The law already has a view on when your car should charge. Since 30 June 2022, every new home chargepoint sold in Great Britain has had to be smart, and the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 set out exactly what that means, down to a definition of peak hours: 8am to 11am and 4pm to 10pm on weekdays. A charger sold today has to arrive with default charging hours that sit outside those windows. If you are planning an EV charger for your Esher home, that rule shapes how the unit behaves from its first night on the wall.
In Esher the where is usually settled: 41.0% of homes in Esher ward are detached and 23.7% semi-detached (Census 2021), so most households have a drive or garage beside the car. The open question is when, and on what tariff. It is a question more people in the borough are asking. DVLA records 6,523 privately kept plug-in vehicles across Elmbridge at the end of June 2026, up from 5,249 a year earlier, a rise of about 24% (our arithmetic). This guide explains the smart rules, what you control, and how the overnight sums work.
What the 2021 Regulations cover
The Regulations apply to charge points sold for charging cars and vans in Great Britain from 30 June 2022. They do not apply to public charge points, to rapid charge points of 50 kW or more, or to a plain cable that cannot send and receive information. A home wallbox on an Esher drive is squarely inside them.
The practical point for an Esher household is age. A charger fitted before mid-2022, perhaps by a previous owner of the house, may not have these features at all. If you have inherited one, note its make and model before the survey and we can talk through whether it is worth keeping.
The charger we fit is the EnSmart SmartBee-M. Its published specification lists WiFi and Ethernet connectivity and OCPP 1.6 support, which is what lets it take a schedule, report what it has done and work with tariff and car apps rather than one closed system.
The default hours, and what you can change
Under regulation 10, a new charger must come with pre-set default charging hours outside peak hours. Three things then sit with you:
- At first use, you can accept the default hours, remove them or set different ones.
- At any time afterwards, you can change or remove them, or set new ones if none are in place.
- On any day, you must be able to override the default mode and charge now.
Peak hours, as the Regulations define them, cover 9 of a weekday’s 24 hours, and the definition names weekdays only, so weekend charging is never inside a defined peak window (our reading of regulation 10). That matters less than it sounds, because the hours that cost you least are set by your supplier, not by the Regulations. The default schedule is a starting point; the one you want is the one that matches your tariff.
The random delay
Regulation 11 adds a smaller detail you may notice in the first week. A new charger must be able to start with a random delay of up to 600 seconds, about ten minutes, at each relevant time, such as the start of a scheduled charge. You, or another user of the charger, can cancel or override that delay. It also has to support a separate delay of up to 1,800 seconds whose maximum can be adjusted remotely over the network. If the car on your KT10 drive starts charging a few minutes after the time you set, this is usually why, and it is behaving as the law requires.
Overnight sums for an Esher drive
A 7 kW charger puts roughly 7 kWh into the car for each hour it runs. Two figures follow from that (our arithmetic):
- A 20 kWh top-up takes under three hours.
- A 60 kWh charge from close to empty takes about 8.6 hours, most of a night.
On price, the reference point is the Ofgem cap. At the October to December 2026 price-cap unit rate of 26.32p per kWh, a 60 kWh charge costs about £15.79 (our arithmetic on the average capped rate). Off-peak EV tariffs price overnight units well below that, which is the whole reason to schedule. We do not quote supplier tariff rates here; they change, and the supplier’s own page is the place to compare them. What we do is set the charger’s schedule to the window your tariff gives you.
Why scheduling suits a larger Esher house
The weekday evening peak, 4pm to 10pm, is also when a busy household cooks, showers and runs the dishwasher. A 7.4 kW charger draws 32 A continuously, and most homes have a 60 A, 80 A or 100 A main fuse. Load management, a sensor on the incoming supply that turns the charger down while the house is busy, protects the fuse whenever the two overlap. A charger that does most of its work overnight rarely needs to be turned down at all, so the car charges at full speed and the evening is undisturbed.
Esher is in UK Power Networks’ South Eastern Power Networks area, and your installer notifies UK Power Networks about the new chargepoint. There is nothing for you to send.
The daytime exception: solar
Scheduling is not only about the night. With a compatible setup, surplus solar can be sent to the car in daylight. PVGIS estimates a 4 kWp south-facing array in Esher makes about 485 kWh in June, roughly 16.2 kWh a day, and about 136 kWh in December, roughly 4.4 kWh a day (our arithmetic). On a June weekend with the car at home, the roof can do some of the charging; in December it mostly serves the house, and the overnight schedule does the work. Our page on solar panels in Esher covers what a roof here could generate.
Before the survey
Four things make the set-up quicker:
- Your tariff’s off-peak hours, or the tariff you plan to move to.
- Whether the car is usually at home in the day.
- Details of any panels or battery already fitted.
- Whether you own, rent or live in a flat, because that decides the grant position. Owners of houses get no grant; renters and people who own and live in flats can get 75% of the cost, up to £500 per socket, with private off-street or allocated parking. The claim must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer; tell us your situation at the quote stage. Our guide to who qualifies for the chargepoint grant sets out each group.
For the kit itself, speeds and connectors, see our guide to home EV charger installation.
Sources: The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 (SI 2021/1467), regulations 3, 10 and 11, legislation.gov.uk, read 19 October 2026; Ofgem energy price cap, October to December 2026 unit rate (Direct Debit); DfT and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by local authority, private keepers, 2026 Q2 and 2025 Q2 (published 23 September 2026); ONS Census 2021, TS044 accommodation type, Esher ward (Nomis); European Commission JRC, PVGIS 5.3 (4 kWp, 35°, due south, 14% losses, PVGIS-SARAH3 2005 to 2023), run 15 October 2026; UK Power Networks licence boundaries (UKPN Open Data, December 2024); GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); EnSmart SmartBee-M published specification, as listed by its UK distributor. Hours, costs and per-day figures are our arithmetic.