Charge on your own electricity
A car is the largest single load most homes ever add. Charging it from your own panels, or from a battery filled at off-peak rates, is where the economics of home energy and motoring actually meet.
Eligible — but only as part of a solar or battery job
EV chargers and the Warm Homes Loan
Plenty of websites will tell you the Warm Homes Loan Scheme "covers EV chargers". That is only half true, and the missing half matters. Here is what the rules actually say.
The rule, in one sentence
An EV chargepoint installation must only be made as part of a solar and/or battery installation to be eligible under the scheme, and EV chargepoints are not permissible as a standalone measure.
So: solar plus a charger, yes. Battery plus a charger, yes. A charger on its own under this scheme, no — not at any price, and no matter who tells you otherwise.
What that means in practice
Four conditions, all of which apply
- The charger must be part of an eligible solar PV and/or battery installation
- The chargepoint model must be OZEV approved
- The installer must be OZEV approved — which requires membership of a Competent Persons Scheme
- You must not have already received an OZEV grant, or any other grant, towards that chargepoint
And the cost sits inside the cap
The charger is treated as an ancillary cost of the solar or battery measure. The scheme is explicit that any ancillary work funded by a loan must fall within the relevant measure cap.
So a charger does not unlock extra borrowing. It uses part of the £15,000 solar cap or part of the £15,000 battery cap. In practice, for most domestic jobs, there is ample headroom — but it is worth knowing which bucket it comes out of.
The practical route if a charger is what you really want
Pair it with a battery. A battery-only retrofit is eligible in its own right under this scheme — up to £15,000, no solar required — and an OZEV-approved charger can be included as an ancillary cost of that battery installation. For a lot of EV drivers that combination is the better buy anyway: the battery lets you charge the car and run the house from off-peak electricity.
Why solar, battery and EV charging belong together
One visit, one set of electrics
Consumer unit work, earthing arrangements, load calculations and cable routes overlap heavily between a battery, an inverter and a charger. Doing them together is cheaper and tidier than three separate visits.
Smart charging, properly configured
A charger that talks to your tariff, your inverter and your battery is worth far more than one bolted to a wall in isolation. Integration is the part people regret skipping.
If you only want a charger
We will still fit it — we just will not pretend this scheme pays for it. You would be buying it as ordinary paid work, or using whatever separate finance you prefer. A lender on the Warm Homes list can offer you a normal, unsubsidised loan for work outside the scheme; that is a standard personal loan and carries none of the Warm Homes rate reduction. Ask us for a straight price and we will give you one.
Free, no-obligation
Solar, battery and EV charging — quoted together
Tell us what you drive and how you use the car. We will design the electrics once, quote them properly, and tell you exactly which parts the loan can and cannot fund.
- MCS-certified installation — a requirement of the Warm Homes Loan Scheme
- Itemised quote with system size in kW, in the format lenders ask for
- Solar, solar + battery, battery-only retrofit or an EV charger added to either
- No hard credit check from us, and no cost for a quote
Prefer to talk it through? Email [email protected].