If you have bought a home charger since 30 June 2022, it arrived with charging hours already set. That is the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 at work, and for a Biggleswade household on an off-peak tariff it is most of what makes overnight charging cheap without anyone setting an alarm. This guide goes through what the regulations require, read on legislation.gov.uk and GOV.UK on 19 October 2026, and how to set a charger up around a tariff and, in summer, a roof. For the installation itself, see our Biggleswade EV charger installation page.
The rules apply to private chargepoints sold for domestic or workplace use in Great Britain. Public chargers, rapid chargers and chargers sold before 30 June 2022 are outside them.
What every new charger must do
GOV.UK’s guidance lists the requirements. A charger must have smart functionality, including the ability to send and receive information, and must be able to respond to signals that change when or how fast electricity flows. It must keep its smart functions if the owner switches supplier, keep charging if it loses its communications network, include a user interface and a measuring system for the electricity used and the time charging lasts, and meet security requirements consistent with the cyber security standard ETSI EN 303 645. The security requirements came in on 30 December 2022, six months after the rest.
Peak hours, as the law defines them
Regulation 10 requires pre-set default charging hours outside peak hours, and defines peak hours as 8am to 11am and 4pm to 10pm on weekdays. The regulations set no peak hours at weekends. When the charger is first used, the owner must be offered the choice to accept those default hours, remove them or set different ones, and must be able to change or remove them at any later time.
In practice, a car plugged in at 6pm on a weekday in Biggleswade will not start charging before the peak ends at 10pm unless you change the setting, and the exact start depends on the hours the charger was given at first use. The law sets no weekend peak, so what happens on a Saturday afternoon depends on those same settings.
The random delay
Regulation 11 adds a random delay. By default, a charger applies a delay of up to 600 seconds, of random length, at the relevant times, and it must be capable of delays of up to 1,800 seconds. The owner can cancel the delay, and it does not operate where the owner, or another user, has overridden it. A ten-minute wait at the start of an overnight charge makes no practical difference to a car that sits on the drive until morning.
When you want the car now
The default hours and the delay are settings, not locks. The owner can override them, and the regulations also require that the owner can override demand side response services, the signals that can shift when or how fast the car charges. If the car needs to be ready for an evening trip, you charge it then and accept the peak-time rate for that session.
Scheduling against a tariff
The saving comes from where the schedule sits. At Ofgem’s price-cap unit rate of 26.32p per kWh for October to December 2026, with Direct Debit, a 60 kWh charge costs about £15.79 on our arithmetic. Off-peak EV tariffs price overnight units well below that. Suppliers set those rates and change them at short notice, so we do not print them; check the window your tariff uses and set the charger’s hours to match. A smart charger on a single-rate tariff still works, but the schedule then saves nothing on price.
Where the sun fits in
Biggleswade has the highest PVGIS annual figure of the five Bedfordshire towns we cover. PVGIS 5.3 puts a 4 kWp south-facing array here at about 480 kWh in June, roughly 16 kWh a day, and about 141 kWh in December, roughly 4.5 kWh a day (our arithmetic). After a day’s share of Ofgem’s typical 2,500 kWh a year, about 6.8 kWh, around 9 kWh is left on an average June day. With a compatible setup, a charger can take that surplus while the car is home, then fall back to the overnight schedule. In December the roof makes less than the house uses, so the schedule does all the work. Our page on solar panels in Biggleswade covers the roof, and our earlier guide, EV on the drive in Biggleswade: where a battery fits in, covers adding storage.
The charger we fit
The EnSmart SmartBee-M is a 7 kW single-phase charger with a Type 2 connection, WiFi and Ethernet connectivity, RFID cards for access control and OCPP 1.6 support, on its published specification. At handover we demonstrate the app and the scheduling, so you can set the hours to your tariff before we leave. It draws 32 A continuously, and central Biggleswade sits in UK Power Networks’ Eastern Power Networks area, about 20.2 km from the nearest other network on NESO’s boundaries, so the installer notifies UK Power Networks. Our EV chargers page has the full specification.
Grants, briefly
At the 2021 Census, 70.2% of Biggleswade households owned their home (our sum), and owner-occupiers of houses get no chargepoint grant; that scheme closed in April 2022. Renters and people who own and live in a flat with private off-street or allocated parking can get 75% of the cost up to £500 per socket. Our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant has each case. Claims must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer; tell us your situation at the quote stage.
Sources: legislation.gov.uk, The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 (S.I. 2021/1467), Part 2, regulations 5, 6, 7, 10 and 11, read 19 October 2026; GOV.UK, Regulations: electric vehicle smart charge points (published 3 February 2022, last updated 23 April 2024), read 19 October 2026; Ofgem, energy price cap unit rate October to December 2026 (Direct Debit); Ofgem, typical domestic consumption values from 1 July 2026; European Commission JRC, PVGIS 5.3 (PVGIS-SARAH3 2005–2023; 4 kWp, 35°, due south, 14% losses; run 15 October 2026); EnSmart Power, SmartBee-M published specification; UK Power Networks, Licence Boundaries open dataset; NESO, GIS Boundaries for GB DNO Licence Areas (May 2024); ONS, Towns and cities, characteristics of built-up areas: Census 2021, Table 6c (Biggleswade BUA); GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026). Charge cost, per-day figures and ownership sum are our arithmetic.