Wallbox at home and in a block of flats - what determines whether you can charge your car

Single-family house: the simpler path

There are basically three things to consider:

• Charger power vs home power - an 11 kW (three-phase) wallbox is often as much as all the rest of the house combined. There are two solutions: increasing the contracted power or dynamic load management (DLM) - the charger "talks" to the house in real time and slows down when the induction hob or heat pump is running. DLM usually wins: the car charges mainly at night anyway, when the house is asleep;
• Dedicated circuit and protections - the wallbox gets its own circuit with the correct RCD (chargers require protection against DC currents - some have it built-in, which changes the selection of devices in the board);
• Installation location - cable routing, protection against mechanical damage, cable reach to the car's charging socket.

And charging "from a socket"? In an emergency - yes, regularly - only after checking the circuit. A standard socket was not designed for a 10-16 A draw for 8 hours without a break; an old or loose connection will heat up night after night.

Block of flats and housing community: procedure instead of guerrilla tactics

The Ustawa o elektromobilności (Act on Electromobility) provides a path for residents of multi-family buildings: an application to the property manager and an expert opinion on the feasibility of installing a charging point. The expert opinion answers questions that a housing community meeting cannot resolve:

• whether the building's connection capacity has a reserve for charging points;
• what condition the main power line (WLZ) and main switchgear are in (this is a common "bottleneck" - more in the guide on WLZ and risers);
• how to meter the charging so that the person who charges pays;
• how to route the power supply to the garage hall or parking spaces.

For the housing community, it is cheapest to plan the infrastructure once, for multiple spaces - instead of five separate approaches, each of which breaks through the same walls again. We prepare such a plan for property managers as part of electrical services for buildings.

Companies and fleets

Chargers for employees and fleets are a separate topic - with building power analysis, load management for multiple points and energy billing. Details on the page charging stations for companies.