Commercial EV charger installation, with the grant paperwork done for you.
Staff, fleet and customer charging for Scottish businesses, from Aberdeen and Peterhead. OZEV authorised so we can claim the Workplace Charging Scheme on your behalf, and we check the Scottish schemes most installers never mention. Chargers from £800 + VAT, free site survey.
TrustMark licence 4205123. Aberdeen Trusted Trader rated 5.0. Registered in Scotland SC821028. Steven Watt also holds City & Guilds 2391-52, 2382-22 and 2365-03.
Commercial EV charging splits into three jobs that look similar and are not: charging your staff's cars, charging your own vans overnight, and charging your customers' cars while they spend money with you. They need different hardware, they fall under different rules, and they qualify for different funding.
Faithful Spark Electricians is an OZEV authorised installer, reference EVHS/WCS14254, which is what lets us claim the Workplace Charging Scheme on your behalf, plus a NICEIC Approved Contractor under enrolment 620239. This page is written for Scotland and we work from Aberdeen and Peterhead.
Chargers start at £800 + VAT. Everything above that depends on the distance from the board, the supply capacity and how many sockets you want now versus later. The survey is free and the quote is fixed and in writing. For the domestic side see EV charger installation Aberdeen.
Three kinds of commercial charging, and why the difference decides everything
Nearly every mistake we are asked to fix starts here: hardware bought for one of these and installed for another. The regulations, the grant and the payback all fork at this point.
- Typical hardware
- 7kW or 22kW AC, untethered, often in pairs sharing a supply.
- Dwell time
- A full working day, so speed matters far less than socket count.
- Funding
- Workplace Charging Scheme, and this is its core case.
- Regulations
- In scope of the 2021 smart charge point rules.
- The usual mistake
- Buying fast chargers nobody needs instead of more sockets.
- Typical hardware
- 22kW AC for overnight, DC where vehicles turn around mid shift.
- Dwell time
- Set by your duty cycle, not by the driver. This is a scheduling problem.
- Funding
- Workplace Charging Scheme, plus infrastructure funding aimed at fleets.
- Regulations
- In scope below 50kW, out of scope at 50kW and above.
- The usual mistake
- Sizing for the vehicles you have rather than the ones arriving.
- Typical hardware
- 22kW AC, or DC rapid where the stay is short. Payment built in.
- Dwell time
- As long as they are in your hotel, restaurant or car park.
- Funding
- Different schemes. Not the Workplace Charging Scheme.
- Regulations
- Generally out of scope as a public charge point.
- The usual mistake
- Treating it as a cost when it is a reason to visit.
Which one are you? Plenty of sites are two of them at once, and that is fine as long as it is designed that way from the start rather than discovered later. We establish this at the survey before anybody talks about hardware. Call 07304 027013 or book a free site survey.
The grant window closes 31 March 2027
The Workplace Charging Scheme pays up to £500 per socket and up to 75% of the cost. We are OZEV authorised, so we claim it for you rather than handing you a form.
Charger speeds and connectors, and which one your site actually needs
Speed is the thing everybody asks about and usually the thing that matters least. What decides the right choice is how long the vehicle is parked, not how fast the charger could theoretically go.
| Type | Power | Supply | Suits | Connector |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slow AC | 7kW | Single phase | All day parking. Staff cars, overnight vans. The cheapest socket count per pound. | Type 2, usually untethered |
| Fast AC | 22kW | Three phase | Shorter stays, customer parking, depots with turnaround. Many cars only accept 7kW or 11kW from it anyway. | Type 2 |
| DC rapid | 50kW+ | Three phase, often a supply upgrade | Short dwell. Forecourts, transport cafes, mid shift fleet top ups. | CCS, sometimes CHAdeMO as well |
| DC ultra rapid | 150kW+ | Almost always a new supply or substation | Destination sites on trunk routes. A different scale of project and cost. | CCS |
The honest version of "fast"
A 22kW charger only delivers 22kW if the car can take it, and most cannot. Many accept 7kW or 11kW AC regardless of what you install. The charger is rarely the constraint.
