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My experience of setting up a home charger for Jaguar I-Pace

23rd December 2021, 17:40 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

Making all the necessary changes at my Bangalore apartment to set up the home charger would cost me over Rs 1.5 lakh.

BHPian sudhirsen recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

All this started with me deciding to buy a Jaguar I-Pace. I was blown away when I drove it. I saw this in the showroom. I took the same with ivory interiors. The test drive and experience is another story.

With the limited availability of public charging setup, I decided to set up a home charger.

Now, the I-Pace comes with two home chargers, a 7 KW charger from Tata Power that they will set up, and a charger unit that I can directly plug into a 16A home power plug.

So, two weeks before the delivery of the car, I decided to set up the home charger at the Bangalore apartment.

Here starts the problem. The Tata Power guys came for inspections as coordinated by Jaguar, so a series of changes were required.

I had an approved load of 3KW, which must be changed to 10 KW. They asked to reach out to BESCOM.
Since the apartment is on the third floor, a power cable has to be drawn from the meter. That was costing me an additional 85k.
The Bescom contractor came, the single-phase connection has to be upgraded to three-phase. The meter has to be changed - all together, including service charges, another 75k.
And before all of these, I need to change the electricity connection to my name. It was still in the builder's name.

So then I thought, let me see how much it will cost me to set it up at my house in Thrissur, Kerala. It already had an approved load of 9 KW and was already three-phase. So again, the Tata Power inspector came from Cochin.

Here are his findings:

I have to apply for a load enhancement and get the load enhanced from 9KW to 17 KW.
My car porch was 27 meters away. Only 10 meters of wiring was inclusive of the original charger. So I have to pay additional 17 meters and that's around 12k.
KSEB must change the service cable from the electric post to my main meter to a 10mm XLPE cable.
KSEB must change the wiring from the meter to the fuse to a 10mm cable.
The electrician has to change the three main fuses to a 64A fuse.

None of these I could achieve in 2 weeks. So I took the delivery of the car in Bangalore and drove down to Thrissur the next day with the assumption that I could still charge at home using the 16A charger.

On the way, I charged at the Zeon Chargers, which was a wonderful 50KW charger. I made multiple long trips and Zeon chargers continue to help me.

Once I reached home, I figured out that the charger provided had an industrial plug. So I could not charge at home, and I had 80 km of range remaining.

I looked in the map and figured out that there is a KSEB provided charger and Tata Power-provided chargers in Thrissur. So that night at 10, I went to the Tata showroom to charge, expecting that no one would be there. The place was dark. But the security opened the gate when I said I was here to charge. I charged there for 2 hrs, another Nexon came for charging, and I moved out by that time.

With sufficient battery in place, I got my electrician the next day to find an adaptor for the industrial plug, and he also got me a 20 meters power cable to full from the AC socket in my living room.

It took 35 hrs to charge. Then I decided to fix the charger in Thrissur. The next day I went to KSEB to get the load enhanced; they said I needed to fix the wiring and charger before they came for inspection. So I called up the Tata guys, and they came a few weeks later and fixed it. I could not find the 10mm XLPE cable that KSEB asked for, so I bought a 25 mm ABC cable. The cable cost me around 175 Rs per meter. Then, since the load went beyond 10KW, I had to pay another 18k to KSEB. And since the porch was 27 meters away, I had to pay an additional 12k to Tata Power for the extra 17 meters. Still good, approximately around 40k.

But after a month of purchasing the car, I had the final charging station at home. Till that time, I charged from the 16A charger, and to be frank. I never found it challenging.

I pulled a standard 4.5 mm power cable to the parking spot at the Bangalore apartment, and I used that for charging. That seems to be more than sufficient for city travel. It cost me 10k instead of 1.5 lakh.

Now you will think, was it worth all this trouble to get an electric car? Believe me, this was the best thing that ever happened. You need to drive an I-Pace to feel the G force, the SUV that behaves like a sports car. More about that later.