Home charging without a driveway? Good luck! Municipalities give you a hard time (but you can do it here)

Municipalities  

Charging your electric car via a cable across the sidewalk: convenient, provided you don’t live in the wrong municipality. Only one-third of Dutch municipalities allow this form of home charging, according to research by Zonneplan. The remaining two-thirds prohibit cables on the sidewalk – even if they disappear neatly under a rubber mat or are sunk into specially constructed cable ducts. An ingenious but rather complex charging arm above the sidewalk is permitted almost nowhere. Only the municipalities of Haarlem and Zuidplas think it’s a good idea.

From cable mat to cable tray

There are plenty of ways to prevent tripping hazards: rubber cable mats, tiles with an integrated gutter or, in other words, a loading arm. In municipalities where it is allowed, the cable channel appears to be the most popular – a quarter of municipalities are experimenting with it or have done so in the past. Still, the cable mat remains the most accepted: 8 percent of municipalities allow this solution.

Own driveway, then you’re a bounty hunter

So the place where you live largely determines how easy it is to charge your car. In the Randstad, Zeeland and Noord-Brabant municipalities are relatively lenient with “sidewalk charging. In Drenthe, Groningen and Limburg, on the other hand, it is prohibited almost everywhere. Fortunately, many houses in these provinces do have their own driveway, so residents can easily install a charging station there.

Home charging pays off (especially with solar panels)

The financial benefits of home charging are considerable. Those who charge their EV at a public charging station pay about 1,530 euros per year with average consumption. Charging at home with a standard energy contract costs an average of 952 euros. With a dynamic contract, that amount even drops to 748 euros. Those who also have solar panels on the roof charge for free for much of the year. In short: those who can charge at home save hundreds of euros annually. But then you must have a charging station or live in a municipality where you can (safely) lay a cable across the sidewalk.

Also read: Why a Dutch experiment with charging stations that barely supply power is a huge success