Home Battery Install: Contacting Electricians

Last month I started to plan getting a battery in my home, to power the whole home from cheap overnight electric rates. This was after seeing the Anker Solarbank 4 E5000 Pro released, which would reasonably fit in my smaller home, while at a reasonable price of £3k for 10kWh of energy storage.

While this battery can functionally be plugged into a standard socket, that’s not yet legal to do in the UK. It has to be hard-wired in by a competent electrician. In the UK, there’s also zero-VAT on battery installations performed by an electrician.

In my mind, I thought that maybe I could get an electrician to buy the battery, then provide it as part of the install. That way, the battery only costs £2.5k ex-VAT, and that £500 saved could help cover much of the install costs. So I reached out to a bunch of local electricians, and here’s how that’s gone:

For the one quote I did get, it was someone that had recently done work for my Dad. Even then, I had to prompt them to re-quote a couple of times after there being issues in the quote. The price, upon the battery cost, was over £2k and they refused to provide a breakdown of where the costs lie.

I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong. Maybe electricians don’t do electronic mail. Maybe there’s something wrong with my request. Maybe you’re expected to chase up constantly. I don’t know. It’s been 10 days now since last communication with any. I’m thinking it might be easier to wait until the regulations change to allow plug-in.

It does help knowing that, if AI destroys my software career, there seems to be a massive need for local electricians.