Connecting a charge point

Connecting a charge point

Electricity North West owns and maintains the electricity network of overhead lines and underground cables that bring power to 2.5 million homes and businesses in the North West.

It’s important that you talk to us about your charge point installation so that we can assess whether the local electricity network and your site have enough capacity to meet your charging needs. For larger projects, we may need to build new infrastructure which will affect the time and cost of your project.

Before you install your charge point, your installer should contact Electricity North West by completing the appropriate application form and emailing it to connectionapplications@enwl.co.uk.

It’s important that we’re told about any new charge points so that we can monitor supply and demand on the region’s electricity network, and ensure all our customers continue to receive a secure power supply.

Approximate connection costs and timescales

The costs and timescales for connecting your charge point to the electricity network will depend on the number and size of your charge points. The information below should be used as a guide only as costs and timescales will vary according to available capacity on the network.

Installing a slow charger at a residential home will usually not incur a cost from Electricity North West, although you will still incur a cost from your installer. However, if you install a fast charger, you may incur a cost for your connection.

Size of installation	Size	Number of charge points	Connection time	Approximate costs
Small	up to 70kVA (residential or small office)	1-3 fast or one rapid charge point	8 – 12 weeks	£1,000 – £3,000
Medium	200kVA – 1,000 kVA (small business or car park)	More than 3 fast or more than 1 rapid charge point	8 – 12 weeks	£4,500 – £75,000
Large	Above 1,000 kVA (large car parks and commercial premises)	Multiple fast/ rapid charge points	>6 months	£60,000 – £2 million

Connecting charge points on the public highway

Local authorities and customers without off-street parking may wish to install charge points on the public highway. These charge points must be installed to the appropriate standards to ensure a safe and reliable power supply for those charging their vehicles and for the rest of the public.

In the majority of cases where a charger needs to be on-street you will need to request a new connection which is separate to any other existing supply and which is separately metered. The meter should be housed in a position which is maintained and accessed by the customer. It is not permitted to run charging cables across public footpaths so on-street charge points will normally be located at the kerbside.

It is also sometimes possible to connect a single charge point to an existing unmetered connection such as a street lighting column, providing certain criteria are met.

Installers who are not installing charge points on behalf of the local authority should ensure that they have the relevant permission from the authority before installing on-street charging facilities.

For more information on design standards for installing EV charge points, please refer to the IET Code of Practice for Electric Vehicle Charging Equipment Installation.