Electric Vehicle Charging In New Homes & Building Regulation Part S

The UK government has set out to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and one sure step towards this goal is by making electric vehicles the dominant technology. As it stands, road transport contributes 25% to the UK’s emissions. The UK has pledged that from 2040 onwards, no new cars or vans may be fuelled wholly by petrol or diesel, and that by 2035, no hybrid vehicles will be permitted. To meet this challenge, it has been estimated that the UK needs around 4.1 million electric vehicle charge points by 2030, with the figure standing at a mere 182, 000 in 2019.

The New Building Regulations Part S is anticipated to tackle the implementation of Electric Vehicle charging points in new homes in late 2021 and will essentially call for EV charge points to be installed in any vicinity where there are parking spaces that are physically adjacent to the home. This process will comprise the physical installation of the charge point, as passive provisions such as cables/infrastructure provision will not suffice. This will have a significant impact on the design of Cooper Homewood’s phased mass density residential projects.

Part S will call for a minimum of a 7KW charge point, otherwise known as a fast charge point, and the cables used will need to be untethered or removable to be able to accept any cable into the charge point. The charge points will need to be smart charging points, meaning they would need to optimise the supply of electricity over time.

In an effort to increase the use of a home’s surplus photovoltaic generation and ultimately reduce the amount of grid import and carbon emissions from electricity use, smart chargers should be specified. This will optimise the use of PV panels and/or household battery stores.

Sites in areas where significant electrical capacity reinforcement is needed will be exempt from the charge point installation requirement. A typical 100A single phase supply will typically be sufficient to accommodate a 7kW charge point, however, it is considered prudent by the Distribution Network Operator (DNO) to install the three-phase infrastructure.

The minimum standards for charge point and cable installations are dicated by the IET Code of Practice. This Code of Practice includes the clause that no trailing leads and charge points will be protected from vehicle impact.

Currently, the only government subsidies available for the installation of charge points are for those that apply to retrofit installations and not to new builds, however, as this technology progresses, so should the support of this move towards a more sustainable future.