In Epsom and Ewell’s own group-buying record, batteries outnumbered car chargers by about seven to one. The first three Solar Together rounds fitted 132 home batteries and 18 EV chargepoints alongside 157 household solar installations, on the borough council’s figures. Since then the cars have been catching up, and households with a plug-in vehicle on the drive now ask how the three pieces of kit fit together. Our guide to battery storage in Epsom covers where a battery goes and the grid side; this one is about the car.
The short answer is that a charger, a battery and panels do three different jobs, carry three different VAT rates, and are best planned in one survey even if they are fitted at different times.
What the borough’s numbers show
DVLA records 2,744 privately kept plug-in vehicles across Epsom and Ewell at the end of June 2026, up from 2,153 a year earlier: 591 more, a rise of about 27% (our arithmetic). Those are plug-in vehicles of every body type, battery-electric, plug-in hybrid and range-extended, registered to private keepers anywhere in the borough, not chargers and not a count of households, and they leave out company-registered vehicles. They are also borough-wide, so they cover Ewell, Stoneleigh and Langley Vale as much as the town.
Three products, three jobs
The charger puts electricity into the car. It is the only one of the three a plug-in household strictly needs, and every new home chargepoint sold in Great Britain has had to be smart since 30 June 2022, so it can be scheduled for a cheaper overnight rate.
The battery stores electricity for the house, from the roof or from the grid at a cheaper time, and releases it in the evening. The Energy Saving Trust suggests a typical home system might be 10 kWh, which is sized to a household’s evening use rather than to a car.
The panels make electricity in daylight. On an Epsom roof that is mostly while a commuter’s car is away, which is the main reason a battery and an EV are often discussed together.
The fuse comes first
A 7.4 kW charger draws 32 A continuously, and most homes have a 60 A, 80 A or 100 A main fuse. Add an electric oven, a shower and a battery charging from the grid at the same moment, and the sums need checking. Load management, a current sensor on the incoming supply that turns the charger down when the house is busy, usually avoids an upgrade. Where one is needed, UK Power Networks says it can upgrade a main fuse from 30 or 60 A to 80 or 100 A, and a looped supply shared with a neighbour has to be re-planned with both households. Epsom sits in UK Power Networks’ South Eastern Power Networks area, and the installer notifies it of a new chargepoint and of a battery. Our post on whether your fuse will take a 7 kW charger goes into the detail.
Can an Epsom roof charge the car?
Partly, and mostly in summer. PVGIS puts a south-facing 4 kWp array in Epsom at about 484 kWh in June, roughly 16.1 kWh a day, and about 134 kWh in December, roughly 4.3 kWh a day (our arithmetic). Take a 60 kWh charge as an example: at the October to December 2026 Ofgem cap unit rate of 26.32p per kWh, that is about £15.79 from the grid (our arithmetic on the average capped rate; off-peak EV tariffs price overnight units well below that). On an average June day the roof’s whole output is about a quarter of that charge; in December it is about a fourteenth. Solar tops a car up in the long months, and the overnight tariff does the heavy lifting the rest of the year.
Where the battery fits in
For an Epsom household with a car on a cheap overnight rate, the battery’s job is the house. It can fill from the roof on a June afternoon, or from the same cheap overnight window as the car in December, and cover the expensive early-evening hours. Whether that pays its way depends on the gap between your peak and off-peak prices and on your evening use. A standard grid-tied battery does not power the house, or the charger, in a power cut unless backup has been designed in.
Money: VAT and grants
HMRC’s VAT Notice 708/6 zero-rates residential battery and solar installations until 31 March 2027, then 5% from 1 April 2027. A home EV charger is not on the energy-saving list and is standard-rated at 20%, so a combined Epsom quote should show the charger as its own line.
OZEV’s chargepoint grant, raised to £500 per socket on 1 April 2026, pays 75% of the cost for renters and for people who own and live in a flat, if they have private off-street or allocated parking. In a borough where 20.9% of households live in purpose-built flats and 16.1% rent privately, that covers a fair number of households; owner-occupiers of houses get nothing, as the scheme that covered them closed in April 2022. Our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant has the conditions.
A sensible order for an Epsom home
- Check the main fuse and the supply, before anything is bought.
- Fit the smart charger if the car is already on the drive.
- Survey the roof: orientation, shading and, in Epsom’s 21 conservation areas, where panels can go.
- Size the battery from your evening use, with panels or after them.
Fitting panels and a battery in one visit costs less than two, the Energy Saving Trust says, so if both are likely, plan them together. Our page on solar panels in Epsom covers the roof, and the Surrey solar panels hub covers the county’s schemes.
Sources: Epsom and Ewell Borough Council, climate change pages; Surrey County Council, Solar Together pages; DfT and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by local authority (published 23 September 2026); Energy Saving Trust, Battery storage (updated 19 August 2026); Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021; UK Power Networks, licence boundaries and fuse-upgrade guidance; PVGIS 5.3, European Commission Joint Research Centre (PVGIS-SARAH3 2005–2023, run 15 October 2026); Ofgem, energy price cap October to December 2026; HMRC, VAT Notice 708/6; OZEV, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); ONS Census 2021, TS044 and TS054, Epsom and Ewell.