Three pieces of kit, two VAT rates. If a Romford household adds a car charger, a home battery and solar panels, HMRC treats the battery and the panels as energy-saving materials at 0% until 31 March 2027, and the charger as an ordinary installation at 20%. That difference is a useful way into a bigger point: the three do different jobs, on different timetables, and they are bought under different rules.
This guide works through how they fit together in a Havering home, from the semis of Gidea Park and Harold Wood to flats near the Market Place. For where a battery physically goes and how it connects to UK Power Networks, see our Romford battery storage guide.
Havering’s plug-in count, read carefully
DVLA records about 6,642 privately kept plug-in vehicles across the London Borough of Havering at the end of June 2026, up from 4,948 a year earlier. That is 1,694 more in twelve months, a rise of about 34% on our arithmetic. The figure covers the whole borough, counts vehicles at the registered keeper’s address and leaves out company registrations. It is not a count of chargers or of households with an EV, but it shows where Havering is heading. The council’s own Climate Change Action Plan names transport and domestic gas use as the borough’s largest sources of emissions.
Three jobs on three timetables
Panels make electricity in daylight. PVGIS, run for Romford with a 4 kWp array facing due south, gives about 489 kWh in June and about 143 kWh in December: roughly 16.3 kWh a day in midsummer and 4.6 kWh a day in midwinter on our arithmetic.
A battery moves electricity from one part of the day to another, which in most Romford homes means from the afternoon to the evening. The Energy Saving Trust says a typical home system might be 10 kWh, and a 5 kWh battery holds about a twelfth of a 60 kWh car charge.
The car is the biggest store of the three. At Ofgem’s cap unit rate of 26.32p per kWh for October to December 2026, a 60 kWh charge costs about £15.79 on our arithmetic, and off-peak EV tariffs price overnight units well below that. So in most Romford homes the car charges overnight, the battery runs the house through the evening, and a smart charger, which every new home chargepoint sold in Great Britain has had to be since 30 June 2022, can follow a schedule or a solar surplus rather than draw whenever the car is plugged in. In December, with 4.6 kWh a day off the roof, the car’s charge comes almost entirely from the grid.
A Romford drive, a semi and the grant gap
Havering is a borough of houses: at the 2021 Census, 41.2% of its 101,277 households lived in a semi, 24.3% in a terrace and 11.1% in a detached house, and 69.5% owned their home. Where a semi or detached house has its own drive, the charger can go on a front or side wall and the battery in the garage or utility room, keeping both close to the consumer unit and the cable runs short.
That same ownership pattern is why many Romford households get no help with a charger. OZEV’s grants exclude owner-occupiers of houses; the scheme that covered them closed in April 2022. Where parking is on the street, OZEV offers up to £500 towards a chargepoint installed with an approved cross-pavement solution, subject to the council’s rules, so Havering’s own position is the first thing to check. Our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant sets out each case.
Flats and renters
Purpose-built flats house 19.8% of Havering’s households, and 15.8% rent privately and 13.6% from a social landlord. For these households OZEV is more generous: renters and people who own and live in flats can claim 75% of the cost, up to £500 per socket, with private off-street or allocated parking, and residential landlords can claim up to £500 per socket. A battery in a flat is a different matter, because the freeholder’s written consent comes before any unit or cable is fixed to a shared wall, and a tenant also needs the landlord’s agreement.
The fuse and the paperwork
A 7.4 kW charger draws 32 A continuously, in a Romford semi or a terrace alike. Most homes have a 60 A, 80 A or 100 A main fuse, and load management, a current sensor on the incoming supply, usually avoids an upgrade by turning the charger down when the kitchen is busy. Our guide on whether your fuse will take a 7 kW EV charger goes through the checks.
Central Romford sits in UK Power Networks’ Eastern Power Networks licence area, and the London Power Networks area about 3.4 km away is UK Power Networks too, so every notification goes to the same company. The installer notifies it of a new chargepoint. For a battery or panels, type-tested equipment up to and including 16 A per phase (3.68 kW) is notified under G98, before commissioning or within 28 days after; anything larger needs a G99 approval before work starts. UK Power Networks says it can upgrade a main fuse from 30 or 60 A to 80 or 100 A where needed, and a looped supply shared with a neighbour has to be re-planned with both households.
Order of work and backup
The Energy Saving Trust says fitting storage at the same time as panels costs less than a separate visit later, and on a combined Romford quote the charger line should carry its own 20% VAT. If you would like to see retrofit kit before deciding, Havering opened a Low Energy Visitor Centre in the converted Park Lodge in Raphael Park in 2025, a year-long exhibition including solar panels.
One rule applies whatever is fitted. A standard grid-tied battery shuts down in a power cut, so neither the house nor the charger runs from it during an outage unless backup was designed in, with extra equipment and a dedicated circuit, at extra cost. For the roof itself, see our solar panels in Romford page, and for the boroughs around it our solar panels in North London hub.
Sources: Department for Transport and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by local authority, Havering, end of June 2025 and 2026 (published 23 September 2026); HMRC, VAT Notice 708/6; Energy Saving Trust, Battery storage (updated 19 August 2026); Ofgem, energy price cap October to December 2026; European Commission JRC, PVGIS 5.3 (PVGIS-SARAH3 2005–2023, 4 kWp, 35°, due south, 14% losses, run 15 October 2026); OZEV, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021; ONS Census 2021, TS044 and TS054, Havering (E09000016), via Nomis; London Borough of Havering, Climate Change Action Plan 2024–2027 and news release on the Low Energy Visitor Centre; UK Power Networks, Licence Boundaries open dataset and fuse upgrade guidance; NESO, GIS Boundaries for GB DNO Licence Areas (May 2024); Energy Networks Association, EREC G98 Issue 2 (10 March 2025).