BS7671 18th Edition And EV Charging

All EV (Electric Vehicle) charging units need to have a new component fitted to meet BS7671 British Standards. This update will affect all installers and manufacturers of EV charging equipment.

This update is to take into account DC (Direct Current) leakage from EV’s into your fuse board (consumer unit). It is believed that if a car has a DC leakage of greater than 10mA, it may cause some household RCD’s (Residual Current Device) not to operate under fault condition. As a result all the Rolec units have been updated to detect and prevent this leakage causing an issue.

Some manufacturers of electric vehicle charging equipment will not be updating their units, instead it will be down to the installer to fit a DC Leakage device at the source end. These RCD’s that detect DC leakage cost around £200-£300. Therefore because the Rolec solution incorporates DC detection in the unit, it is a much more cost effective option for the EV driver. Safety first. The new Type of RCD is a Type B

Be careful as their are 3 types

TYPE AC (house AC only)

Type A (good for when a DC monitoring device is installed as well)

Type B (this one is for when there is no DC monitoring device in the EV charger and costs around £200