Lay My Hat

Hi,
Asking on behalf of a friend who is considering installing one for punters to use, good selling point? Has anyone else done it?

Yes, we've got one at the holiday cottage (and another next door at our own place). Both installed around 5 years ago when we first got an electric car (and were therefore free installs). The car charging point is mentioned on our website, and as we're pretty eco-friendly with ground source heat pump, ventilation system, solar panels, wind turbine etc, we thought we'd have a good take-up. However, to date, we've not had a single guest bringing their own electric car. Not a great marketing tool then, but if you get a free install it can't do any harm.

On a separate note, whenever we stay over anywhere with the electric car we just charge up overnight via a standard socket. The cost would typically be around £2-3 (max 20kWh) depending on tariff. (And yes, we would always ask in advance when staying in a B&B/holiday cottage, and we always leave enough cash to cover the cost)

It is something that will become more and more sought after.

The alternative to having a dedicated charging point is guests asking to use a standard socket to charge from (or just doing it without permission) which is fraught with potential problems.

The key one is that any socket used must be be properly protected by a suitably fast acting RCD or RCBO, and capable of providing around 2kW for anything up to 10 hours continuous running. That may be the case, but neither of those is a given.
The first is a safety feature required for any supply to be used outdoors (current regs for new installations go further, but that’s a different story) to protect human life from contact with exposed connections, cut cables etc.
The second is a check on the suitability of the internal wiring not overheating (and setting fire to the house) due to sustained high current use over a long period.

Hence, if as a rental owner you give permission for a guest to use a standard socket for charging an EV (or any outdoor use), that socket needs to have been checked and certified as suitable by an electrician.

There are associated issues of course with trailing cables over the ground, running them through open windows etc, and some guests being ignorant enough to use a coiled up extension lead with a 2kW load.

Giving anyone permission to charge an EV from a standard socket is accepting a big responsibility; don’t do it without it being certified as safe.

A correctly installed dedicated point with its own circuit wired directly from the distribution board obviously overcomes all these issues, but at a cost; are grants available for FHLs or only for domestic properties?

We've gone half way.

I had a dedicated outside socket installed which meets all of the regulations for EV charging that Greenbarn mentions. It just has a plug socket on the end as I'm far from convinced that the current charging points will be the standard in a few years time. If they are the cost should have come down considerably!

We can advertise that we have a suitable charging point for electric vehicles and I have a nice NICEIC certificate for it to keep my insurer happy.

Thanks all, she is going the whole hog with a professional fitted one, as she said the hire car companys are seeing an up serge in bookings of EV cars... Thinking about it returning the car without being stung for fuel is quite attractive.

had guests charge electric bike batteries from an RCD protected socket in our shed but only one lot so far - most guests wouldn't probably ask about charging things and some come with multiple gadgets, batteries, etc.

I wonder how long it will take the rental companies to expect a full tank and a fully charged car to be returned ? or/and add a surcharge to ensure the battery is at maximum charge when you return the car at a premium tariff.

as an aside, I offered to pump up a soft tyre for a guest with a Hybrid Rental but backed off quickly when they weren't sure which battery did what - decided NOT attaching my cheap air pump to their expensive car was probably a good way of limiting my liability !

Interesting. With 18kVA available on site, we have the power if guests start requesting this service.

Blue days only!

Nope, not going to encourage it. We have three phase installed and recent guests turned almost everything on at the same time and kept blowing the electrics for the Gite and our property as well. There’s nothing we can do here as EDF are already supplying us with the maximum. We don’t advertise that we have charging facilities so I don’t expect people to automatically assume that they can.

just be aware & when sending out confirmation emails mention that you cannot accept electric vehicles. We had a booking via bookingdotcon last year, who fortunately for us called direct to change his dates slightly as he was attempting to drive a Nissan Leaf from Sheffield to the Charente. He had already had a few problems with finding charging points on another trip, so we discussed it & agreed to search out local charging points for him. We are fairly rural & while we agreed that he could charge overnight at the gite, the nearest charging point if he was out & about was Angouleme (38km from us)...bearing in mind he only had approx 100miles coverage on any full charge & a full charge takes up to 7hrs to achieve, he was going to be limited as to where he could easily go there & back, so he cancelled. Not all owners of electric cars will let you know in advance.

We had a booking via bookingdotcon last year,

Is that a typo???

zebedee wrote:

We had a booking via bookingdotcon last year,

Is that a typo???

Looks like a typo - they’re normally referred to as bookingdotvom...

Nope, not going to encourage it. We have three phase installed and recent guests turned almost everything on at the same time and kept blowing the electrics for the Gite and our property as well. There’s nothing we can do here as EDF are already supplying us with the maximum. We don’t advertise that we have charging facilities so I don’t expect people to automatically assume that they can.