It’s the most common question we hear about home charging: “will my fuse box cope?” The honest answer is sometimes, and a proper survey settles it before any money changes hands.
What a home charger actually demands
A typical home charge point runs at 7kW: roughly 32 amps, continuously, for hours at a time. That’s one of the biggest single loads in any house, comparable to an electric shower but sustained far longer. It needs its own dedicated circuit from the consumer unit with appropriate protection; it can’t just tee off an existing socket circuit.
When the existing board is fine
Plenty of installations need no consumer unit work at all. If your board is reasonably modern, has a spare way for a new circuit, and the overall supply has capacity once the charger’s load is added, the charger simply gets its own protected circuit and that’s that.
When an upgrade makes sense
A consumer unit upgrade tends to enter the picture when:
- there’s no spare way on the board for a dedicated circuit,
- the board is old (rewireable fuses or no RCD protection), so adding a major new load to it isn’t good practice,
- the supply needs load management to keep the total demand within what’s available, or
- the earthing arrangement needs attention. Modern charge points typically include protection (so-called open-PEN devices) that avoids the earth rods older installations needed, but the wider earthing still has to be checked and confirmed.
None of this is guesswork on the day: it’s exactly what the electrical assessment at the start of a home EV charger installation is for. You find out what’s needed, and what it costs, before committing.
The practical takeaway
Don’t buy a charger first and hope. Get the installation surveyed, let the survey decide whether the consumer unit needs work, and have one contractor handle circuit, charger and certification together. That’s how we run EV charger installations across Dundee and the surrounding towns. Send us the details and we’ll take a look.