The garage where our cars are parked is about 4 metres from the house and Distribution Board. There is a standard 13 amp socket in the garage on a spur from the house.
The garage is hardly larger than the cars, a golf estate and a polo. The estate has to go nose in, the polo tail in, so as to be able to exit the cars in the small space between ever-widening car dimensions.
We have solar panels on the house, which feed surplus into the grid, and an economy 7 tariff.
Is it possible to fit one - and in future 2 - chargers in the garage?
How much space is required around the cars to be able to connect to them - or is that a “how long is a piece of string?” question that depends on the specific model?
Does the system allow for daytime charging using surplus from the panels, but otherwise only the night-time electricity?
Best answer by Ash_OVO
Updated on 10/03/25 by Abby_OVO
I can confirm that when an installation takes place in a garage that isn’t connected to the main building where the consumer unit is located, there would usually be groundworks involved. This usually consist of digging up a small trench between the main property and the garage and laying ducting down in place for the wiring run (power and ethernet).
As this is outside of a standard installation, however, some installers may charge for this work to be completed or you would usually be welcome to get third quotes of your own to complete the work. A standard 7kWh Smart Charger is around 32 amps and as such, requires the correct cable to be laid between the main building and garage.
Why not check out the exclusive OVO offers on Smart EV chargers here. There’s more advice on the possible placing of a home charging unit from our community members below!
Just had solar and battery fitted by OVO to our remote garage.
They needed to run a separate feed back to the meter box and isolators/fuse protection.
Remember to ask them to install cat5 cable alongside the electrical wiring which will connect the garage to your house router.
Hard wiring your EV charger, solar and battery to the house router is the most reliable connection and negates weather conditions that 4g will be susceptible to.
Spec. it at the design stage as cat5 cable costs almost nothing.
You could also run CAT6 if you want, for that extra burst of speed - still pretty cheap cables!
You could, but for almost no benefit. The bandwidth required by a solar inverter, battery and EV is dwarfed by the capacity of Cat 5 (100 Mbps), Cat 5e (1000 Mbps). Cat 6 will accommodate several Gbps.
By all means go for it but it's not needed. The essential factor is to hardwire not rely on WiFi or mobile connection.
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