DVLA records about 3,513 privately kept plug-in vehicles across Woking borough at the end of June 2026, up from 2,679 a year earlier. Our arithmetic puts that at about 31% more in a single year, and it counts cars registered to households, not company fleets. If one of them is on your drive in Horsell or Knaphill, or about to be, the question changes from “should I get a battery?” to “how do the car, the battery and the panels share one supply?”. This post answers that for Woking homes; for the battery itself, its size and its cost, see our page on home battery storage in Woking.
A charger, a battery and a set of solar panels are three separate decisions that happen to share a consumer unit, and you can have any one without the others. The aim here is to show where they help each other in Woking’s housing, where they do not, and which parts of the paperwork and the VAT treat them differently.
Reading the Woking vehicle numbers carefully
The Department for Transport’s table VEH0142 counts plug-in vehicles of every body type together, battery electric, plug-in hybrid and range-extended, by the registered keeper’s address. We use the privately kept figure because company cars are counted wherever the company registers them, which can say little about local households. Woking’s figure covers the whole borough, from St John’s and Knaphill to Byfleet and Pyrford, not the town centre alone. It shows EV ownership among Woking households rising quickly from a modest base. It does not show how many homes have a charger, and it tells us nothing about yours.
Charger first: what a Woking supply can take
Most EV owners start with the charger, and the supply is the first question. A 7.4 kW charger draws 32 A continuously. Most homes have a 60 A, 80 A or 100 A main fuse, and a current sensor on the incoming supply, known as load management, lets the charger back off when the oven and shower are on, which usually avoids a supply upgrade. Every new home chargepoint sold in Great Britain has had to be smart since 30 June 2022. For a Woking household adding a battery as well, the battery’s charging current joins the same calculation, which is why we look at all three together rather than charger now and battery later.
Where the grant applies in Woking’s housing
Woking’s housing decides who gets help with the charger. Census 2021 counts 41,439 households in the borough: 30.5% detached, 24.7% semi-detached, 18.5% terraced and 26.0% flats or maisonettes. The OZEV grant, as changed from 1 April 2026, pays 75% of the purchase and installation cost, up to £500 per socket, to renters and to people who own and live in flats, where there is private off-street or allocated parking; it is claimed through an OZEV-authorised installer. Owners of houses get no grant, because the scheme that covered them closed in April 2022.
So in Woking the households most likely to qualify are the 26% in flats, including town-centre schemes such as Victoria Square with its 429 apartments, and the 21.1% who rent privately, provided they have the parking. In a flat, the freeholder’s consent usually comes first. Who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant sets out the detail; the live schemes run to 31 March 2027.
What solar adds to an EV in Woking
Solar adds daytime generation. PVGIS 5.3, the European Commission’s solar calculator, puts a 4 kWp array facing due south at the Woking town-centre point at about 3,984 kWh a year: about 483 kWh in June but about 136 kWh in December. Spread across each month, our arithmetic gives roughly 16 kWh a day in June and about 4.4 kWh a day in December. In summer a car parked at home during the day can take a real share of that. In winter there is little left once the house has taken its share, so most winter charging in Woking comes from the grid whatever you fit. These are figures for an unshaded south-facing roof, not a survey result.
What a battery adds to an EV in Woking
A battery moves energy in time. Charged from the panels during the day, or from the grid on a cheaper overnight rate, it covers the house in the evening, so the car and the evening peak are not competing for the most expensive units. What it rarely does well is fill a car. The Energy Saving Trust says a typical home battery might be 10 kWh. As a sense of scale, our arithmetic puts a 60 kWh charge at Ofgem’s October to December 2026 price-cap unit rate of 26.32p per kWh at about £15.79, and off-peak EV tariffs price overnight units well below that. For most Woking EV households the sensible pattern is the car charging overnight from the grid and the battery serving the house.
Paperwork and VAT for a Woking EV, battery and solar
The installer notifies the network operator of every new chargepoint and every battery, and any generating system above 16 A per phase (3.68 kW) needs a G99 approval before work starts. Confirm which operator serves your own Woking postcode with the Energy Networks Association’s lookup rather than relying on any web page, ours included. The VAT differs between the three: solar panels and batteries on a home are zero-rated until 31 March 2027, reverting to 5% from 1 April 2027, while a home EV charger installation is standard-rated at 20%, because chargepoints are not on HMRC’s energy-saving materials list. If one visit covers all three, the charger should be on its own line.
Solar Together Surrey, in which Woking takes part through the council’s Planet Woking campaign, has covered EV charge points as well as panels and batteries, and around 2,250 Surrey residents have had installations through it since 2021. It runs in rounds, so check what is open; a group-buy offer and an independent quote on the same specification are worth comparing.
A Woking checklist before you buy
- Your main fuse rating, and whether load management is in the charger quote.
- Off-street parking, and in a flat, the freeholder’s consent.
- Your roof: orientation and shading decide whether panels are worth adding.
- Your evening use, which sets the battery size, not the car’s battery.
- Separate lines for charger, battery and panels, so the VAT is clear.
Our page on solar panels in Woking covers the roof side, and solar panels in Surrey the county picture.
Sources: Department for Transport and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by local authority (published 23 September 2026, read 15 October 2026); ONS Census 2021, TS044 accommodation type via Nomis, and How life has changed in Woking; PVGIS 5.3, European Commission Joint Research Centre, PVGIS-SARAH3 2005–2023; Energy Saving Trust, Battery storage (updated 19 August 2026); Ofgem price cap, October to December 2026; HMRC VAT Notice 708/6; GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021; Energy Networks Association, EREC G98 Issue 2 (10 March 2025); Woking Borough Council newsroom and Surrey County Council, Solar Together Surrey.