Richard has a Easee One 2021 charging unit.

Which company installed it and would you recommend them?

CW Electrical Ltd (Bristol) installed the charger. They submitted a detailed quote and were very knowledgeable on the types of charger available.

How much did you pay for your unit and installation?

£497

Why did you purchase this particular unit?

It has a small form factor and fits neatly on our garage wall. It came with a free lifetime SIM subscription that allows remote management of the charger. It also connects to my home Wi-Fi network. The Easee app controls exactly when the car is charged and is simple to use. Lastly, there is an active development community where software enhancements can be raised and ‘bugs’ reported.

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List 3 or more points that you like about the charging unit.

• The unit design – the face cover can also be changed for another colour
  The free lifetime SIM subscription to allow for remote management
  The Easee user forum where there is a knowledgeable community willing to answer queries.

List 3 or more points that you don’t like about the charging unit.

• The rubber cover that protects the charging port did not fit correctly when first installed. However, after speaking to Easee Support in the UK, they sent me a replacement free of charge.

Outline any faults you have experienced with the unit.

No faults so far with the unit but 7.4 kW home charging was difficult to set-up. However, this turned out to be a problem with our car app (SEAT Connect – we own a SEAT Mii Electric). We resolved this by setting the current charging rate to maximum in the SEAT Connect app and synchronising this change with the car.

Provide your overall rating for the charging unit.

Tell us about your home charging routine.

We use the car for local shopping trips and consequently, we tend to charge the car about once a week to 80% charge. We schedule this charge in the Easee app to make use of the cheaper Octopus Energy Go tariff at night. However, given current petrol prices, we have started using the car for much longer journeys. In recent weeks, we have taken the car to Torquay, Dorchester, and Slimbridge and charged the car to maximum charge the night before each journey.

If you were buying a new charging unit now, what would you buy and why?

I would certainly look again at the Easee One charger. We would also consider the zappi charger as we are thinking about investing in solar panels for our house.

Tell us about your electricity provider and tariff. Would you recommend them?

Our electricity provider is Octopus Energy and we are on the Go tariff. We specifically switched to Octopus Energy after purchasing our car. We pay 7.5 pence per kWh between the hours of 12:30 and 4:30 at night. We also delay some of our other appliances (washing machine, dishwasher, etc.) to start at these times.

We are averaging about £1.30 to charge the car to 80% (starting from about 20% charge). The Easee app documents the home charge costs and in May 2022, it states we spent £8.70 on charging the car (see the screenshot below from the app). This equates to about 600 miles over the month; the car is pretty efficient and we are getting about 5.3 miles per kW.

Are you part of a charger-sharing scheme for those who don’t have their own charger?

No but we have considered it. The problem is that our charger was installed inside our garage. This would mean that one would of us would need to be here if someone (a neighbour) had booked a charge.

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