Half of the households in the Virginia Water ward live in detached houses, 50.3% at the 2021 Census, and three in four own their home. Many of those houses now have an electric car on the drive, and the question we hear next is whether the car changes the case for a home battery. Mostly it does not: the battery is sized to the house, and the car is a separate load with its own best time to charge. The home EV charger in Virginia Water page covers the charger itself, the Wentworth Estate step and the network operator.
This post sets out the sizes involved, in our own arithmetic on published figures, and where a battery does and does not help a Virginia Water household that also runs an EV.
Three sizes that are easy to mix up
There are three numbers to keep apart. The first is the car. Our EV page uses a 60 kWh battery as its worked example, which a 7 kW charger fills from near-empty in roughly eight to nine hours. The second is the house. Ofgem’s typical household uses 2,500 kWh a year, which is about 6.8 kWh a day on our arithmetic, though a large Wentworth or Callow Hill house may use well above that, and your own bills show what yours does. The third is the home battery. The Energy Saving Trust says a typical home system might be 10 kWh, and that there is no exact formula for working out what you need.
Put side by side, a 10 kWh battery is a sixth of that 60 kWh car charge, and about one and a half days of the typical house’s use (both our arithmetic). On a large Virginia Water house that uses more than Ofgem’s figure, the battery covers even less of a day. Either way, it is on the scale of the house, not the car. That is the whole argument for sizing it to your evenings.
What the Runnymede figures do and do not say
DVLA counts 2,850 privately kept plug-in vehicles across Runnymede borough at the end of June 2026, up from 2,161 a year earlier. On our arithmetic that is 689 more, about 32% in twelve months. The figure covers the whole borough, from Egham and Addlestone to Virginia Water, and counts battery-electric cars, plug-in hybrids and range-extenders together, registered to private keepers rather than companies. It shows plug-in ownership among Runnymede households rising quickly. It does not show how many homes have a charger or a battery, and it says nothing about your house.
Where a battery earns its place beside an EV
A home battery moves energy in time. Charged from panels during the day, or from the grid at an off-peak rate, it supplies a Virginia Water house through the evening, when grid power usually costs most. A smart charger, which every new home chargepoint sold in Great Britain has had to be since 30 June 2022, can fill the car overnight at the same cheap rate. So in a typical pattern the two do not compete: the car charges straight from the grid while you sleep, and the battery covers the hours between getting home and going to bed.
What a battery rarely does well is fill the car. Emptying a 10 kWh battery into a 60 kWh car adds a sixth of a charge and leaves the house on grid power for the rest of the evening. If you have panels, or plan them, our page on battery storage in Virginia Water covers sizing for the house. If panels are already on your roof, adding a battery to existing solar in Virginia Water covers the retrofit.
One supply, three loads on a large house
The charger, a battery and the rest of a big house share one main fuse. A 7 kW charger draws 32 A, and keeps drawing it for hours. Most homes have a 60 A, 80 A or 100 A main fuse. On a detached house around Wentworth or Knowle Hill with several showers and ovens on one supply, the survey adds up what could run at the same time, then adds the battery’s charging current. A current sensor on the incoming supply, known as load management, slows the charger while other loads are on and usually avoids an upgrade. The village centre sits in SSEN Distribution’s Southern Electric Power Distribution area, but only about 1.7 km from UK Power Networks’ South Eastern area, so we confirm your postcode before anything is notified.
Planning the two together matters most where the parking is far from the house. On a long Wentworth drive or a detached garage, the cable run is the item that varies most, and a battery and a charger may want different positions. Our EV charger installation cost guide explains how that run is priced.
Wentworth and Virginia Park add their own sign-offs
On the Wentworth Estate, the Wentworth Estate Roads Committee must approve all works, including permitted development, and its approval is separate from anything Runnymede Borough Council decides. A charger on an outside wall, a battery on an external wall and any trench across a drive all go to the Committee. At Virginia Park, the former Holloway Sanatorium is Grade I listed, so anything fixed to its fabric needs listed building consent, and the national permitted development right for a wall-mounted charger does not apply within the curtilage of a listed building. In both places we build the approval step into the timetable before ordering kit.
VAT and grants treat the two differently
A residential battery is zero-rated for VAT until 31 March 2027, reverting to 5% from 1 April 2027. A home EV charger is not on HMRC’s energy-saving materials list, so it carries 20%. If one visit covers both, the charger should be on its own line. Grants differ too. Owner-occupiers of houses get no chargepoint grant; the scheme that covered them closed in April 2022. In the Virginia Water ward, 14.5% of households live in purpose-built flats and 20.4% rent privately; flat owners and renters with private or allocated parking can get 75% of the cost up to £500; see who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant. Claims must be made through an OZEV-authorised installer; tell us your situation at the quote stage.
What to bring to a survey
Bring a year of electricity bills, so the battery can be sized to what your house uses rather than to the car. Bring your car’s battery size and how many miles a week you drive. Tell us whether the Committee or Virginia Park’s management is involved, and whether you want backup: a standard grid-tied battery shuts down with the grid, and backup has to be designed in and priced separately.
Sources: DfT and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by keepership and local authority, 2026 Q2 and 2025 Q2 (published 23 September 2026); ONS Census 2021, TS044 and TS054, Virginia Water ward (E05012899), via Nomis; Energy Saving Trust, Battery storage (updated 19 August 2026); Ofgem, Typical Domestic Consumption Values from 1 July 2026; Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 (S.I. 2021/1467); HMRC VAT Notice 708/6; GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); NESO, GIS boundaries for GB DNO licence areas (May 2024); SSEN Distribution, Who we are; Wentworth Estate Roads Committee, Planning (wentworthestate.org.uk/planning); Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, Schedule 2, Part 2, Class D (legislation.gov.uk, read 19 October 2026).