EV chargers
A home charger is a dedicated 240V circuit and a load calculation. The calculation is the part that decides the price, because it tells you whether the panel can take it as it stands.
Charging levels
Three tiers get discussed as if they were options for a house. Only one of them is.
The cable supplied with the car, plugged into a standard 120V outlet. It adds only a few miles of range per hour, which suits a plug-in hybrid or a short commute and frustrates almost everyone else. It needs no installation, but a dedicated circuit is still worth having if it will be used nightly — a charger sharing a circuit with other loads is a common cause of nuisance tripping.
The normal home installation, and what most people mean by a home charger. A dedicated 240V circuit sized for the charger, typically adding several times the range per hour that Level 1 manages, so a car charges overnight comfortably. This is where the load calculation matters, because it is a continuous load rather than an intermittent one.
The high-power charging found at commercial sites requires a three-phase supply and equipment at a scale residential service does not provide. If someone offers to install DC fast charging at a house, that is a conversation to end. Level 2 is the ceiling for home charging.
The decisions
In roughly the order they get decided. The first one determines most of the cost.
The first question, and the one that decides the price. A charger is a continuous load, so it is calculated at its full rating rather than at an average. The calculation totals the house's existing demand — general lighting and receptacles, fixed appliances, heating and cooling — applies the standard demand factors, and shows how much of the service is left. There is either room for the charger or there is not, and that is arithmetic rather than opinion.
A charger's circuit is sized above its continuous draw, which is why a 48A charger needs a 60A circuit rather than a 50A one. Many chargers can also be configured to draw less than their maximum, which is often the neat solution when the service has some headroom but not the full amount — a slightly slower charge overnight is rarely noticed, and it can avoid a service upgrade entirely.
A hardwired charger is connected directly and is the more robust arrangement, particularly outdoors. A plug-in unit on a suitable 240V receptacle can be unplugged and taken with you, which suits a rental or someone who expects to change units. Some higher-current chargers must be hardwired. Both are proper installations; the choice is about permanence.
Distance from the panel is the main cost variable after the load calculation, because it sets the cable run and how difficult that run is — a charger on the wall the panel is on is a very different job from one at the far end of a detached garage. Also worth deciding early: which side the car's port is on, and whether a second vehicle might eventually want charging too.
Where the calculation shows the service cannot carry the charger, the options are a service upgrade, a lower charger setting, or a load management device that prevents the charger and other large loads drawing at full rate simultaneously. All three are legitimate; which is best depends on how much headroom is missing and what else you plan to add.
Charging equipment outdoors or in a garage needs the appropriate protection and enclosure rating for where it sits. Chargers have their own internal protection, and how that interacts with circuit-level GFCI requirements is a detail worth getting right — mismatches here are a common cause of a charger that trips for no apparent reason.
Send a photograph of your panel with the door open enough to show the labels, the main breaker rating, roughly where you want the charger, and the charger model if you have chosen one. That is enough to run the load calculation and tell you whether the service can take it as it stands.
Request an EV Charger EstimateIf the calculation shows the service is the constraint, that is a panel or service upgrade — and if you are also considering standby generator power, scoping both at once means the service work happens once rather than twice.
Questions
Many houses do not. A load calculation on the existing service will show whether there is capacity, and plenty of homes have enough — particularly those with gas heating and gas water heating. Where there is not quite enough, reducing the charger's configured current or fitting a load management device often solves it without touching the service. A full service upgrade is the answer when the service is genuinely committed, and that is worth knowing before you buy the charger rather than after.
The electrical work is the same regardless of brand: a dedicated 240V circuit correctly sized, run to the right place, terminated properly and tested. Tesla vehicles use a different connector from the J1772 standard most other manufacturers use, and adapters exist in both directions, but that is a connector question rather than an installation question. We do not claim membership of any manufacturer's installer programme, because that is a credential that has to be genuine before it is advertised.
Fitting a 240V receptacle and using the car's portable cable can cost less up front and is a reasonable choice for some people. The trade-offs are that portable equipment is generally slower than a wall unit, that a receptacle used daily for a high continuous load wears in a way a hardwired connection does not, and that you lose the scheduling and monitoring features built into most wall chargers. The circuit and the load calculation behind it are identical either way, which is where most of the cost sits.
A straightforward installation — charger near the panel, service with capacity, no upgrade needed — is typically a single visit. What extends it is distance from the panel, a difficult cable route, or a service upgrade being needed first, since that brings in permitting and the utility's scheduling. The load calculation is what tells us which of those you are looking at, and it is done before the work is quoted.
Charging a car uses a meaningful amount of electricity — it is often the largest single load added to a home. What it replaces is fuel, so the comparison worth making is against what you currently spend on gasoline rather than against your previous electricity bill. Many wall chargers can be scheduled to run in off-peak hours where your rate plan has them, and that scheduling is usually configured at commissioning.
Send a photograph of your panel and we will tell you whether your service can carry a Level 2 charger as it stands.