ADEQUACY OF DIMENSIONING THE ELECTRIC NETWORK WHEN CHOOSING AN ELECTRIC CAR CHARGING STATION
A high-quality charging station charges your car's battery quickly. We think it's always worth choosing the most efficient charger, because it's also an investment in the future. Electric cars are developing and internal car chargers are growing. Of course, renewing an expensive charger after a few years doesn't feel good. You can find information about the built-in charger of different cars on our website. For example, charging a hybrid even with low power is reasonably fast, but if charging a fully electric car might take up to 2 days. When choosing a more efficient charger, the price differences are not necessarily large, so you should also think about the future. Often, however, the available power may limit the choice of charger.
So how powerful a charger can I get? Older houses usually have e.g. a 25 A main fuse. Then you cannot get a 32 A device that can be installed with a fixed current. In the majority of new properties, however, the main fuse is larger. If you are renewing the electrical network or building a new property, it is worth dimensioning the main fuse and connection cable for the necessary amount of electric car charging capacity. These Chargers are usually the devices that require the most power in your electrical network.
Dimensioning should always be done together with an expert electrician or designer. Below, however, is information on how you can roughly assess this yourself:
Look at the power of your main fuse and multiply it by the voltage 230 V and the number of phases in use. E.g. 35Ax230Vx3=24.15 kW. After that, calculate the maximum power used by your other electrical appliances SIMULTANEOUSLY (assuming here that everyone uses three phases), e.g. stove 6kW+kitchen appliances 5kW+washing machine and dryer 2kW+other appliances 1kw=14kW. In the example, the charging station has a power reserve of 10.15 kW. The power required for lighting, especially with LED lights, is so low that it does not need to be taken into account. This calculation is really only indicative and different phases can be loaded in different ways. The maximum load of each phase must also not be exceeded, i.e. in the example, the remaining power in practice is less than 10kW. During installation, the power should be distributed as evenly as possible, but often the first phase is more loaded.
It is clear, however, that the charging station requires a lot of power, and therefore you should be careful with its selection. A powerful device is comfortable to use and a good investment, but it is also not pleasant to use if the main fuse trips. A skilled electrician can map and measure the situation more precisely. Electricity companies also offer a service where you can estimate the existing capacity for charging equipment. In many houses, the size of the fuse can also be increased, but sometimes increasing the power requires excavation work if the dimensioning of the house cable is not sufficient for the desired power.