Do I need a switchboard upgrade for an EV charger?

Often not. Four things decide it: whether there's room in the board for a dedicated circuit, whether the board already has modern protection, whether your supply can carry the extra load, and whether you're single or three phase. Plenty of houses need only a new circuit added to an existing board. Houses with ceramic fuses or no RCD protection are a different story — the board was due for replacement regardless of the car.

A 7 kW single-phase charger draws about 32 amps continuously, so it needs its own dedicated 32 amp circuit with cable sized for the run and the mounting conditions. The Wiring Rules require EV charging equipment to be on a dedicated circuit with specific earth leakage protection — a Type A RCD together with DC fault detection, or a Type B device. It can't share a circuit with power points, and a standard outlet in the garage isn't a substitute.

Load management means fitting a current sensor on your main supply so the charger knows how hard the whole house is drawing. When the oven, aircon and dryer are all running the charger reduces its rate, then speeds back up when they stop. The car still charges overnight either way. It very often removes the need for a consumer mains or supply upgrade, which is usually the most expensive part of the job. Tesla Wall Connector and myenergi Zappi both support it.

Only if your car can use it and you have three-phase supply. The limit is the vehicle's onboard AC charger, not the wall unit. Most EVs sold in Australia accept about 7 kW on single phase, and some accept 11 kW on three phase. Installing a 22 kW charger on a car that accepts 7 kW charges the car at 7 kW and costs you more for nothing.

No. A single-phase 7 kW charger adds roughly 40 km of range an hour, which is more than most households drive in a day, so overnight charging is comfortably covered. Three phase is worth having if you already have it, if the car genuinely accepts 11 kW, or if you're doing other work that needs it anyway. Converting to three phase purely to charge faster at home is rarely money well spent.

Look at the main switch in your meter box. A single wide switch with one or two poles is generally single phase; a main switch spanning three poles, or three separate main fuses at the service, points to three phase. Some newer estate homes were built with three phase and the owners have no idea. We check at the board rather than guess, because it changes the options completely.

It's a capacity problem rather than a safety one, and there are usually three ways out: extend the existing board if the enclosure and busbar allow it, add a small sub-board fed from the main board, or replace the board if it was marginal anyway. Which one is cheapest depends on what's in there now, which is why we look before quoting rather than after.

The portable lead that came with the car will charge from a standard outlet at around 2 kW, which is roughly 10 to 15 km of range an hour. It works for a plug-in hybrid or very light use. For a full battery EV it's slow, and running a continuous load for twelve hours through an old outlet and a shared circuit is exactly how outlets and connections cook. A dedicated circuit is the answer.

Adding a dedicated charger circuit to an existing board usually doesn't. Changing your supply — upgrading consumer mains, increasing your service capacity, or converting to three phase — does involve the distributor, and that process adds time as well as cost. We handle the paperwork, but it's a reason to find out early whether load management can avoid the supply change altogether.

Yes, and it's the sensible way to do it. If a battery is on the horizon, the board and the mains get sized for both now rather than revisited in two years. See home batteries — and tell us at quote time, because it changes what we'd recommend.