JC
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| posted on 9/11/25 at 03:54 PM |
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PHEV Charging
Hi all,
My Daughter has bought a PHEV Kia. She's been running it for a few months without actually charging it. I want to give her the facility to use a
standard 3 pin plug in charger at home.
My first thought was to run a cable from a plug socket point she has near her window, through a small hole in the frame and give her an IP66 socket
outside, with a RCD. I know that these should be conforming with BS 1363-2.
However, it gets muddy there as some suggest you need a dedicated line to support this - rather than a standard plug - needing an electrician to
install it.
As you can plug the charger into a standard electric outlet regardless, is this really necessary or am I ok to basically give her a heavy duty outdoor
extension lead, plugged into a standard outlet indoors and a BS 1363-2 socket outside?
Thanks
JC
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Sanzomat
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| posted on 9/11/25 at 05:24 PM |
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If, as you say, you are just looking to charge using using a standard 13A plug (I'm assuming the car came with a suitable charging cable) then I
don't see any reason why a suitably located weatherproof socket shouldn't work. That is what I used to do when I had my Passat GTE. I
believe that most PHEV's that offer charging off a domestic plug charge at a maximum of 10A so shouldn't overload a 13A socket. My
understanding of UK building regs (Part P) was (might be out of date now so check) that suitably competent people (and there was no fixed definition)
are allowed to add an additional outlet to an existing circuit without it being notifiable work. If her consumer unit is reasonably up to date it
should already have RCD protection but check. If in any doubt get a proper sparks to do it though.
On my Passat it took about 4hrs at 10A to fully charge the small battery and that gave 30 miles. At the time my commute was 21 miles so I could get to
work and half way back on electric (and if I ran a cheeky extension lead out of the office window I could get home too!) I managed to do about 2/3 of
my total mileage on electric even only having a 30 mile range so it was well worth the trouble.
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Partofthechaos
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| posted on 9/11/25 at 05:24 PM |
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Surely a dedicated supply be only be needed for powering a hard wired wall charger, more than 13A? Like you say, all you are doing is installing an
external socket, if it is not hard wired and the car uses a normal 3 pin plug I can't see why it would need anything different to a normal
external socket. Not that I am an electrician.
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Sanzomat
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| posted on 9/11/25 at 07:54 PM |
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Not sure if the Kia does this but other definite advantages of plugging in a PHEV I found with the Passat PHEV included setting a timer (or can be
selected via a phone app) to pre-heat the car using the car's electric heater so it is nice and toasty when you get in and also to set it to
de-ice/de-mist ready for a given set off time. Great in the winter. Those things could only be done whilst it was plugged in on the Passat. IIRC you
could also set it to just charge at 6A instead of 10A e.g. if you were running it off an extension lead. It also monitored the temperature of the
charging cable and plug so if it got too warm it would shut off the charge or reduce the current draw.
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JC
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| posted on 11/11/25 at 06:15 AM |
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It seems the Kia only charges at a max of 3.3kw so I should be fine to do my plan!
Thanks for the help 
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