather than the number of chargers: both are continuous loads, so we size them against your mains and set them to share the current that is actually available. Evoenergy will not approve a second supply to a standard house for this.

Yes, if someone swaps the plug over. Most home chargers let you set a schedule, so one car takes the early part of the night and the other the rest. Two cars that both need a full charge on the same night are where a second charger starts to earn its place.

The wiring is the easy part; the billing is not. A charger on your switchboard draws on your account, so any arrangement needs agreement about cost first. Chargers that require an RFID tag or an app before a session starts make each charge attributable, which is what makes sharing workable.

Yes. Several chargers sold here deliver no current until an RFID tag or the owner’s app authorises the session, the Zaptec Go 2, the MG ChargeHub and Ocular’s RFID models all carry a reader, and socketed units lock the lead into the socket. We set that up at commissioning.

You can, but treat it as two jobs rather than an afternoon with a screwdriver. Removing a hard-wired charger and making the circuit safe is electrical work, and so is installing it at the new address, both need a licensed electrician, and both are certified.

We do not claim that it does. We looked for an Australian source that measures resale value for a home charger and did not find one, so we will not put a figure or a promise on it. What it reliably adds is a full battery in the morning.

With the owner’s written permission. A wall charger is a fixed alteration to the property, so the decision is the owner’s, and the safety certificate for the work goes to the owner as well as to Access Canberra. Ask us for a written scope you can send to the agent.

Check your policy, we are not insurance advisers. What insurers ask for is evidence the work was done properly, and in the ACT that is the Certificate of Electrical Safety: the law requires the work to be tested to AS/NZS 3017 and the report given to you and to Access Canberra within 14 days.

The manufacturer sets it and it varies. Tesla’s Australian manual states 48 months for normal personal use, myenergi publishes three years on the zappi, and Zaptec five years on the Go 2. Those terms sit on top of your rights under the Australian Consumer Law.

Call us. Most call-outs come down to one of three things: a protective device that has tripped, a fault on the car’s side of the plug, or a charger needing a firmware update or a part under warranty. We test the circuit first, because that narrows it quickly.

Usually because the circuit is carrying more, for longer, than it was designed for. Evoenergy classifies EV chargers as continuous loads, so a charger holds near its rated current for hours at a time. Sharing that circuit with other outlets is the most common cause we find.

A safety switch trips on leakage current, and an electric car can introduce a small DC component that not every device type tolerates. The Electric Vehicle Council’s guidance is that a Type B device is needed unless the charger itself detects DC fault current and disconnects. Which device suits your installation is decided on site.

That is a capacity problem, not a charger fault. Your mains and main switch have a ceiling, and a charger added to a Canberra winter evening of heating and cooking can reach it. Load management fixes it by letting the charger back off while the rest of the house is busy.

The slowest link sets the pace, and it is often the car. The federal energy department notes that a Type 2 connection can provide up to 22 kW, but that some EVs accept only 11 kW AC. Battery temperature, how full the battery already is, and any schedule or load limit also pull the rate down.

Batteries taper near full. The federal energy department says charging between 20% and 80% is usually when a battery charges at its highest rate, and that the final 20% may take as long as the stretch from 20% to 80% did. Overnight charging hides this; a daytime top-up does not.

Divide the battery size by the charger’s output for a rough figure: a 60 kWh battery on a 7.4 kW charger is about eight hours, before losses and the taper near full. From an ordinary power point, the federal energy department says it can take up to 24 hours.

Possibly not. If you drive short distances and can leave the car plugged in for long stretches, the portable lead that came with it may be enough. A wall charger is about speed, a dedicated circuit built for a continuous load, and control over when charging happens, not about whether the car will run.

Yes. The ACT Government says there are now more than 330 public EV charging bays across the ACT, with a further 86 on the way, and both it and Evoenergy point drivers at PlugShare to find them. Apartment residents in particular often run this way for years.

The ACT Government puts a regular power point at up to 15 km of range per hour, and says an overnight charge from one can add up to 150 km. That covers an ordinary Canberra week, and falls short in one with a long drive in it.

