Commercial EV Charger Installation Cost UK (2026 Guide)

There is no single price for commercial EV charger installation — but there are honest working ranges. Installer cost guides in 2026 put a single 7–22kW AC commercial chargepoint at roughly £1,500–£4,000 installed, and a dual-socket AC unit at £2,500–£5,000 (Excel Energy, last checked July 2026). DC rapid charging is where numbers diverge sharply: the same guide quotes £8,000–£15,000 for a 50kW unit, while We Power Your Car puts DC installations from £30,000 upwards — a gap that mostly reflects what each figure includes (hardware only, versus hardware plus civils and grid connection). The Workplace Charging Scheme still takes up to £500 per socket off eligible workplace installations. The real cost driver is your site, not the charger — which is why every credible quote starts with a survey.

What commercial installation costs in 2026

Ranges from named installer cost guides, last checked July 2026. They disagree because scope differs — treat them as brackets, not quotes.

Note that 22kW figures assume you already have a three-phase supply. Many smaller commercial premises don’t, and without one a 22kW unit will simply run at single-phase speeds — the installer you choose will confirm this when they assess your supply and distribution board.

Per-socket cost falls with scale. One 2026 model for a 5–10 charger workplace site puts each 7kW charger at £1,200–£2,000 plus £3,000–£8,000 of shared infrastructure — distribution board, cabling, load management — spread across the whole site (Solar4Good). Ten sockets is not five times the cost of two.

The cost lines a headline quote often misses

The charger is usually the smallest surprise on a commercial invoice. The lines that catch people out:

• Groundworks and civils — trenching, ducting and reinstatement add £500–£3,000+ per charger where bays sit away from the building (Excel Energy).
• Electrical and supply upgrades — on-site electrical work runs £1,000–£20,000+ depending on the state of your infrastructure (Excel Energy). If your incoming supply lacks headroom, a DNO supply upgrade averages £4,500–£6,000 (We Power Your Car); a new HV connection with a customer substation for a rapid hub can run £80,000–£200,000 (Utility Solutions Provider, 2026). Load management can often defer or avoid an upgrade — it’s worth asking about before you pay for one.
• Back-office and maintenance — managed platform subscriptions typically cost £10–£50 per charger per month, and maintenance contracts roughly £200–£500 per unit per year (Connekt Charging); a basic workplace setup can be as little as £50–£100 a year per chargepoint (Spirit Energy).
• Bay marking and signage — a modest line, but rarely itemised until the final quote.

If you plan to open chargers to the public, the Public Charge Point Regulations 2023 add obligations — new public chargepoints of 8kW and above must offer contactless payment, and rapid networks must average 99% reliability — which pushes you towards better hardware and a proper service contract.

How the Workplace Charging Scheme changes the maths

The WCS covers up to 75% of purchase and installation costs, capped at £500 per socket (raised from £350 on 1 April 2026), for up to 40 sockets across all your sites — a maximum of £20,000. It’s voucher-based: your business applies online, receives a voucher code by email if approved, and an OZEV-authorised installer must complete the work and claim within 180 days. You’ll need dedicated off-street parking for staff or fleet use, and landlord consent if you don’t own the premises.

Two things older guides get wrong: the education rate went down on 1 April 2026 (state-funded schools now get up to £2,000 per socket, from £2,500), and three business grants — the staff-and-fleets infrastructure grant, the commercial landlord grant and the residential landlord infrastructure grant — closed to applications on 31 March 2026. Landlords can still claim £500 per socket, up to 200 sockets, under the surviving landlord chargepoint grant. The 100% first-year capital allowance for chargepoint expenditure was also extended at the Autumn 2025 Budget and now runs to 31 March 2027 (5 April 2027 for income tax) — the mechanism is straightforward, but talk to your accountant about whether and how it applies to you. Our grants hub covers the live schemes in detail.

Why every serious quote starts with a site survey

The published ranges above disagree by tens of thousands of pounds for the same nominal hardware — and that disagreement is the honest picture. Until someone has assessed your incoming supply, distribution board, cable routes, ground conditions and DNO headroom, any fixed price is a guess. For rapid charging in particular, no installer can price the job without engaging the DNO first.

Get two or three surveyed quotes and compare like for like: what’s included, what’s excluded, and who owns the DNO application. You can find OZEV-authorised installers by county in our directory, or request a free quote and we’ll point you towards the right kind of installer. Our commercial charging hub covers the wider decisions — charger choice, payment and payback — beyond the install price.

Grant amounts, scheme rules and typical costs all move, and grant schemes can be amended or closed at short notice. Before committing budget, check the current position on GOV.UK’s Workplace Charging Scheme page (figures here last checked July 2026).