Best Commercial EV Charging Stations

Introduction

Whether you are installing a single chargepoint, or a multi-site network, there are a few things you need to take into account when choosing the best commercial EV charging stations.

First of all you need to work out which charger type(s) you need. We have written a page all about chargepoint types here. In general if you are providing workplace charging, you are best looking at a 3 phase 16A or 32A universal Type 2 socket, giving power of 11kW or 22kW. If you only have a single phase connection at the charging site, you'll be restricted to providing power of 3.6kW or 7.2kW.

Then you need to work out what functionality you need:

• Is a 'dumb' chargepoint suitable? A 'dumb' chargepoint is essentially a dedicated car charging socket, without monitoring of kWh supplied, remote stop-start etc. If you go down this route, we recommend you choose an EO Genius charger where intelligence can easily be added at a later date, or an EVBox charger - EVBox currently offers the option to take an intelligent charger, with initial zero subscription and then revert the device to an autostart unit if intelligence is not required. Note that you may be prepared to supply electricity for free now, but as the number of electric cars on the roads increases, this is going to become expensive, plus it's only a matter of time before EV charging becomes a taxable benefit and monitoring of the electricity supplied is going to be essential - you don't want to have to rip your chargers out and start again, as we have already seen happening.
• What do you need to monitor - 'charger time' or kWh consumption, and, if kWh, does your charging infrastructure include MID approved kWh meters which you can use as a basis for billing?
• What is the upfront cost of installation, not only of the chargepoint, but also any civil works (foundations, cabling etc)?
• What subscription fees are there for monitoring, reporting, charger management? does the payment gateway take a % of the revenues your charger earns?
• How does invoicing and payment settlement work? Ideally it should all be automated; as the number of users increases, you don't want to be creating a mountain of manual billing, not to mention double entry bookkeeping.
• How are the chargepoints accessed - key, fob, RFID card, online account? Some sort of access restriction is important - you certainly don't want to find yourself powering the local EV community without some restriction on access.
• If your business provides vehicles which employees take home at night, you may need to provide home charging infrastructure and it's important to understand how charger monitoring, access and reimbursement will work, especially if the same charger is going to be powering other family cars alongside your company car.
• Is EV charging likely to put a strain on your grid connection? You don't want to find the lights flickering and the computers going down as the cars guzzle your capacity or push you over your max import limit, with all the associated penalties entailed - if this is likely to happen you should look at suppliers such as EO or EVBox who offer active load management, or you should install a battery and / or apply for a grid upgrade before everyone in your neighbourhood grabs whatever spare grid capacity there may be.
• Do the chargepoints conform to the OCPP (voluntary open charging protocol), allowing drivers to have a single RFID to access all OCPP chargepoints, thus making it easy for drivers using the chargers?
• Do aesthetics matter, do you need dual chargers mounted on a single pole, and can you brand the chargers with your company logo?
• How scalable is the solution and at what cost - while most businesses will want to start small with one or two chargepoints, and see what gives, the one thing we can be fairly certain of is that electric vehicle take up is growing exponentially, albeit from a low base, and so whatever capacity you install now will probably have to increase tenfold or more over the next few years;
• Is the charger approved for the Workplace Charging Scheme grant and what's its warranty (OLEV grants require 3 years)?

Which charging solution?

Our most popular commercial chargepoints are those made by Rolec, in particular the BasicCharge and SecuriCharge. These offer most of the features you need for workplace charging at a decent price. To manage these chargers online and collect payments for their use, you’ll need to add on the EV Charge.Online management software.

At a slightly more premium level, we recommend EVBox for its BusinessLine charger. This has comprehensive functionality and a fantastic platform for managing a fleet of chargepoints.

Comparison table

Request a quote

If you would like a quote for the supply and installation of an EV chargepoint, please call us on 0118 951 4490, email us at info@spiritenergy.co.uk or complete our online form:

We are happy to provide comparative quotes for more than one type of chargepoint. We can also assist in deciding which chargepoint is right for you.