I intend to install an EV charger at our holiday cottage which we rent out. Is there any way to ensure that only people renting the cottage can make use of the EV charger? It must be absolutely foolproof, so enforcing access via a smartphone (for example) may not be quite foolproof enough.
I note that the charger can be had with a physical push button but it isn’t exactly clear to me what that button is for?
Last question: The prebuilt charger has a socket whereas it looks like the kit can only be had with directly connected cables. Is there a reason for this?
The physical switch can be used to enable / disable the charge point or override a charging timer. If you want to secure the unit I would recommend an option for the option without the switch then the unit can be enabled or disabled via the local WiFi network. Assuming you will be giving guests access to the holiday cottage WiFi, once connected to the holiday cottage WiFi then will be able to connect the charge point and enable it. Or you could set up a remote connection to do it for them.
I do think it’s unlikely that anyone not staying in the cottage would attempt to use it, someone would need to plug in for 1hr to steal about £1 max of electricity, the risk vs reward is not good! Fitting a gate or CCTV would probably be more effective. I would recommend keeping the charging experience simple for guests allowing them to just plug and play to charge.
We decided to develop the EmonEVSE with a non-tethered cable as our pre-built OLEV certified unit since this is the most flexible option. If you want a tethered unit you can just leave the cable plugged in. I would recommend a non-tethered option for a holiday cottage since this will allow guests to charge EV’s with different charging connectors e.g older Nissan Leafs, mitsubishi PHEV