How to choose the right charger, what a real installation involves, how to fund it and what to do about the grid connection. For hotel, B&B, holiday park, workplace and fleet operators.
The most common mistake businesses make is choosing a charger based on the number they have seen on a motorway forecourt rather than what their customers actually need. Rapid DC charging at 50–150kW makes sense where drivers park for 20–40 minutes. It makes no sense for a hotel where guests park for eight hours.
The core decision is AC versus DC, and within AC, 7.4kW or 22kW.
The right choice for most small business destinations. A vehicle charging at 7.4kW for eight hours gains roughly 55–60kWh of range — enough to fully charge most current EVs from near-empty. Installation is straightforward on a standard single-phase supply, hardware costs are lower, and the Workplace Charging Scheme covers up to £500 per socket.
Appropriate for: hotels, B&Bs, guest houses, holiday parks, workplaces with employee overnight or all-day parking, restaurants with 3+ hour average dwell.
Delivers a full charge in 1.5–3 hours, depending on the vehicle’s onboard charger. Requires three-phase electrical supply, which many commercial properties already have. Hardware costs are moderately higher than 7.4kW. Useful where dwell times are consistent at 2–4 hours and guests need a meaningful top-up rather than a full overnight charge.
One important limitation: the vehicle’s own onboard charger caps AC charging speed. A vehicle with an 11kW onboard charger will charge at 11kW even connected to a 22kW unit. Check that your typical guest vehicles can benefit before specifying 22kW hardware.
Appropriate for: leisure centres, restaurants with 2–4 hour dwell, workplaces with shift patterns, car parks with half-day turnover.
DC rapid charging (50kW+) is appropriate for a small number of business types: motorway-adjacent sites, large fuel forecourts, fleet depots with vehicles on tight return schedules. For most hotels, B&Bs and holiday parks, the installation cost (typically £20,000–£80,000+ including grid connection works), ongoing DNO charges, and poor revenue-to-cost ratio make it difficult to justify. If DC rapid is relevant to your site, the DC rapid charging guide covers CPO partnership models in detail.
The right specification varies significantly by how long your customers park and what they need from the charging session.
Overnight stays perfectly match 7.4kW charging. Start with 2 units and duct for expansion. Use RFID for guest allocation, with per-kWh billing added to the folio. Research shows EV-driving hotel guests generate materially higher F&B spend when they don’t need to leave site to find a charger.
Hotel EV charging guide →One or two tethered units is sufficient for most. In rural locations with no other nearby charging, a charger can become the lead booking reason for EV-driving guests. Prioritise ease of use — tethered cable, app or auto-start, no RFID complexity.
Aim for EV-capable provision on 10–20% of pitches in the first phase, scaling to 50% within 3–5 years as EV adoption accelerates. Dynamic load balancing is essential at scale. Pitch-level billing via smart metering protects you from guests who run other appliances from the EV charging circuit.
All-day parking suits 7.4kW well. The Workplace Charging Scheme is specifically designed for this sector and covers up to 40 sockets per business. Employee benefit models — subsidised or cost-price charging as a staff perk — are increasingly common and support recruitment.
Dwell time drives the decision. Under 2 hours: 22kW gives a meaningful top-up. Over 2 hours: 7.4kW is fine. For restaurants where EV charging is primarily a draw rather than a revenue line, simplicity of operation matters — auto-start or contactless, minimal friction.
Overnight depot charging on 7.4kW handles most light van and car fleets. Heavier vehicles or tight overnight windows may need 22kW or DC rapid. Whole-fleet charging loads require careful DNO coordination and may involve significant grid connection works. A DNO pre-application engagement is strongly recommended before committing to fleet-scale infrastructure.
The number of units depends on three things: how many EV drivers you expect at any one time, how long they park, and how much electrical capacity you have available.
EV adoption among UK new car buyers reached around 22% in 2025. Not all drivers are EV drivers, and not all EV drivers will use your chargers (some will arrive fully charged). A conservative planning assumption for hospitality is that 10–20% of overnight guests in 2026 are EV drivers, rising to 30–40% by 2030.
