A Brighton home usually has the easy part of EV charging already sorted: a driveway, a garage, somewhere off the street to park overnight. The question that actually decides a charger installation is whether the switchboard behind that garage wall has room left for a 7kW unit once the pool pump, the ducted air and an induction cooktop are already on it. Martin Turnbull, a licensed A-Grade electrician who has run Smartlec since 2017, answers that before quoting, because on a larger home it is the part that moves the price. Tell us the car, where it parks and roughly where your board sits, and you get a firm number before anything is fixed to the wall.
EV charger installation for Brighton homes and businesses
Charging one car overnight in a garage and running a row of bays for a Bayside business are different jobs, and Smartlec takes on both. For most homes it is a single 7kW wall charger on its own dedicated circuit, placed so the lead reaches the car without trailing across a doorway or a path. For a workplace it can mean several units, a supply shared sensibly between them, and load management so the building does not trip when three cars plug in at once. Same licence, same standard, garage or car park.
The public chargers that have gone in around Brighton and the Bayside foreshore are handy for a top-up while you are out, but they are not the answer to charging the car you drive daily. A unit on your own wall, on its own circuit, filling overnight on a cheaper rate, is what actually fits how an EV lives at home. It often goes in around the same time as other comfort upgrades too, so if split system air conditioning in Brighton is on the same list, that is the same licensed contractor as well.
Costs: a $99 inspection, credited the moment you proceed
Almost nobody publishes a real price for an EV charger install, and the few figures floating around the area are guesses at a job nobody has looked at. What sets the cost is the run from the board to the charger, whether the switchboard has spare capacity, and whether the home is on single or three-phase supply. A figure quoted sight-unseen is just a number.
So we charge a $99 inspection to assess the job properly and hand you a fixed, itemised quote, and that $99 is credited back in full the moment you go ahead. A straightforward garage install can often be scoped from a few clear photos of your board and meter. The price is locked before any work begins, so there is no hourly meter ticking over and no surprise on the invoice.
One licensed trade for the circuit the board and the charger
Here is the part worth understanding before you book anyone. A lot of EV charger installers are precisely that, charger installers, and they bring in a separate electrician for the wiring and the switchboard. Smartlec works the other way around, which is the approach across all our EV charger work. Martin is a licensed A-Grade electrician who fits chargers, so the dedicated circuit, the switchboard capacity and the charger itself are one job, one trade, and one person answerable for all of it.
The same goes the other way: plenty of Brighton EV jobs land alongside other work, and a Brighton electrician who already knows the property can sort the power points, the lighting and the charger on one visit.
