Home charging of electric vehicles in Belgium

The demand for green alternatives in the transportation sector is resulting in an expanding supply of electric vehicles. This triggers the need for both public and home charging infrastructure. In Flanders, five living-lab platforms were launched and funded by the government [1]. The main goal of one of these projects, i.e. the EVA-platform, is to deploy and monitor a public charging network. Nevertheless, in those five living-lab platforms no special attention is paid to home charging infrastructure. However, fleet tests have shown that 90-95% of the time electric vehicles will be charged at home [2]. This proves that home charging infrastructure is an indispensable part of electric driving. Regarding home charging, the electrician will often be the first point of contact for the general public. At this moment however, electric vehicles and home charging are still unknown concepts for this stakeholder group. Therefore, it is important to provide them with appropriate information concerning standardization and safety, to give an overview of the existing variety of home charging stations and to suggest the possibility of self-assembly of home charging stations. This paper describes the content of the current hands-on training sessions, organised in the context of the Flemish research project “Home charging of electric vehicles”, which has started to fill this hiatus. Special attention is drawn to the given installation guidelines of three phase charging stations and to problems experienced by some electric vehicles when charging on the 3×230V part of the Belgian distribution grid.