Is carrying out an electrical design even for a small domestic situation worth it?

Over the past year, I have had a number of requests to install EV chargers in domestic properties now I don’t know about the rest of the electrical businesses in the industry, but I really do not have people available 24 hours a day- 7 days a week to run around checking whether or not these chargers can be installed for free, yet so many contractors keep doing it; It comes off their bottom line and they just hope to get the job. I’ve now got to the stage where if you want an EV charger installed, we will charge you to come out and do an assessment including travel time to and from the job asking all the relevant questions such as:- Are you thinking of having solar panels on your roof are you thinking of having battery backup within your premises all this information changes the type of charger and installation method, that we would recommend the customer looks at, we take the source readings of your installation we check that your earthing is correct, we check that the sighting of your preferred place for the EV charger is not near any other systems which could prove to be a danger, we see if your existing fuse board is even capable of accepting the type of safety device necessary, this and many other pieces of information gained from this survey. We then come back to our office and do the electrical design this is half a day’s work every time, for small installations minimum, and provide this information back to you, as part of that cost. For the last larger one we did it was 2 days of design work, where we proved the existing electrical system was incapable of taking the load they required, with the chargers they wanted, after going to the manufacturers to obtain all the design information we required, and they needed another supply to be put in! If the design process has been carried out and the design is feasible, and I’ve had a number that was not, we will happily move forward and carry out an estimate for the installation. We recently had a customer that required 2 single-phase 7.2 kw EV chargers and another that required 3 single-phase 7.2 kw EV chargers to be run for a 100-amp supply. Now I know there are many companies out there that will install two or three charges and I’ve seen it and they have then crossed their fingers and hoped that the load balancing devices work and don’t melt the incoming supply head, to me this is a very risky situation because you are hoping that these devices always work, the moment they don’t you will take out the existing supply and quite possibly damage the supply cable as well, I have even tried to get an EV manufacturer to state in writing that if the load balancing device fails on there charger that the charger will shut down and not supply power until such time as this system is rectified they refused! This should be telling you something. When we install these devices we are taking responsibility for that device and the fact that we have designed the system correctly, make no mistake if there is a fire HSE will get involved and the Fire Brigade and if you can’t prove that it was safe to install your head is on the chopping block, not the customer, once you sign that certificate saying it is installed safely you’re accepting the design responsibility including accepting that the manufacturer’s safety systems are safe, In your design. I can answer the question at the beginning of this document and it’s simply the answer is yes, every time, yet over 80% of contractors I get coming to me failed to do so and left themselves open to prosecution and are expecting me to pull them out of the crap pile of their own making! A cheap price will never protect you from HSE if you cannot prove you did it correctly.

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