A Kew house tends to come with the part of EV charging most of Melbourne is missing: a garage or an off-street space the car sits in overnight, and a wall to mount a charger on. That makes an EV charger installation here one of the more straightforward home jobs Martin Turnbull and the Smartlec team takes on. Martin is an A-Grade licensed and insured electrical contractor, and has led the company since 2017. The one thing worth checking before anything goes on the wall is whether your switchboard has the headroom for a 7kW charger.
EV charger installation for Kew homes and businesses
A family home charging a car or two overnight and a Kew business running bays for staff are different jobs, and Smartlec does both. At home it is usually a single 7kW wall unit on its own dedicated circuit, sited so the lead reaches the car without trailing across a doorway or the path to the front door. For a workplace it can mean several units, a supply shared sensibly between them, and load management so the building does not trip when a few cars plug in at once. Same A-Grade licence either way, garage wall or car-park pillar.
The public pole chargers that have appeared on Kew streets, including those around Kew Junction, are handy for a top-up while you are out, but they are not the way to charge the car you drive every day.
What it costs: the $99 inspection, waived if you go ahead
Hardly any installer publishes a real EV charging price, and on a home job the reason is simple: no two switchboards are the same. What sets your cost is the run from the board to the car, whether that board has spare capacity, and whether your supply is single or three phase. A round figure quoted down the phone is a guess at a job nobody has looked at.
So we charge a $99 inspection to assess it in person and hand you a fixed, itemised quote, and that $99 is waived in full the moment you go ahead. On a tidy garage install we can often scope it from a few clear photos of your switchboard and meter instead of a visit. Either way the price is locked before any work starts, so there is no hourly rate ticking over and no surprise on the invoice.
Busy family home: does your board have the headroom?
Here is where the easy job earns a second look. A 7kW charger is not a load that flicks on and off like a kettle. It draws hard and steadily for hours, usually overnight, which is a different demand from anything a normal power point was built for. A Kew family home tends to already run a lot off the one board: ducted heating and cooling, an induction cooktop, a pool or spa pump, sometimes a studio out the back. Add a charger to a board that is already close to full, or one still leaning on older fuse-style protection, and the result is nuisance tripping at best.
So the driveway and the garage are sorted, the install looks simple, and yet the question that decides it is sitting inside the meter box. On a fair share of these homes the honest answer is that the switchboard, or the mains feeding it, wants upgrading before the charger goes in. We tell you that plainly when it is true, and just as plainly when the board you have is fine and needs nothing. If a wider electrical safety check makes sense while the cover is off, we will say so. What you will not get is a push toward a switchboard you do not need to land the charger.
