EV charger installation in Alicante and the northern Costa Blanca

An EV charger installation is mostly a cable run and a protection decision. The charger itself is the cheapest and least interesting part; what determines the price is how far the cable has to travel from your meter, what it has to pass through on the way, and whether your existing supply can carry the load without an upgrade.

That is why we do not quote from a photograph. We read the meter cabinet, measure the run and look at what is already on the board, then give you a fixed figure. Every job on this page was done that way.

What does an EV charger installation actually involve?

A compliant home charging point is a dedicated circuit, not a socket on an existing one. It runs from your consumer unit or meter position on its own cable, through its own protective devices, to the charger — and under ITC-BT-52 it needs its own residual current protection rather than sharing a device with the rest of the house.

In practice the work is: confirm the available supply at the meter, choose the cable size for the distance, run the cable, fit an enclosure with the breaker and RCD, mount the charger, connect, test and commission. On a straightforward villa that is a day. In an underground garage with a 40-metre run and a communal board, it is longer.

The reason a dedicated circuit matters is duration rather than peak load. A kettle draws more current than a 7.4 kW charger, but it does so for two minutes. A car charges at close to full load for hours at a time, and every connection, terminal and protective device on that circuit sits at working temperature for the whole session.

Do you have to increase your contracted power?

Usually not, because dynamic load management solves the problem more cheaply. A current sensor on the supply tells the charger how much the rest of the house is using, and the charger reduces its own draw to fit inside what is left. Your car charges more slowly while the oven is on, and faster once it is off.

The alternative — raising your contracted power with the distributor — increases the fixed portion of every bill for the rest of the time you live there, in exchange for a faster charge on the few occasions the house is at full load simultaneously. For most households the sensor is the better trade.

There are cases where the increase is genuinely the right answer: a low contracted power on an older supply, two electric cars, or a property where a heat pump and an induction hob already push the existing limit. We tell you which situation you are in after reading the meter, not before.

7.4, 11 or 22 kW — which do you actually need?

For overnight home charging, 7.4 kW is enough for almost everybody. It adds roughly 35 to 40 km of range per hour, which fills any normal daily use several times over during the hours a car sits on a driveway. Paying for more capacity buys nothing if the car is parked for ten hours anyway.

11 and 22 kW need a three-phase supply, which most Spanish homes do not have — three-phase is common in commercial units, industrial estates and some newer developments, and rare in older apartments. Where it exists, 11 kW is the sensible step up; 22 kW is worth it only if the vehicle can actually accept it, and many cannot.

The honest check is the car, not the charger. A vehicle limited to 7.4 kW on AC will charge at 7.4 kW from a 22 kW wallbox, and the extra capacity does nothing at all. We ask which car before recommending anything.

Installing a charger in a communal garage

In a comunidad de propietarios you have the right to install a charging point in your own space, and you do not need the community to approve it — you need to notify them in writing beforehand. That is a legal right, not a favour, and it surprises a lot of owners who have been told otherwise at a junta.

What does need deciding is where the electricity comes from. The clean answer is an individual supply or a dedicated meter for the charging point, so the consumption is yours and appears on your bill rather than on the community's. Hanging a charger off the communal supply and settling up informally later is where disputes start.

The practical side is the cable route: from the meter room or your own supply, along the communal ceiling or wall on proper containment, to your space. We install so that the route is extendable, because in most garages the second and third owner follow within a couple of years.

What we check before quoting

We check four things: the available power at the meter, the distance from supply to parking space, the route the cable can physically take, and the state of the existing board. Those four determine almost the entire cost, and none of them can be assessed from a description over the phone.

The distance matters more than people expect. Cable is sized so that the voltage drop over the run stays within limits at full load, so a 30-metre run needs a heavier conductor than a 5-metre one for exactly the same charger. That difference is often larger than the price gap between two charger models.

What we do not do is quote a headline figure and then discover the cable run on the day. The quote you get is the quote you pay unless you change the specification.