All new privately-owned EV chargers sold after 30 June 2022 must comply with the Government’s smart charging legislation.

The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 are designed to help the National Grid adapt to increasing numbers of EVs being charged, and offer drivers more data on their charging.

A key part of the regulations is allowing smart devices to randomly delay EV charging for up to 10 minutes, in a bid to ease peak-time pressure on electricity supplies.

Smarter charging solutions

© Provided by Motoring Electric Smart EV Charging Regulations

The new legislation only applies to charging devices sold for private home or business use. Public charging points are already covered by separate rules.

What makes the new chargers ‘smart’ is the requirement for them to send and receive data over a network. For many, this will mean connecting to wi-fi or using an ethernet cable, although the device must still be able to charge should the network go down.

Drivers will then be able to time when the device starts charging, set the rate at which it charges, and be able to monitor charging data from the past 12 months.

Being able to use the same charging device if a driver changes electricity supplier is also included in the regulations. This is designed to prevent drivers having to purchase a new charger, or losing functions, if they change energy company.

Smoothing out the spikes

© Provided by Motoring Electric Smart EV Charging Regulations

Allowing devices to automatically delay when an EV starts charging is the most controversial part of the smart charging regulations.

This is to ease the strain of the nation’s power grid, with the example of a power cut being given. Following an outage, multiple devices could attempt to restart charging at the same time, potentially overloading the electricity grid. Delaying them would help reduce spikes in demand.

New chargers will be able to delay charging for 10 minutes, but will potentially increase this to 30 minutes should legislation change in the future.

Devices will also need to come with default charging hours set, which fall outside of peak times (8am to 11am, and 4pm to 10pm on weekdays). However, drivers will be able to override these settings if desired.

Source: Motoringelectric.com