What Do You Need To Know About Home Stations For EV Charging?

The world of electric cars is seeing a rapid increase. This is why the charging stations and their demand is also increasing simultaneously.

The segment of home stations is particularly hot these days because reaching public stations for every recharge is practically not feasible. 

The CES is filled with passionate startups looking forward to making their way into the segment by presenting innovative solutions.

Pros of Home Charging Stations

Here are a few pros that these home charging stations offer over the public networks:

Ease Of Access

Access to a home station is not only easier but is possible round the clock. You can simply plug in your vehicle whenever you want without the need of going anywhere just to get your EV charged.

Fast Home Chargers Now Available

Recent improvements in the field have opened newer avenues and a larger number of faster home chargers are now being offered than ever before.

Ability To Earn Revenue

A unique feature that has been introduced by a startup named Blink is dubbed the V2G or Vehicle To Grid technology.  

What this technology does is that it charges the vehicle during the off-peak hours and then gives back energy to the grid from the EV’s battery pack thereby generating revenue for the owner.

Choosing The Charging Times Remotely

Another advanced feature of the modern-day home chargers is the ability provided to EV owners for choosing the time slot for charging their vehicles and for starting or stopping the process at their discretion.

Charging Multiple Vehicles Concurrently 

Charging multiple vehicles using one charger is another need that will soon be experienced in the upcoming days. 

This is why companies are already working on the production of chargers that can charge up to two vehicles concurrently

Cons Of Home Charging Stations

While the home charging EV stations offer several benefits, not all is sunshine. So, here are a few cons of these systems:

Expensive To Install & Run

While public charging stations are ready to serve customers, the home charging station needs to be built from the ground up. 

This means that unlike public chargers, which are maintained by companies and customers can simply switch to an alternative if one isn’t working, the entire infrastructure of home stations is entirely the responsibility of the owner.

As a result, the overall installation and maintenance costs of home charging stations are significantly higher than those of public units.

Relatively Slower

While newer and better technology for home charging stations is being developed on an annual basis, these units are still much slower when compared to public superchargers.

As a result, a home charger takes several hours longer to charge an EV with a similar battery capacity to one charged publicly using fast chargers.

Yet To Prove Their Longevity

For several years, major brands such as Tesla have provided public fast chargers to meet customer demand. These public chargers have thus proven their worth, but this is not true of home stations, particularly the newer and more advanced ones with distinctive features such as V2G.

This is why many people are still reluctant to install such a system after expending huge sums of money.

Final Verdict

When compared to the world of public fast chargers, home charging stations have a lot of room for improvement.

However, the rate at which startups are progressing appears sufficient to present unique and cutting-edge solutions within a few years.