Guides / Guide

Charging an electric car at home in South Africa

Most electric car owners do nearly all their charging at home, overnight, which is the cheapest and easiest way to run an EV. Here is what that involves in South Africa.

Do you need a wall charger?

You can charge from a normal plug, but a plain three-pin socket is a poor long-term plan. Household sockets are not designed to run flat out for hours every night, and motoring press have warned that relying on a portable charger is a fire risk. A proper wall charger on its own circuit, fitted by a registered electrician, is the safe approach.

What it costs

Quotes vary a lot, so get two or three. As a guide:

  • 7 kW charger, single phase: one 2026 installer guide puts the fully installed price at roughly R17 000 to R35 000, including the unit and a certificate of compliance. An older guide quoted R9 000 to R18 000, so prices have moved and so has the range of what gets included.
  • 22 kW three-phase charger: the unit and installation cost noticeably more, and if your home does not have a three-phase supply, bringing one in is a separate application to your municipality and can add tens of thousands of rand.
  • Certificate of compliance: typically R1 500 to R2 500 and part of a legal installation.
  • Where the money goes: the cost depends heavily on the distance from your distribution board to the parking spot, spare capacity in the board, and whether cables need trenching.

Most South African homes have a single-phase supply, which limits a home charger to about 7 kW. That is enough: 7 kW adds roughly 40 to 45 km of range per hour of charging, so an overnight session refills most of a daily commute many times over.

What it costs to charge

At home you pay your normal electricity rate. In 2026 that is about R2.70 per kWh on Eskom’s Homelight 20A tariff and around R3.30 to R5.10 per kWh on municipal tariffs in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Tshwane, depending on how much you use. Many articles use roughly R4 per kWh as a typical figure. See the running costs guide for what that means per kilometre.

If you are on a time-of-use tariff, charging overnight can be cheaper still. Check your municipality.

Load shedding

Eskom last load shed on 16 May 2025, and by August 2026 had gone more than 440 days without it. That is a big change, but many households still have backup, and it is sensible to plan for it coming back.

  • A car that is plugged in at 7 kW plus the rest of your home can pull a lot of power at once, more than a small inverter and battery can supply. A 5 kVA inverter and a small battery generally cannot run a 7 kW charger.
  • If you want to charge through outages, you need an inverter and battery sized for it, or a charger you can throttle to a lower current.
  • If you do not have backup, the practical fix is simple. Charge when the power is on, and keep the car above about 40% so that one missed night does not matter.

Solar

Charging from solar works best if you are home in the day or can program the charger to follow the sun. If the car is away all day, solar helps less than people expect, and a battery to carry it into the evening adds a lot of cost. Do the sums for your own usage before buying panels just for the car.

Apartments and complexes

If you park in a shared area, you will need approval from your body corporate or landlord, and a dedicated, metered supply. If that is not possible, charging at work or at public chargers may work, or a plain hybrid may suit you better. Our PHEV or EV guide covers that choice.

Checklist before you buy a charger

  1. Get your electrician to check your distribution board and supply.
  2. Ask what the certificate of compliance covers.
  3. Check what your car’s onboard charger accepts (see its AC charging figure on the comparison page). A 22 kW wall charger gives no benefit to a car that accepts only 7 kW.
  4. Ask about surge protection, which is worth having where outages are common.