Start with enough units to serve peak simultaneous demand, not average demand. For a 20-room hotel: if 20% of guests are EV drivers, that is 4 vehicles on a full-occupancy night. Two or three chargers, with ducting for a fourth, is a sensible starting point.
The most cost-effective approach is to install more groundwork and ducting than you need today, but only the charger hardware you can justify now. Ducting costs a fraction of excavation and cabling; adding charger units later to an already-ducted car park is straightforward. Retrofitting ducting to an underprepared car park later is expensive and disruptive.
For most small business EV charging installations, grid connection is not a separate project — your existing supply is sufficient and the installer connects new circuits from the existing distribution board. But there are scenarios where additional grid capacity is needed, and understanding them early avoids expensive surprises.
A formal application to your Distribution Network Operator is typically required when:
DNO applications for new or upgraded connections can take anywhere from 3 to 18 months, depending on local grid capacity and the complexity of works required. This is the most common cause of EV charging project delays. For any project involving significant load, start the DNO conversation before you finalise hardware or contractor selection.
Before reaching for a DNO application, check whether dynamic load balancing solves the problem. A load management system can share available capacity across multiple chargers intelligently, preventing any combination of simultaneous charging sessions from exceeding your supply limit. For many sites with four to eight units on an existing commercial supply, load balancing eliminates the need for a grid upgrade entirely.
If you want 22kW AC charging and your property has only single-phase supply, a three-phase upgrade is needed. Your DNO handles this. Lead times are typically shorter than a new connection — often 3–6 months — but costs vary widely depending on proximity to a three-phase network. Your installer can confirm your supply type from the incoming meter and distribution board.
Most online resources describe EV charging installation as if it is a simple process. For a single unit on an existing circuit, it can be. For a multi-unit car park installation with new groundworks, it is a construction project requiring proper planning.
Your installer assesses electrical supply, distribution board capacity, car park layout, cable routes, and whether groundworks (trenching, ducting) are needed. This should be done in person, not by phone. Good installers provide a written survey report. They will also confirm whether planning permission is required for your specific site.
Charger type, quantity, positions, cable routes, load management approach, back-office platform selection, and billing setup. This is where the decisions from the survey get turned into a project specification. Changes after this stage add cost.
If additional supply capacity is needed, the installer or a specialist DNO agent submits an application. This runs in parallel with equipment procurement. Budget 6–12 months for non-trivial applications.
Your OZEV-registered installer applies for the Workplace Charging Scheme (and any applicable Scotland or Wales-specific grants) before installation begins. Grant approval must typically be in place before works start.
Trenching, ducting, cabling from distribution board to charge point locations. For multi-unit installations this is often the largest cost component and the most disruptive phase. Plan for car park sections to be out of use during groundworks.
Charger units mounted, wired, connected to back-office platform, tested and signed off. You receive an Electrical Installation Certificate and commissioning report. RFID cards or app access configured.
Your installer should walk you through the back-office platform — how to monitor sessions, set tariffs, pull reports, and raise faults. Agree a support and maintenance arrangement before installation completes.
EV charging installation costs vary significantly by site complexity. The figures below are indicative ranges for 2026 UK installations; your installer will give firm quotes after a site survey.
| Scenario | Hardware | Installation | Typical total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single 7.4kW unit, existing circuit | £500–£1,200 | £300–£700 | £800–£1,900 |
| 2 x 7.4kW, minor groundworks | £1,000–£2,400 | £1,500–£3,500 | £2,500–£5,900 |
| 4–6 x 7.4kW, car park groundworks | £2,000–£7,200 | £5,000–£15,000 | £7,000–£22,000 |
| 22kW AC (three-phase supply needed) | £1,500–£3,500 | £2,000–£8,000 | £3,500–£11,500 |
| DC rapid (50kW), new connection | £15,000–£35,000 | £10,000–£40,000 | £25,000–£80,000+ |
All figures exclude VAT. Grants reduce the net cost for eligible AC installations. Grid connection or supply upgrade costs are additional and vary significantly by site.
