EV charging
Home EV charging
Home EV charging that works with your solar rather than against it.
A dedicated home charger is faster and safer than a power point, and it lets you charge from your own solar rather than the grid.
An electric car is the biggest appliance most homes will ever plug in.
Charged from the grid at peak it is a cost; charged from your roof at noon it is close to free driving.
The arithmetic
Where the kilowatt-hours come from
Most EVs use roughly 15–20 kWh per 100 km. An average Victorian driver covering around 12,000 km a year needs about 5–7 kWh a day — similar to adding an electric hot water system.
Where those kilowatt-hours come from decides whether the car runs on sunshine or on peak-rate grid power.
Midday
Close to zero
From your own solar surplus
Exports earn almost nothing in Victoria anyway.
Overnight
Cheap-ish
On an EV or off-peak tariff
Some retailers offer dedicated EV windows.
Evening peak
Avoid
Unmanaged charging
The most expensive electricity of the day.
Since Victoria scrapped the minimum feed-in tariff, solar you export is worth close to nothing — which makes an EV parked at home during the day the single best consumer of surplus solar there is.
The charger
Making EV charging automatic
A smart home charger — typically 7 kW on single phase, up to 22 kW on three phase — can be scheduled or, better, set to solar-tracking mode, where it modulates charging to match your surplus in real time. The car soaks up exactly what the house is not using, and stops when clouds roll over.
If the car is away weekdays, a scheduled overnight window on an EV tariff is the fallback.
NETCC Approved Seller — signatory since October 2025, covering solar PV, energy storage and EV charging.
Panels, battery, charger and phase are one design problem, not four purchases.
Scoping them together is cheaper than retrofitting them in sequence.
Do I need a bigger battery because I have an EV?
Usually not — and this trips people up. Charging a 60 kWh car through a home battery would need a battery larger than most houses justify, and every stored kilowatt-hour makes a round trip through two conversions. The efficient pattern is: solar charges the car directly when it is home in daylight; the home battery covers the house’s evening; the grid covers long-range top-ups. Size the battery to the house, not the car — the usual sizing rules hold.
Do I need three-phase power for an EV charger?
Only for the fastest home chargers. A 22 kW EV charger needs three-phase supply; most homes are single phase and top out around 7 kW — which still adds roughly 40–50 km of range per hour, far more than a daily commute needs. Here is how to tell what you have.
Can I charge the car from solar alone?
Mostly, if the car is home in daylight. A charger in solar-tracking mode matches charging to your surplus in real time and stops when clouds roll over. If the car is away weekdays, a scheduled overnight window on an EV tariff is the fallback.
Can I buy a charger on this site?
No. Chargers are not in our online catalogue, because the right one depends on your phase, your switchboard and your solar — so we scope it with you in a consultation.
Talk to a person
Planning solar with an EV in the driveway?
Talk it through with a person — array size, charger, battery and your phase, scoped as one system.