For most Sydney homes, the honest answer is a 7kW single-phase charger, and it'll cost you somewhere between $1,200 and $2,500 installed depending on your switchboard and cable run. The bigger 22kW units get plenty of attention, but the vast majority of houses can't actually use that speed, and paying for it is money down the drain.

We install EV chargers across the Northern Beaches, greater Sydney and Newcastle, and the sizing question comes up on nearly every quote. Here's how we think about it, in plain terms.

The short answer: 7kW suits almost everyone

A 7kW charger adds roughly 40km of range per hour. Plug in overnight and you'll wake up to a full battery, even with a big daily commute from Frenchs Forest into the city. For a household doing 30 to 60km a day, that's overkill in the best way — you're never waiting on charge.

A 7kW unit runs on standard single-phase power, which is what most Sydney homes already have. That keeps the install simple and the price sensible. It's the default we recommend unless there's a specific reason to go bigger.

When 11kW or 22kW makes sense

Faster charging (11kW or 22kW) needs three-phase power. Plenty of newer homes in areas like Mona Vale and Charlestown have it; many older brick-and-tile places don't. If you've only got single-phase, upgrading to three-phase through Ausgrid or Endeavour can run several thousand dollars, and that changes the whole equation.

There's also a catch worth knowing: most EVs cap their onboard AC charger at 7kW or 11kW anyway. A Tesla Model 3, for example, tops out around 11kW on AC. Buy a 22kW charger and your car simply won't draw the extra — you've paid for headroom the vehicle can't use.

Where the bigger units genuinely earn their keep: two-EV households, tradies charging a ute and a car back-to-back, or anyone with very high daily kilometres who needs to top up quickly between trips. If that's you, and you've got three-phase, we'll happily spec it.

What we actually check on a quote visit

The charger price is only part of the job. The first thing we look at is your switchboard. Older boards — the ceramic-fuse and early plastic ones we still see all over the Northern Beaches — often don't have spare capacity or an RCBO slot for a dedicated EV circuit. A board upgrade can add $800 to $1,800, so we'd rather flag it upfront than surprise you.

We also check the cable run from the board to where you park. A tidy 5-metre run in the garage is cheap; a 25-metre run down the side of the house and around to a carport means more cable, more labour and possibly trenching. Distance is one of the biggest hidden cost drivers on any EV job.

A common mistake we get called out to fix: someone had a charger installed without load management, and now the whole house trips the main breaker when the oven, air-con and charger all run at once. On a single-phase supply that's easy to hit. A smart charger with dynamic load balancing solves it by throttling the car when household demand spikes — we fit these as standard where the supply is tight.

Charging off your solar

If you've got solar, sizing gets more interesting. Feed-in tariffs in NSW have fallen to around 4 to 7 cents per kWh, so exporting your surplus is barely worth it. Diverting that power into your car instead is one of the best returns you can get from a solar system now.

A 7kW charger pairs nicely here. A solar-aware charger can run in a solar-only or blended mode, charging the car mainly from panels during the day and topping up from the grid only when needed. If you're also weighing up a battery, the federal STC rebate on solar and the NSW battery incentive can make the combined setup stack up — we'll run the numbers for your roof and usage rather than quote generic payback figures.

One metering note: if you're on a time-of-use plan and want to charge cheaply overnight, a scheduling function on the charger matters more than raw speed. Cheap off-peak power plus a 7kW unit will beat expensive daytime charging at any speed.

Get the right size for your home

The right charger depends on your car, your daily driving, your supply, and whether you're pairing it with solar. In most cases that lands on a 7kW single-phase unit — but the switchboard, cable run and load on your supply are what decide the real cost.

Book a free on-site assessment with our team and we'll check your board, measure the run and give you a fixed-price quote for the size that genuinely fits your home across Sydney, the Northern Beaches and Newcastle.