Yes, slowly. The ACT Government describes this as Level 1 charging: a regular wall outlet at about 2.3 kW, adding up to 15 km of range per hour. It is a top-up method, not a way to refill a large battery every night.

Not without checking first. The ACT Government’s warning is direct: “Old homes may have low gauge wiring and/or ceramic fuses. Charging for prolonged periods of time from an existing socket is not recommended without seeking guidance first.” Canberra has a great deal of housing old enough for that to matter.

No. The federal energy department recommends plugging the charging cable straight into the power point rather than using extension cords or power boards. The load is continuous, and the weak point is always a connection: a tired socket or plug heats up under hours of steady current.

A granny charger is the portable lead supplied with most electric cars, which plugs into an ordinary 10 A power point and charges at roughly 2.3 kW. The Electric Vehicle Council calls this Mode 2 equipment, and puts it at between 10 and 15 km of range per hour.

It depends how far you drive. The Electric Vehicle Council’s figures work out at about a 100 km top-up over an eight-hour overnight window. If your daily driving fits inside that, a granny lead covers it; if it does not, you spend the week slowly falling behind.

Not to use one. The Electric Vehicle Council states that consumers do not need to be licensed electricians to use the portable Mode 2 cable that plugs into a standard power point. You do need one to add a socket, a dedicated circuit, or any hard-wired charger.

No. The units we fit are rated a long way below anything Canberra produces: Tesla’s Wall Connector manual states an operating range of −30 °C to 50 °C, and the Bureau of Meteorology’s Canberra Airport record since 2008 has a lowest reading of −8.7 °C. Cold slows the car, not the charger.

Yes, for three reasons: how far the cable has to run from the switchboard, which side of the car the charge port sits on, and sun. myenergi specifies that the zappi is installed out of direct sunlight, which argues against an unshaded western wall in a Canberra summer.

Measure it against where the car actually parks, because a tethered lead that is half a metre short is a daily annoyance you cannot fix afterwards. Lengths differ by model, Tesla’s Gen 3 Wall Connector ships with 7.3 m. A socketed unit lets you change the lead later.

No. A wall charger has no moving parts you would hear. What people do notice is the contactor clicking as a session starts and stops, and the car’s own cooling running on a hot night, neither is loud enough to be a problem in an attached garage.

The ACT Government’s advice is no: keep the battery charge between 20% and 80%, avoid full cycle charging and discharging, and do not charge every day unless you need to. Most cars and most chargers let you set a limit and a schedule once and then leave it alone.

The ACT Government’s guidance is to only use DC fast chargers when you really need to, and it notes that DC fast charging speeds are automatically reduced once a battery reaches 80% charge, to protect it from degradation. Charging at home on AC is the gentler default.

Less often than most people expect. The ACT Government’s estimate is that the average Canberran drives approximately 40 km a day, so on its figures you would only need to charge overnight twice a week. Winter, towing and long trips change that; the baseline stays low.

It does. Real-world US data covering 34 models and more than 30,000 vehicles found electric cars kept 78% of their range on average at 0 °C, and Canberra Airport averages 15.6 days at or below 0 °C in July. Budget for longer plugged-in hours through winter.

No. Evoenergy’s rules list storage water heaters and thermal storage space heaters as eligible for Off-Peak, and EV chargers are not among them. Off-peak charging in the ACT means a retail time-of-use plan plus a schedule set on the charger, not a controlled-load circuit.

ACT electricians are licensed under the Construction Occupations (Licensing) Act 2004, and there is no separate EV endorsement, an unrestricted electrician’s licence covers EV charger wiring. The Distributed Energy Resource endorsement is a different thing: it covers solar, inverters and batteries.

A straightforward job, a wall charger near the board, on a supply with capacity to spare, is usually a single visit. What stretches it is a long or awkward cable run, a switchboard that needs work first, or a network upgrade. We tell you which of those applies before we book.

For part of the day, yes. Adding a circuit means working inside the switchboard, so we agree a window with you and do it in one block rather than several. If you work from home, or anything in the house depends on power, tell us when you book.

We test the installation, commission the charger, set its current limit and any load management, and show you how to start a session. The work is tested to AS/NZS 3017 and the Certificate of Electrical Safety goes to you and to Access Canberra, which the law requires within 14 days.