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The first question is not which charger. It is whether your connection can carry one.
A 7 kW charger adds 31.8 A of continuous load to a single-phase 220 V connection — for hours, usually at night, on top of whatever the house is already drawing. Before anyone specifies a cable, three things have to be established: what your connection is actually rated for, whether the distribution board has a spare way and the capacity behind it, and what earthing arrangement the charger requires. A charger fitted to a supply that cannot carry it does not fail dramatically; it trips the main, repeatedly, at three in the morning.
This one decision constrains everything else. Most Pakistani homes are on a single-phase 220 V connection, which in practice caps a home charger at around 7 kW. Larger houses, plazas and commercial connections are often three-phase 400 V, which is what makes 11 kW and 22 kW units possible.
A single-phase WAPDA or K-Electric meter has one live conductor coming in. A three-phase meter has three, and the main breaker will be a three-pole or four-pole device.
A single main switch handling everything is single phase. Three ganged poles moving together is three phase.
Charger models are usually sold in both variants and they are not interchangeable. Confirm the supply before ordering, not after the unit arrives.
If the supply is three phase, the electrical side of the job gets easier rather than harder: an 11 kW charger asks each phase for only 15.9 A, which is less per conductor than a 7 kW single-phase unit. The arithmetic behind that is on EV charger wire size.
A charger does not run in isolation. It runs while the air conditioners are on, while the geyser heats, while the house is doing everything it normally does. The relevant question is what the total looks like at the worst moment, not what the charger draws by itself.
| Load | Typical draw | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 7 kW EV charger | 31.8 A | Continuous, for hours |
| 3.6 kW EV charger | 16.4 A | Continuous, for hours |
| 1.5 ton air conditioner | typically 6-9 A | Cycles with the thermostat |
| Storage geyser, 3 kW | 13.6 A | Cycles, resistive |
| General house circuits | varies widely | Lighting, sockets, fans |
Add a 7 kW charger to a house already running two air conditioners and a geyser and the total gets close to what many domestic connections are set up for. There are three honest ways out: commission the charger at a lower current than its maximum, which most units allow; charge at times when the rest of the house is quiet; or apply to upgrade the connection. Which is right is a question for your electrician with your actual bill and board in front of them.
The load is unusual, not just large.
Diversity - the assumption that not everything runs at once - is what domestic supplies are designed around. An EV charger undermines that assumption, because it genuinely does run at full current for hours. That is why a charger cannot be treated as just another large appliance.
A charge point is a dedicated circuit from the distribution board. Not a spur off a socket ring, not a connection into the nearest junction box, and not an extension of the geyser circuit because it happens to run the right way. That is true regardless of charger size.
The board needs a free way of the right type, and physical room for it. A full board means a board change or a small sub-board, which belongs in the quote from the start.
Shorter is cheaper and drops fewer volts. It also matters what the cable passes through - conduit, wall chases and hot outside walls all reduce what a given size carries.
Charge points are specific about the earthing arrangement they will work with, and some will refuse to energise without it. This is the item most often discovered late.
Route length deserves its own calculation rather than an estimate, because a cable can be comfortably large enough for the current and still drop too many volts over the distance. The working is on charger far from the board.
An EV charger survey goes badly when the answers are not in the room. Five things, gathered beforehand, turn a guess into a quotation and usually save a second visit.
| Bring | Why it decides something |
|---|---|
| A photo of the meter | Settles single phase against three phase, and shows what the connection is rated at |
| A photo of the open board | Shows whether a spare way exists and what type the existing devices are |
| The route, measured | Voltage drop is calculated from real metres, not from a look across the garden |
| The charger manual | Carries the required protection and earthing, which override any general rule |
| Your peak load | What actually runs together on a summer evening decides whether the charger fits |
The route measurement is the one people skip and the one that most often changes the answer. Walk it with a tape along the path the cable will actually take — along walls, up and over door frames, down to the board — rather than measuring the distance across open ground. A run that looks like 15 m across a lawn is regularly 25 m of cable, and on a single-phase charger circuit that difference can move the size. The arithmetic is on charger far from the board.
Pilone Cables makes cable. We draw copper in Lahore and sell it factory-direct, and we will quote you the cable for a charge point run at the day's rate if you send the size and the metres on WhatsApp. We do not supply chargers, we do not install them, and we do not certify installations — so treat this page as the cable-side background to a conversation with a qualified electrician, not as a substitute for one.