For a car parked eight hours, a 7kW socket is a full charge either way. Two 7kW sockets usually serve a workplace better than one 22kW, for less money and less supply.
Tethered or untethered
Tethered means the cable is attached. Convenient, and it fixes you to one connector type. Untethered means drivers bring their own cable, which suits mixed and changing fleets and shared workplace bays.
For staff and customer charging we normally recommend untethered. For a depot running one vehicle type, tethered is often the better call.
What we do with this. At survey we count the parking bays, ask how long vehicles sit and what they are, then work backwards to the smallest sensible specification. More often than not that means more sockets at a lower rating, which costs less to install and claims more grant per pound. Call 07304 027013 for a free survey.
The Smart Charge Points Regulations, and the chargers they do not apply to
Since 30 June 2022 a chargepoint sold in Great Britain for a domestic or workplace setting has to meet the Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021. The genuinely useful part is the list of what falls outside them, because that is where most commercial questions land.
In scope, so the rules apply
- Workplace chargers for your staff
- Depot and fleet chargers below 50kW
- Any smart chargepoint sold for a domestic setting
These must default to not charging at peak times (weekdays 8am to 11am and 4pm to 10pm), and apply a random delay of up to 10 minutes when charging starts, with the capability to go to 30 minutes. The user has to be told and be able to change it.
Explicitly excluded
- Public charge points, including those in public car parks
- Rapid charge points of 50kW and above
- Non-smart cables that cannot send or receive information
So a customer-facing charger in your car park, or any DC rapid, sits outside these particular rules. That does not make it unregulated, it means a different set of obligations applies.
Why this matters commercially. The randomised delay and the off-peak default are exactly the behaviours that confuse people when a new workplace charger appears not to start. It is not a fault, it is the regulation working. Knowing which category your installation falls into before you buy prevents both the wrong hardware and the wrong expectations. We tell you which of the three you are at survey. Call 07304 027013.
Not sure which category your site falls into?
That single answer changes the hardware, the rules and the funding. Free site survey across Aberdeen, Peterhead and the north east.
The grant everybody knows about, and the Scottish support most installers never mention
Being OZEV authorised is not a badge, it is the mechanism. The Workplace Charging Scheme can only be claimed through an authorised installer, and we do the claim rather than hand you a form.
Workplace Charging Scheme, UK wide
- Up to £500 per socket, raised from £350 on 1 April 2026.
- Up to 40 sockets across all your sites, one application per applicant.
- Up to 75% of the purchase and installation cost, so it is a contribution rather than the whole job.
- Closes 31 March 2027. This is the final year as things stand.
- You need dedicated off street parking and an OZEV authorised installer. Our reference is EVHS/WCS14254.
Open to businesses, charities and public sector organisations.
Scottish schemes, on top
The Scottish Government confirmed £17.8 million for a package of EV incentive schemes in 2026-27, delivered by Energy Saving Trust and designed to run alongside the UK schemes rather than instead of them.
The targeting is the interesting part for our patch: rural and island communities, microbusinesses and third sector organisations are named as priorities, alongside public and workplace charging.
That covers a great many Aberdeenshire businesses, and it is the part a national installer working from an England based playbook will not raise with you.
Criteria and budgets move, so rather than print numbers that date, we check the current Energy Saving Trust position against your specific situation as part of the quote, at no cost.
Worth knowing before you plan. Grant funding is claimed against sockets installed, so the design decision in the previous section directly changes what you can recover. Fewer, faster chargers frequently claim less grant than more, slower ones for the same spend. We model both before you commit. Call 07304 027013 and we will tell you what you are likely to be eligible for.
Supply, distance and what you will want in three years
The chargers are rarely the expensive part. The cost sits in the supply and the civils, and both are far cheaper to deal with once than twice.
