EV charging at home

[Mr_T25]

Can someone please confirm whether an electric vehicle charging pod at home can be setup to prevent any random person from charging their EV from my property or whether it's open to all?

I presume that they need to connect to the home wifi to enable it in the app otherwise simply plugging the charger into the car will NOT charge it and consume a homeowner's electricity?

 

[ericmark]

Most EVs have locking mechanisms to keep your charging cable secure while the vehicle is left unattended. Unfortunately, they’re not always fool-proof - as Tesla owners discovered in 2018.

It seems the easiest method to stop cable theft is to park on the cable, but that would not stop some one parking next to you and yanking out your cable and plugging in theirs, but one would be likely caught doing that, so either you have turned on your EV charge point, and have a cable attached, or your using the car, so EV charging point is switched off.

At work the first 15 minutes is free, this is so the user can log onto the providers system and register their card etc. We have seen people plugging in and sitting in their cars and unplugging and plugging back in every 15 minutes, at 22 kW this is 5.5 kWh they are getting for free every time they do it, which is likely less than a £1. If their car is single phase only, then 1.8 kWh, I tried to find the cost of a kWh but going round in circles, but the point is would you try to steal electric if likely you will get caught?

Stealing the lead yes, it take minutes, but the electric it takes hours, one of the workers where I work has an electric car, she clearly starts work around 9 am as most of us do, and at 11 am it was still charging, and I noted still a few bars to go on the bar graph on the car, likely midday before she moved it to members car park, so in three hours I would say likely if stealing electric one would be caught, internet says average battery is 40 kWh, so either hers is only single phase, or she has a 66 kWh battery, which seems unlikely.

I did look at it, our trains take around 2 hours return trip Welshpool and back, hers is a really small EV, so not recharging within 2 hours with a 22 kW charge point, means people can't fully recharge their cars while on the train, so one has to question the whole idea of EV's.

 

[davelx]

My charger has a key switch and I have a rotary isolator in the locked front porch.

 

[dannyboi2003]

Yes there are smart chargers on the market that can be configured so that you have to enable the charger via the app, it will also tell you a whole load of other things such as power used etc.

 

[flameport]

All home charge points installed from 30 June 2022 must include smart functionality.

 

[conny]

It seems the easiest method to stop cable theft is to park on the cable, but that would not stop some one parking next to you and yanking out your cable and plugging in theirs, but one would be likely caught doing that, so either you have turned on your EV charge point, and have a cable attached, or your using the car, so EV charging point is switched off.

At work the first 15 minutes is free, this is so the user can log onto the providers system and register their card etc. We have seen people plugging in and sitting in their cars and unplugging and plugging back in every 15 minutes, at 22 kW this is 5.5 kWh they are getting for free every time they do it, which is likely less than a £1. If their car is single phase only, then 1.8 kWh, I tried to find the cost of a kWh but going round in circles, but the point is would you try to steal electric if likely you will get caught?

Stealing the lead yes, it take minutes, but the electric it takes hours, one of the workers where I work has an electric car, she clearly starts work around 9 am as most of us do, and at 11 am it was still charging, and I noted still a few bars to go on the bar graph on the car, likely midday before she moved it to members car park, so in three hours I would say likely if stealing electric one would be caught, internet says average battery is 40 kWh, so either hers is only single phase, or she has a 66 kWh battery, which seems unlikely.

I did look at it, our trains take around 2 hours return trip Welshpool and back, hers is a really small EV, so not recharging within 2 hours with a 22 kW charge point, means people can't fully recharge their cars while on the train, so one has to question the whole idea of EV's.

Bloke in work has got a mini, (something or other). Plugs it in at 10.00am when he arrives and unplugs it at 6.00pm when he leaves.
The charging point is actually in one of the disabled bays by the front door. Any excuse not to park down the slope in the main car park.
It's app operated apparently, with no free time, so once a car is unplugged the app shuts off the supply so no one can unplug his and plug theirs in without opening a new app.

 

[StephenStephen]

Can someone please confirm whether an electric vehicle charging pod at home can be setup to prevent any random person from charging their EV from my property...?

Yes, I can confirm that.

(Even if you couldn't do it with the software, you could put the EVSE in a lockable box)

 

[Old Salt]

My wallbox can be locked via bluetooth. Shows yellow when locked, green when open and blue when charging. I just lock it from my phone when disconnecting the cable.

 

[ericmark]

Reading the replies, raises a second question, what happens after a power cut or brown out? Never been at work when one has happened, but in general there are two possible default options with most appliances be it a bulb or EV charger, default on, or default off, I have in last week needed to reset my clocks a few times, due to very short power cuts, and had the phones not chimed when power restored they were that short I may have missed the fact we had a power cut.

My simple battery charger would simply carry on where it left off, but my smart charger needs me to press a button, and since many EV chargers are designed for a TN-C-S supply so monitor that the voltage is in the 207 - 253 volt range, I would expect them to default off, and need a manual reset.

It is likely down to acceptable excuses for being late, my sister said going to work by train being late due to cows on the line, was accepted as a valid excuse for being late, but a pile up on the motorway was not, the comment was you should have set off earlier. So will the excuse my charger did not charge my car be accepted?

I noted the Milkman where I use to live used a Kango EV van, but he also had a pick-up in case the van was not fully charged, so his EV was as well as the pick-up, not instead.

 

[securespark]

I can help here.

I had an Ohme Home Pro charger fitted today.

It is tethered, which means the lead is fixed to the charger.

As for someone else unplugging it, well, if yours is charging, the end is locked to the car while charging.

If you are not charging and someone tries to use it, you can set it up so that when this happens, you get an alert on your phone via the Ohme app. Only when you OK the charge does the charger start charging.

 

[Sureitsoff?]

Ask your workplace if they will reimburse you for your petrol /diesel costs as that employee with the ev is in effect getting free fuel from the company!