What is home EV charging software, and why do I need it?

It’s a fair question! If you’re new to the EV industry, figuring out what you need and don’t need when you make the switch can be a bit confusing.

Do I need a home charger? Which one’s best? Do I need a specific type of cable? What’s the best network provider to use for public charging? There are a lot of questions; each of them important to getting the most out of your new vehicle(s).

And now a new question is coming in: the question of EV charging software. Luckily, we’re here to help you understand what home charging software can do for you, and whether you need it.

We’ll start off by covering the essential question you need to answer before looking into home charging software: do I need a home EV charger? Our short answer is, you'd be wise to.

According to ZapMap’s latest pricing index, charging on the road is as expensive now as it’s ever been. Those able to charge at home spend an average of £680 over 10,000 miles of home charging, compared to £1810 for those without.

And while we’ve come a long way in delivering over 50,000 of the 300,000 public chargers targeted in the UK by 2030, the consensus in the industry is that we’re still in the process of building our public infrastructure to facilitate drivers’ needs.

For those making the EV switch, having a home charger can be the simplest way to reduce the impact of potential availability issues and the relatively high costs of public charging.

When it comes to home EV charging software, our package offers three main benefits to home EV charger owners. That includes the ability to:

• Save Money
• Easy Expenses
• Make Money

Saving money means being able to schedule your chargers using our app, so you can charge at off-peak times (between midnight and 4am typically) to make use of cheaper tariffs.

We’ve written a whole blog on this subject, advising drivers on how to make the most of charge scheduling and pointing to the huge saving potential it provides. This feature alone resulted in £2,000 worth of savings over the course of the year for our CEO Wil David’s home charging, with a cost reduction of around £5.77 a night. With that money, he’s planning a whole family holiday! If you’re a home EV driver, there really is no downside to backing your systems with a feature like this.

The next thing our home charging software provides is easy expensing. Especially useful for those who use a work fleet vehicle and charge at home, this feature means getting in-app energy usage visuals, and itemised receipts at the end of charging sessions to send to your employers if charging a company EV at home.

And finally, our package offers the ability making money with your home EV charger. You can do this by renting out your driveway to friends, family, and neighbours, with the ability to set different tariff groups to open and close your charger for public use when you’re not using it.

What does all of this mean? Well, it essentially means you can level up your home charging to add some really useful features for absolutely free. There really is no catch, just the ability to save more without having to make any changes to your charging routine.

Previously, the ability to charge your vehicle at home has only been available for those with off-street parking, leaving around 20% of our current pool of UK EV drivers reliant on the public network alone.

Luckily, the emergence of low-tech but highly practical solutions could mean you’re able to install regardless.

If you’re a keen follower of EV news (or BBC reality shows), you’ll be familiar with the home charging alternative offered by Kerbo Charge. They recently appeared on Dragon’s Den, receiving funding from Dragon Deborah Meaden for their on-street cabling system that allows for cables to be run through the pavements.

Previously, the installation of home chargers for those without off-street parking on driveways has been hampered by poor cable management creating a trip hazard and obstruction for disabled pedestrians.

With these options, homeowners without driveways have access to installing home chargers to help drive down charging costs. Other brands like Charge Gully offer similar solutions, and are vying to make home EV charging more accessible.

In the meantime, however, those powering their EVs without access to home charging can make the most of the latest industry innovations like EV Roaming.

A new offering for Clenergy EV drivers, EV Roaming involves cross-industry partnerships between your driving app and all your favourite charging networks.

What these deals mean is that our drivers can access a whole host of different networks in one app, increasing the number of chargers available for use from thousands, to hundreds of thousands.

Currently, we offer charging at over 250,000 chargers across the UK and Europe through our EV Roaming features. And for drivers, more chargers means more options, and more opportunity to choose the cheapest possible price from your public EV chargers.

To recap, for those looking to make the EV transition, home EV charging is a must for keeping down running costs and managing the limitations of availability when charging on the public network.

And if you’re charging at home for those reasons, EV charging software is a no-brainer as a free-of-charge tool to get the absolute most out of your home charger.

Hopefully, this blog has helped pique your interest in turning your home charger from the ordinary to the extraordinary, with new features available at zero extra cost. If so, head to our submission form attached below to register your interest, and we’ll be in touch to get you onboarded to our home charging software systems.