Spare supply capacity
Every charger is a continuous load. We measure the existing maximum demand rather than estimate it, and compare it against what the chargers will add. This is the single most common reason a quote changes after survey.
Detail on how that assessment works is on our three phase work page.
Load management
Where the supply will not carry every charger at full output simultaneously, load management shares what you have across them. Frequently it removes the need for a supply upgrade entirely, which is the difference between a job and a project.
Distance from the board
Cable runs, trenching and reinstatement across a car park cost more than the chargers on many sites. Route matters more than metres: crossing tarmac you own is very different from crossing a neighbour's.
Ducting for phase two
If the trench is open, put spare ducting in it. Installing four sockets now with ducting for twelve costs a fraction of digging the same route again in two years, and it is the recommendation clients thank us for most often.
Bay layout and protection
Where the cable reaches, whether a driver can park either way round, bollards or wheel stops, and accessible bay requirements. Straightforward, and irritating to change after the concrete has gone in.
Where the supply must change
If the incoming supply needs upgrading that is SSEN's work and their timescale. We apply and coordinate, and we start it at survey rather than after the design, so the two run in parallel.
Who owns the charger in a leased or shared building?
On a multi let estate or a leased unit this is usually the thing that delays a project, and it is a lease question long before it is an electrical one.
What has to be settled first
- Whose supply is it fed from? Your demise or the landlord's common supply. This decides who pays for the electricity and whether sub metering is needed.
- Who owns the asset at lease end? If it stays, it may become a landlord improvement. If it goes, reinstatement is yours.
- Is the parking demised to you or common? Grant funding needs dedicated off street parking.
- Landlord consent for alterations, usually required in writing before work starts.
How we handle it
We are not solicitors and we will not pretend to read your lease for you. What we do is produce the technical facts the decision needs: where the supply would come from, what metering would be required, what the reinstatement would involve, and what it all costs.
That is usually enough for a landlord conversation to move, because most stall on nobody knowing the practical answer rather than on genuine disagreement.
Where a charger sits on a landlord's supply we design in sub metering from the start, so the electricity can be recharged accurately rather than estimated.
If you are fitting out at the same time, the EV supply belongs in the fit out design rather than bolted on afterwards. That is covered on our electrical fit outs page.
Get your site surveyed and your grant checked
Free survey, measured supply capacity, a fixed price in writing, and the Workplace Charging Scheme claimed by an OZEV authorised installer.
Commercial EV charging services
All certified under NICEIC enrolment 620239, all installed by an OZEV authorised installer, all quoted in writing after a free survey.
Workplace charging
Staff bays, single or three phase, designed around socket count rather than headline speed. Grant claimed on your behalf.
From £800 + VAT per charger.
Fleet and depot charging
Overnight AC or mid shift DC, sized against your duty cycle, with load management where the supply needs sharing.
Customer and destination charging
Hotels, restaurants, retail and visitor attractions, with payment and tariff setup so it earns rather than costs.
Grant applications
Workplace Charging Scheme claimed under our OZEV reference EVHS/WCS14254, plus a check of current Scottish schemes for your situation.
Supply upgrades and load management
Measured load assessment first. SSEN coordination where the incoming supply has to change, and load management where it does not have to.
Ducting and future proofing
Spare ducting and capacity designed in while the ground is open, so phase two is a cable pull rather than a second excavation.
Sub metering
Accurate recharging of electricity where a charger sits on a landlord's or shared supply.
Testing and certification
Full certification on handover, and periodic inspection afterwards. Commercial EICR from £300 + VAT.
On pricing. A charger starts at £800 + VAT. What moves the total is distance from the board, whether the ground has to be opened, and whether the supply can carry the load. Those are survey questions, not web page questions. What we promise is a fixed price against a written scope, the grant applied before you see the net figure, and variations agreed before they happen. The other figure we publish is a commercial EICR from £300 + VAT.
