Home EV charging: what it costs to install, and what it does to your electricity bill
Buying an EV raises a second, quieter question almost immediately: what happens at home. Charging overnight on your own driveway is by far the cheapest and most convenient way to run an electric car — but it means an installation, and it can mean rethinking your electricity tariff too.
The short version: budget £800–£1,200 for a standard 7 kW smart charger fitted. Most homeowners with a driveway won't qualify for the EV chargepoint grant (it's for renters, flat owners, and landlords). The bigger saving comes from switching to an EV-specific tariff with overnight rates of 7–10p/kWh — that's where the long-term maths lives.
What a home charger costs to install
For the vast majority of UK homes, a standard 7 kW smart charger fitted next to the driveway costs £800 to £1,200, including the unit and labour. That figure assumes a fairly typical setup: a modern consumer unit, a charging point within about 10 metres of it, and no groundworks.
A few things push that price up:
- Cable run. Longer distances between your consumer unit and the charger add cost, especially if the cable needs to go under paving or a driveway.
- Consumer unit upgrade. Older fuse boards without RCD or RCBO protection often need upgrading before a charger can be safely fitted — typically £400 to £900.
- Supply upgrade. If your incoming electrical supply can't handle the extra load, moving from 60A to 100A can add £500 to £1,500, occasionally more if the network operator needs to do reinforcement work.
- 22 kW chargers. Almost never worth it for a home. Most UK homes only have a single-phase supply, and most electric cars can't accept more than 11 kW of AC charging anyway — so a 22 kW unit typically charges no faster in practice, for a much higher install cost.
For nearly everyone, a 7 kW charger is the right spec, and it'll comfortably refill a typical EV battery overnight.
Do you qualify for a grant?
This is where expectations often don't match reality. The original grant for homeowners with a driveway closed back in 2022, and it hasn't come back. As of April 2026, the EV Chargepoint Grant offers up to £500 per socket (up from £350) — but only to:
- Renters and flat owners
- Households with on-street parking only, installing an approved cross-pavement solution
- Residential landlords, for up to 200 sockets
If you own your home and have a driveway, you won't qualify. It's worth knowing before you get quotes, so it doesn't come as a surprise partway through.
Use our grants eligibility checker to see what you do qualify for across all available schemes.
Does charging an EV affect your electricity tariff?
Yes — and this is where the real long-term saving lives, more than in the installation itself.
Charging a car adds a genuinely large, predictable chunk of demand to your household electricity use. A full overnight charge can easily be 30–40 kWh, which is more than many homes use in a typical day for everything else combined. On a standard variable tariff, charging from around 20% to 80% can cost roughly £9–£11 a session.
Switch to an EV-specific tariff, and that same session can cost a fraction of that. Several suppliers now offer overnight rates — commonly somewhere in the 7–10p/kWh range — for customers charging between around midnight and 6am, against a standard rate several times higher. Smart chargers, which are mandatory on all new UK home installations, handle the scheduling automatically: set it once in the app, and every charge happens in the cheap window without you having to think about it.
The trade-off is usually a smart meter and a switch to a time-of-use tariff, which can also raise your rate at peak times if you're not careful about when else you use electricity. For most EV owners the overnight saving comfortably outweighs that, but it's worth checking your own daytime usage pattern before switching, particularly if you already work from home and run appliances during the day.
Use our tariff switching calculator to model your flat-rate vs time-of-use comparison, and our EV charging calculator to see what running an EV actually costs for your mileage. For a deeper look at the specific Octopus tariffs most EV owners choose between, see our Octopus Go, Cosy, and Intelligent guide.
If you already have solar
An EV charger and solar panels are a natural pairing, but only some chargers are built to make the most of it. Chargers with solar diversion mode will automatically direct your own generation into the car during the day instead of exporting it for a low per-kWh payment — worth checking for specifically if solar is already on your roof, or on your future plans.
If you're considering the combination, our solar + heat pump combined guide covers the interaction effects between multiple technologies, and the solar ROI calculator can model the impact of EV charging on your self-consumption rate.
The bottom line
Budget £800–£1,200 for a straightforward install, more if your consumer unit or supply needs upgrading. Check the grant criteria honestly — most homeowners with a driveway won't qualify, and it's better to know that upfront than find out after getting quotes. And treat the tariff switch as part of the project, not an afterthought: it's usually where the bulk of your ongoing saving comes from, far more than the choice of charger brand.
Key numbers: 7 kW smart charger: £800–£1,200 fitted. EV Chargepoint Grant: £500 (renters, flat owners, landlords only). Overnight tariff rate: 7–10p/kWh vs 24.5p standard. Full overnight charge cost: ~£3 on TOU tariff vs ~£10 on flat rate. Grant amount valid to March 2027 — flag for review.
Published May 2026. Grant amount (£500) current as of April 2026 — subject to change, check eligibility checker for latest.