Our technology editor answers your trickiest tech questions
The electricity supply to some older homes is not suitable for consistent car charging. Photo: Getty
I bought an electric car and installed a home charger but I’m having terrible trouble with the set-up. The charger keeps cutting out and restarting, sometimes taking hours for just a fraction of the charge it should be providing. It’s particularly touchy when I do something like boil a kettle or have a shower.
I live in a small former corporation terraced house and the ESB has told me it’s 8kVA and this is likely the problem. I’m annoyed because I spent a fair bit getting the home charger and wasn’t told this might be an issue by anyone. Any advice?
— Tanya McCarthy
Answer
Electricity voltage issues are a very under-reported challenge for homeowners thinking of switching to an electric car. As is depressingly usual in this industry, no-one – from the car dealer to the home charger installer – will mention it to you until you find it’s a problem.
Think of kilo-volt-amperes (kVA) as being the size of the pipe of electricity into your home. The bigger it is, the more things you can power at the same time. Most modern homes have either 12kVA or 16kVA connections.
By comparison, your old corporation house appears to have much less. Charging an electric car is one of the more intensive electric draws on your home, especially as it usually takes over an hour.
What you can do is to apply to the ESB to upgrade your home from 8kVA to at least 12kVA. Unfortunately, this can take weeks, or even months to be properly processed by the ESB, which is under a lot of pressure from all sides at the moment.
Until then, other than using expensive and scarce public chargers – often the same price as diesel or petrol – the only thing you can do is to use a ‘trickle charger’: a charging lead with a three-pin plug that goes into a regular wall socket.
Email your questions to Âaweckler@independent.ie