Three government schemes are available for qualifying small business installations in 2026. Your OZEV-registered installer applies on your behalf — you do not apply directly.
£500 per socket, up to 40 sockets per business. Available to any UK business, charity or public sector organisation installing smart, tethered charge points. Covers hotels, workplaces, holiday parks and other destinations. Your installer must be OZEV-registered and the charger must be on the approved product list. Grant is claimed by the installer and deducted from your invoice.
Up to £500 per socket or 75% of costs. Specifically for businesses installing EV infrastructure for staff or fleet vehicles where there are physical or structural reasons preventing straightforward installation — for example, listed buildings or complex groundworks. Can be combined with the Workplace Charging Scheme in certain circumstances. Contact your installer to confirm eligibility.
Additional grant support is available in Scotland through Transport Scotland’s ChargePlace Scotland programme and rural island connectivity funds. Rural and island businesses in Scotland may qualify for higher grant percentages. Check transport.gov.scot for current schemes.
Wales-specific EV charging grants are available through Transport for Wales, with additional support for rural and Welsh-language community facilities. Check tfw.wales for current availability.
See the full grants guide for current rates, eligibility criteria and application process across all schemes.
You do not have to own your EV charging infrastructure outright. Three commercial models are common in the UK market, each with different risk and return profiles.
You fund and own the hardware, choose your own back-office platform, and keep all charging revenue. Maximum control and long-term return, but requires upfront capital and ongoing management responsibility. Best suited to businesses with sufficient capital, strong asset management capability, and high confidence in utilisation.
A Charge Point Operator funds, installs and manages the hardware. In return, they take a percentage of charging session revenue (typically 30–60%). You receive the remainder with no capital outlay. This model works best for high-utilisation sites where the CPO’s share still leaves meaningful income for the host. On low-utilisation sites, host income can be negligible. Read CPO contracts carefully — term lengths of 10–15 years and restrictive exit clauses are common.
You fund the hardware (possibly with grant support), but contract a CPO or managed service provider to operate the chargers, manage the back-office, handle faults and billing, and remit charging income to you. Lower ongoing management burden than owning outright, more revenue than a pure revenue share. Monthly management fees typically £30–£80 per charger.
EV Charge Guide does not take referral fees from CPOs, hardware manufacturers or installers. Our recommendations are based on what is appropriate for your site and sector, not on commercial relationships. The free expert consultation covers ownership model options for your specific situation.
Rural and island locations face a specific challenge: the nearest public charger may be 20–40 miles away, and public charging networks are thin or non-existent. This makes destination charging at rural hospitality and leisure businesses more commercially significant — and in some cases, eligible for additional funding.
For an EV driver heading to a rural B&B or holiday park with no other charging nearby, the availability of overnight charging is not a nice extra — it is a booking requirement. Research shows that 48% of EV drivers report that lack of charging at a property would cause them to choose elsewhere. In urban areas, that driver has alternatives. In a rural location, you may be the only viable option for 20 miles.
Rural properties often have lower available supply capacity than urban equivalents, and upgrades can involve longer cable runs and higher DNO costs. Load balancing becomes more important, not less. Some rural properties benefit from pairing EV charging with solar and battery storage — reducing dependency on grid capacity and enabling charging even during grid-constrained periods.
The Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund can support destination charging in underserved rural locations through local authority programmes. Scotland and Wales have separate rural charging support available through Transport Scotland and Transport for Wales. If your property is in a genuinely underserved rural location, it is worth contacting your local authority transport team alongside your commercial installation planning.
A common early-stage question: can guests just use a standard 3-pin plug from an outdoor socket? The answer is no, for several compounding reasons.
A proper smart charger, correctly installed and metered, removes all of these problems. The Workplace Charging Scheme grant of £500 per socket substantially offsets the hardware cost difference.
The free 5-minute assessment gives you charger type, number of units, estimated cost and applicable grants — based on your sector, site and electrical supply.
Start the free assessment Talk to an expert