Before anyone talks about which charger to fit, a St Albans survey asks a quieter question: how much spare capacity does the house’s supply have? A 7 kW charger draws 32 A, continuously, for hours at a time. Whether that fits comfortably depends on your main fuse, what else is running and how the supply reaches the house. For most homes the answer is yes, without any work by the network. This guide explains how that is decided.
It matters to more people each quarter. DVLA counts 6,226 privately kept plug-in vehicles across St Albans district at the end of June 2026, up from 4,722 a year earlier, a rise of about 32%. For the charger itself, the cross-pavement trial and planning, see our page on EV charger installation in St Albans.
The arithmetic of 32 amps
A single-phase home charger rated at 7 kW, or 7.4 kW at the top of its range, draws 32 A for as long as it charges. Most homes have a 60 A, 80 A or 100 A main fuse in the network operator’s cut-out. On an 80 A or 100 A supply, 32 A leaves plenty of room. On a 60 A supply, a winter evening with an electric shower, an oven and a kettle running at the same time as the car could, in principle, push the total close to the fuse rating. That does not mean every 60 A home needs an upgrade. It means the survey looks at what actually runs together in your house. In St Albans district, 26.3% of the 58,990 households live in detached houses, about 15,500 homes on our arithmetic, and 30.2% in semis (Census 2021); larger homes with several high-draw appliances are where the survey spends longest on this question.
Load management: the usual answer
The standard solution is load management. In a Marshalswick, Jersey Farm or Chiswell Green semi, as in any St Albans house, a current sensor clipped around the incoming supply cable tells the charger how much of the fuse is in use. When the shower or oven comes on, the charger turns its own current down; when they go off, it ramps back up. The car charges a little more slowly for a while, and the main fuse never approaches its limit. Where it is needed, the sensor appears as its own line on the quote, as our guide to EV charger installation cost shows. Every new home charger sold in Great Britain has had to be smart since 30 June 2022, so most of the charging for the district’s 6,226 privately kept plug-ins can be scheduled overnight, when little else in the house is running, and load management covers the rest.
When a fuse upgrade comes in
Load management cannot help if the house’s own demand already leaves too little headroom, or if you want two chargers on one supply. Then the network may need to do some work. UK Power Networks, the Eastern Power Networks operator for St Albans, says it can upgrade a main fuse from 30 or 60 A to 80 or 100 A, and that where an installer has applied to connect the device, a fuse upgrade may not be needed. UKPN also says there are no costs for you to pay it if no upgrade is required; where one is, the cost and timing vary from project to project. A 22 kW charger is a different matter: it needs a three-phase supply, which most UK homes do not have, and many cars cannot accept 22 kW on AC, so for a St Albans driveway the practical ceiling stays at about 7.4 kW.
Looped supplies
Some houses share a single service cable with a neighbour, known as a looped supply. UKPN says a looped supply has to be re-planned with both households and may carry a charge. That can add time to a job. The survey checks for it, and if it is found, we tell you before any quote is agreed, because the next step involves UKPN and your neighbour as well as you. It is worth checking in a St Albans terrace using the AL1 to AL5 cross-pavement channel trial, where the charger is wired to the house’s own supply even though the car sits on the street. Terraces are 20.0% of district households (Census 2021).
Who tells the network
You do not. St Albans city centre is in UK Power Networks’ Eastern Power Networks licence area, well away from any other network, and the installer notifies UKPN of each new chargepoint. UKPN’s Smart Connect service, which it says only approved installers can use, lists EV chargepoint forms among those it handles, and for a house or small business up to 69 kVA whose supply can accommodate the equipment, it asks to be notified within 28 days of the installation. If UKPN needs to look at the supply first, that happens before the work, and we tell you.
If you are adding a battery or panels
A home battery or solar inverter adds its own paperwork with UKPN, and the survey considers the whole supply at once rather than one device at a time. In the Cunningham Avenue conservation area, where an Article 4 direction has withdrawn permitted development rights for solar PV since 3 November 2014, panels need a planning application before any of that. Our page on battery storage in St Albans covers that side, and our national guide, will your fuse take a 7 kW EV charger, goes further into the fuse question.
Sources: UK Power Networks, guidance on main fuse upgrades, installer applications and looped supplies (read 12 October 2026); UK Power Networks, Smart Connect (https://www.ukpowernetworks.co.uk/smart-connect, read 15 October 2026); UK Power Networks Open Data, licence boundaries (December 2024), and NESO, GIS boundaries for GB DNO licence areas (May 2024), town-centre point check; The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021; Department for Transport and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by local authority, St Albans, privately kept, 2025 Q2 and 2026 Q2 (published 23 September 2026), change our arithmetic; ONS Census 2021, TS044 accommodation type, St Albans (E07000240), via the Nomis API.