The OZEV reference is the one that decides whether you get the grant
Without an authorised installer there is no Workplace Charging Scheme claim. Every number below is on a public register.
Commercial EV charging questions we get asked
If yours is not here, call 07304 027013 and ask it.
How much is the Workplace Charging Scheme worth and when does it end?
Up to £500 per socket, raised from £350 on 1 April 2026, for up to 40 sockets across all your sites, covering up to 75% of the purchase and installation cost. It closes on 31 March 2027. You need dedicated off street parking and the work has to be done by an OZEV authorised installer, which we are, reference EVHS/WCS14254. We make the claim rather than handing you a form.
Is there any Scottish funding on top of that?
Yes, and it is the part most installers never raise. The Scottish Government confirmed £17.8 million for EV incentive schemes in 2026-27, delivered by Energy Saving Trust and designed to run alongside the UK schemes. The stated priorities include rural and island communities, microbusinesses and third sector organisations, which describes a lot of Aberdeenshire. Criteria and budgets change through the year, so we check the current Energy Saving Trust position against your specific circumstances as part of the quote rather than quoting figures that date.
Do we need 22kW chargers or will 7kW do?
For a car parked all day, 7kW gives a full charge either way, and two 7kW sockets usually serve a workplace better than one 22kW for less money and less supply. 22kW earns its place where dwell time is short: customer parking, or a depot with mid shift turnaround. It is also worth knowing that many cars only accept 7kW or 11kW AC no matter what you install, so the charger is often not the constraint.
Why does our new workplace charger not start straight away?
Almost always the regulations working rather than a fault. Chargepoints sold for workplace or domestic settings since 30 June 2022 must apply a random delay of up to 10 minutes when charging begins, and must default to not charging at peak times, weekdays 8am to 11am and 4pm to 10pm. Both are adjustable and the user has to be told about them. Public charge points and rapid chargers of 50kW and above are excluded from those particular rules.
Can we charge customers or staff for the electricity?
Yes, and on customer facing installations you usually should. That needs a chargepoint with payment or authorisation built in and a back office to handle tariffs and reporting. Where a charger sits on a landlord's or shared supply we design in sub metering from the start, so the cost can be recharged accurately rather than estimated. We set this up as part of the installation rather than leaving you to configure it afterwards.
What happens if our supply cannot take the chargers?
There are two routes and we price both. Load management shares the capacity you already have between the chargers, which on many sites removes the need for an upgrade entirely. Where an upgrade genuinely is needed, that is SSEN's work on SSEN's timescale, so we start the application at survey stage rather than after the design. The load assessment behind that decision is explained on our three phase work page.
Should we install more chargers than we need right now?
Install what you need and duct for what you will need. If a trench is being dug across a car park, the marginal cost of spare ducting and a larger sub main is small, and the cost of reopening that route in two years is not. It is the single recommendation clients come back and thank us for.
Do we need planning permission or a building warrant?
Usually not for a wall mounted charger on your own building. Free standing units, anything in a conservation area or on a listed building, and larger installations with associated equipment can need permission, and that is an Aberdeenshire Council question. Part P does not apply in Scotland and there is no Building Control notification here, because that is the English process. We flag at survey if we think your site needs consent.
Tell us how many bays and what parks in them
Call Steven on 07304 027013, or send the site address and roughly how many vehicles. We survey free, measure the supply, tell you which of the three kinds of charging you are, and come back with a fixed price net of the grant we will claim for you.
Faithful Spark Electricians, 17 Thomson Road, Peterhead, AB42 3FJ. Registered in Scotland SC821028. NICEIC Approved Contractor 620239. TrustMark 4205123. OZEV authorised installer EVHS/WCS14254. Grant values and scheme criteria are set by OZEV, Transport Scotland and Energy Saving Trust and change; we confirm current eligibility in writing before you commit. Prices exclude VAT and were correct at September 2026.