If you’ve only ever put a charger in a residential garage, forget what you know. Installing a commercial Level 2 charger in a shopping mall or a fleet hub is a completely different animal. You aren’t just trying to get a car charged; you’re trying to build a system that won’t crash the building’s grid or require a repairman every two weeks.
Here is the “no-fluff” roadmap for getting a professional installation right.
- Don’t unbox anything until you check the panel
The biggest mistake we see? Contractors unboxing hardware before they’ve even looked at the building’s capacity. A standard 22kW Level 2 charger is going to pull 32 Amps per phase. If you’re putting in five or ten of these, the numbers add up fast.
Most commercial sites don’t have enough spare juice sitting around for a massive new load. But before you tell the client they need to spend $50k on a new transformer, look into Dynamic Load Balancing (DLB). We build this tech into our controllers so the chargers can “talk” to the building. If the elevators and AC are running full tilt, the chargers automatically throttle back. It’s the smartest way to install more plugs without blowing the main fuse.
- The Mounting Debate: Walls vs. Pedestals
Where you put the charger dictates your labor costs.
- Wall-Mounted: This is your best friend for indoor parking. It’s cheaper, faster, and keeps the wiring simple.
- Pedestals (Post Mounting): If you’re out in an open parking lot, you’re going to be digging trenches for underground conduits and pouring concrete bases. It’s more work, but it’s often the only way.
- A quick reality check: In public spaces, people will hit these chargers. Don’t install anything that isn’t IK10-rated. If the casing is flimsy, you’ll be back on site replacing cracked units in six months on your own dime.
- Safety Standards: Residential isn’t enough
You can’t cut corners on safety when the public is involved. Commercial jobs need much higher protection margins.
For example, your breakers and RCDs need to be rock solid. In many areas, you’re required to have Type B RCD or at least 6mA DC leakage protection. We integrate this protection directly into our CCU (Charging Control Unit) firmware. It might seem like a small detail, but for the electrician on-site, it means fewer external parts to wire up and fewer points of failure in the cabinet.
- Software: The “Hidden” Installation Step
A commercial install isn’t finished when the lights turn green. You have to get the OCU (Communication Unit) synced up to the management platform via OCPP.
This is where you actually set the rules: who can charge, how much they pay, and what the max current draw is. If you don’t get the software commissioning right, you’ll be driving back to the site every time a user has a payment glitch. We focus on remote-first diagnostics so you can troubleshoot from your desk instead of a service van.
The Bottom Line: Think about Year 10, not Day 1
Installing a charger is the easy part—keeping a network running for a decade is where the real work happens. You want hardware that makes the electrician’s job fast but the owner’s long-term maintenance even faster. By choosing a factory that owns the “brains” of the machine, you’re ensuring that when a software bug or a vehicle compatibility issue pops up, it can be fixed with a remote update rather than a sledgehammer.
Looking for wiring diagrams or a DLB configuration map for your project? Let our engineering team know, and we’ll send over the full technical pack.