EV charger installation in Preston: Evnex E2 Core on a solar and battery home

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  Evnex E2 Core in Volcanic, Preston, August 2026.

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  The Preston board with the cover off. Clipsal main row, added Hager RCBOs, CT clamps on the mains, a

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  Connected and drawing.

The site

A home in Preston, already working reasonably hard. Dual-inverter solar on the roof, a sonnen battery in the garage, and a 63A main switch that predates all of it. The owner had just taken delivery of a BYD Sealion 7 and was on Amber Electric, so the goal was never just "put a charger on the wall". It was to add a 32A load to a switchboard that already had two energy sources feeding into it, without anything giving way.

That question — what gives way — is the one worth asking before the quote, not after.

What we specified

An Evnex E2 Core in Volcanic, mounted on the rendered pillar beside the driveway, on a dedicated circuit with 10 metres of 6mm² cable back to the board. The EV circuit was given its own RCBO in the existing Clipsal board, alongside replacements for three of the existing protective devices.

The E2 Core earned its place here for one reason: load management. On a 63A main with solar, a battery and the usual household draw, a charger that can throttle itself against real-time switchboard current is doing something a simpler unit can't. Set the maximum charge current to the circuit rating and the supply current limit to the main switch rating, and the charger works around the house rather than against it.

Installed by a registered electrical contractor, with a Certificate of Electrical Safety issued on completion.

The bit most people don't know about Evnex

Every smart charger needs to see what the rest of the house is doing. How they do it varies more than you'd expect, and it changes what the install actually involves.

Evnex reads the current transformer directly at the charger. The CT clamp sits on the mains in the switchboard, and its instrumentation cable runs the full distance back to the charger and terminates inside it. There's no meter or wireless sender sitting in the board doing the talking.

That's different to the alternatives. A myenergi Zappi sends its CT signal to a harvi unit in the board, which talks to the charger by radio. Wallbox uses a Power Boost meter on the DIN rail. Tesla's dynamic load management uses its own meter in the board.

None of these is better or worse in the abstract. But on an Evnex job it means a second cable travels the whole run, and it's supplied and installed by the electrician rather than arriving in the box. On this job the charger position moved during the install, which added two metres to both cables. Worth knowing at quoting stage rather than discovering it on the day.

For anyone planning ahead: Evnex specify a one-pair, overall screened cable, minimum 0.5mm², voltage rated for the switchboard, with a metre of spare at each end. It's permitted to share a conduit with the supply cable, so size the conduit for two.

Setting up Amber

The owner is on Amber Electric, which is a good pairing with an Evnex charger — the charger can generate its own schedule against wholesale prices and charge when they're low or negative.

The setting isn't where older guides say it is. In the current Evnex app it's at:

Charging Settings → Auto-generate your schedule → select Amber → enter the API key generated on Amber's website.

Two things worth knowing once it's running. Your price threshold may be reading the delivered price rather than the raw spot price, and those can differ by 10 to 15 cents a kilowatt hour, so give the threshold a bit of room before deciding it isn't working. And Amber integration is supported on the X-Series, E2 Plus, E2 Core and the original E2 — the Flex is the exception.

The result

Charger commissioned, charging normally, Amber scheduling live. The 63A main stayed where it was, no supply upgrade needed, and the solar and battery carry on doing their job.

If you've got solar, a battery, or an older switchboard and you're wondering what an EV charger does to the sums, that's exactly the conversation worth having before you buy the hardware.

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