EV Charging for Workplaces
Workplace EV charging is the easiest commercial charging case to get right, because the cars sit still for eight hours. That single fact changes what you should buy: you rarely need speed, you almost always need to control access, and the cheapest way to serve more bays is usually more sockets sharing one supply rather than fewer, faster chargers.
We supply workplace chargers from £469, all eligible for the Workplace Charging Scheme grant of up to £350 per socket, with free UK delivery and trade pricing on multi-unit orders.
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How many chargers does a workplace need?
Fewer than most people expect at first, and more than they expect two years later. A common starting point is one charging bay for every 20 to 25 staff parking spaces, with the cable routes and supply capacity planned for two or three times that number so the next phase is a bolt-on rather than a rebuild. Start with the vehicles you know about — salary sacrifice and company car drivers are the immediate demand — and design the electrical side for where you expect to be by the end of the decade.
7kW or 22kW for a workplace?
If cars are parked all day, 7kW adds around 200 miles over a working day, which covers almost any commute. 22kW only helps where vehicles turn over during the day — pool cars, visitors, shift changeovers — or where you are sharing one supply across many bays and want the flexibility to give a smaller number of cars a faster charge. 22kW also requires a three-phase supply, which most commercial premises have and most domestic properties do not. On a fixed budget, twice as many 7kW sockets almost always beats half as many 22kW ones. Read our guide to three-phase power and 22kW charging.
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Controlling who can charge
An unrestricted charger in a staff car park will be used by anyone who parks in front of it. RFID cards and fobs from £7 tie each session to a named user, which does two jobs at once: it stops the charge point being used by passers-by, and it produces the per-user energy record you need if staff are reimbursing the company or the company is reporting on fleet energy. Most commercial chargers include RFID as standard. If you also want visitors to be able to charge without an account, add a contactless payment terminal from £335 rather than trying to issue cards to guests.
Will your supply take it?
This is the question that decides most workplace projects. A 22kW charger draws around 32A per phase continuously; six of them is a serious load on top of an existing building. Two things usually resolve it. Load management monitors the site's total draw and reduces charger output when the building is busy, so charging gives way to the business rather than tripping the main fuse — which often means installing several times more charge points than the raw headroom would suggest. Where that is not enough, a supply upgrade from the distribution network operator is the alternative, and it is expensive and slow. Get the capacity assessed early: it determines the socket count, not the other way round — see our guide to DNO applications.
Wall-mounted or pedestal?
Most staff car parks have bays in the middle of a surface with no wall anywhere near them, which is why pedestal chargers are so common on business sites. A pedestal puts the unit at the bay itself and carries its own upright — the Evec EDP02-N dual socket 22kW at £1,615, the ESP02 single socket 22kW at £1,465, or the 7.4kW EDP01 dual at £1,300 and ESP01 single at £1,120. The alternative is a wall-mounted charger on a mounting post from £240, which works out cheaper where the charger you want has no pedestal version. Either way, add a crash barrier from £155 — anything standing in a bay eventually gets reversed into.
What it costs
Hardware starts at £469 for a single socket 22kW unit and £688 for the Easee 22kW. Dual socket units — the VCHRGD TwentyTwo at £1,550, Rolec BasicCharge duals at £1,825 and £2,125, or the Evec EDP02-N pedestal at £1,615 — serve two bays from one installation, which is where the real saving sits on a multi-bay site because you pay once for the groundworks, cable run and connection. Against all of that, the Workplace Charging Scheme returns up to £350 per socket — up to £700 on a dual unit. See our breakdown of what a workplace installation costs.
Should staff pay to charge?
Plenty of employers offer it free as a benefit, and at 7kW over a working day the electricity cost is modest against the retention value. If you do want to recover the cost, be aware that billing drivers by the kilowatt hour requires MID-certified metering in the charger — that is a hardware decision made at purchase, not something you can add later. A flat charge per session avoids the requirement entirely and suits smaller sites. See our guide to MID metering and billing.
Getting a quote
We supply businesses, installers and facilities teams across the UK with free delivery and trade pricing on multi-unit orders. Tell us how many bays you are planning, whether the site is single or three phase, and how long vehicles typically stay, and we will put together a specification and price.
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New to the grant? Read our Workplace Charging Scheme guide first.