It appears that the EVHS grant will be removed this time next year and re-directed to the rental and leasehold side of the domestic sector. It will be interesting to see the effects of this on the private owner side. If the intent of government is to retain so-called smart charger roll-out then the cheaper dumb chargers will have to be outlawed! With the grant of only £350, clients already see the dumb chargers as a viable option.
My experience has been that the grant doesn't really offer much, if any saving to the end user. The cost to buy an OLEV approved charger and have it installed by an improved installer is more than buying a basic charger and having it installed by A. N. Other electrician. The difference funnily enough is almost exactly the value of the grant. Nor do the approved chargers actually seem that smart, they don't all support obvious smart features like scheduling or remote control, and the logged usage data is not available to the user. The specific model I am thinking of also used the customer's WiFi as the backhaul, which will of course go dead as soon as they change their login details, etc. - they have zero motivation to maintain that connection because there are no features of value to them (rather than of value to OLEV) dependent on it.
My experience has been that the grant doesn't really offer much, if any saving to the end user. The cost to buy an OLEV approved charger and have it installed by an improved installer is more than buying a basic charger and having it installed by A. N. Other electrician. The difference funnily enough is almost exactly the value of the grant. Nor do the approved chargers actually seem that smart, they don't all support obvious smart features like scheduling or remote control, and the logged usage data is not available to the user. The specific model I am thinking of also used the customer's WiFi as the backhaul, which will of course go dead as soon as they change their login details, etc. - they have zero motivation to maintain that connection because there are no features of value to them (rather than of value to OLEV) dependent on it.
