A home charger is the largest steady load most Egham houses will ever carry. A kettle or an electric shower draws hard for minutes; a 7 kW charger draws 32 A for hours, often all evening and overnight. So before anyone talks about tethered or socketed, the first question for a home in Pooley Green, Thorpe Lea or Englefield Green is whether the incoming supply has room for it. Our page on fitting an EV charger in Egham covers the wider job; this post is only about the supply.
For most Egham houses the usual answer is yes, with load management, and without an upgrade. Here is how that answer is reached.
The arithmetic: 32 A against your main fuse
Most homes have a 60 A, 80 A or 100 A main fuse, whether an Egham Hythe terrace or a Thorpe Lea semi. A charger running at 32 A takes more than half of a 60 A fuse, leaving 28 A for everything else in the house, about a third of an 80 A fuse, leaving 48 A, and about a third of a 100 A fuse, leaving 68 A (all our arithmetic). Thirty-two amps at a nominal 230 V is about 7.4 kW, which is why the same chargers are sold as 7 kW or 7.4 kW.
Whether the remainder is enough depends on what else runs at the same moment. A semi with a gas boiler and a gas hob is a different case from one with an electric shower, an electric oven and an immersion heater on timers. In the Egham Town and Egham Hythe wards, 40.4% of households live in semis, and the survey looks at exactly that mix in each one.
Load management comes before any upgrade
The standard answer to a tight supply in a Pooley Green semi with an electric shower is not a bigger fuse. A current sensor clipped around the incoming supply, known as load management, tells the charger how much headroom is spare. When the shower and oven are on, the charger reduces its own current; when they finish, it ramps back up. The car charges a little more slowly for an hour, and the main fuse never approaches its limit. Supply upgrades are for the minority of homes where load management genuinely cannot fit the demand, and where one is needed it appears on the written quote first. Our EV charger installation cost guide sets out how load management and the cable run are priced.
Shared and rented houses around Englefield Green
Egham’s housing has one feature that matters for the supply. In the Englefield Green East and West wards, close to Royal Holloway, 29.6% of 3,492 households rented privately and 19.4% rented socially at the 2021 Census. A shared house with several adults cooking, showering and running heaters through the same evening is where the 28 A left on a 60 A fuse can be used up quickly, so load management is close to essential there. The landlord’s written agreement comes first, because the charger becomes part of the fixed installation. Renters with private or allocated parking can get 75% of the cost up to £500, and residential landlords up to £500 per socket; 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.
Looped supplies
Some homes share their supply with a neighbouring property, known as a looped supply. UK Power Networks, which runs the network a few kilometres east of Egham, says a looped supply has to be re-planned with both households and may carry a charge. The detail for an Egham address is for its own network operator to set, and the survey is where a looped supply comes to light, not installation day. If you know your house shares a supply with next door, tell us at the start.
Which operator, and who tells them
The centre of Egham sits in SSEN Distribution’s Southern Electric Power Distribution licence area, about 3.2 km from UK Power Networks’ South Eastern area, so we confirm the operator from your postcode rather than assume it. Whichever it is, the installer notifies the operator of every new chargepoint and arranges any fuse or supply work. That paperwork is part of the job, not something you arrange.
Every new home chargepoint sold in Great Britain has had to be smart since 30 June 2022, which helps the supply as well as the bill: a charger set to run outside the evening peak spends less time competing with the cooker and the shower, which counts most in an Englefield Green shared house.
Why not 22 kW?
A faster charger does not solve a tight supply; it makes it worse. A 22 kW charger needs a three-phase supply, which most UK homes do not have, and converting a domestic supply is a significant network job. Many cars also cannot take 22 kW on AC, so the extra speed would go unused. For an Egham house on a single-phase supply, 7 kW with load management is the realistic ceiling, and for overnight charging it is usually ample.
What the survey checks
The survey records the main fuse rating, the age and condition of the consumer unit, the earthing arrangement and the route from the consumer unit to where you park. It also asks what else is on the supply now and what is coming: a heat pump, a home battery or panels all join the same calculation. If you are weighing up panels too, solar panels in Egham sets out what an Egham roof generates.
Sources: ONS Census 2021, TS044 and TS054, Egham Town, Egham Hythe, Englefield Green East (E05012893) and Englefield Green West (E05012894) wards, via Nomis; NESO, GIS boundaries for GB DNO licence areas (May 2024); SSEN Distribution, Who we are; UK Power Networks, main fuse upgrades and looped supplies; GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021 (S.I. 2021/1467).