A home charger is a special unit – installed near your driveway or garage – that is capable of increasing the power delivered to your car. The most popular chargers are also able to reduce your cost and carbon by calculating the best times to charge, can protect your home’s fuse by monitoring by automatically reducing power if you’re drawing too much, and can speak to your solar panels to charge only when you’re generating clean energy.
Some are even capable of being activated by facial recognition, controlled by a wave of the hand, or adjusted with commands from Alexa.
Future electric car chargers will also be able to discharge your car, so you can support renewables and be paid for sending electricity back to the grid at peak times, and then charge back up with cheaper, cleaner electricity in the night (this is known as ‘vehicle-to-grid’, or ‘V2G’).
Home chargers can come with a cable attached (tethered), which you just unwind and plug into your car. Or, they can come with a socket (untethered), which allows for both a ‘Type 1’ car or ‘Type 2’ car to be charged from the same charger.
