Can you charge an EV during load shedding?

The short answer

Yes and no. An EV charger needs electricity like any other appliance. When your area is load shed, a standard grid-connected wallbox stops charging and picks up again when power returns. It won’t damage the car or the charger.

Whether you can keep charging during an outage depends on what’s behind your DB board: a backup inverter and battery, solar panels, or nothing at all. And even with backup, there are limits worth understanding before you spend money.

Even when load shedding isn’t scheduled, local outages from faults and maintenance still happen. So the question is worth answering properly.

Why most backup systems can’t run a wallbox at full power

A typical home wallbox draws around 7 kW on a single-phase supply. That’s roughly the same as a geyser, a stove and a kettle running together, and it keeps drawing that power for hours.

Most home backup systems in South Africa were installed to keep essentials running: lights, the fridge, Wi-Fi, the TV and maybe the gate motor. They often run on an “essentials” circuit that’s separate from heavy loads like the geyser and stove. Connecting a charger to that circuit can:

• Overload the inverter, which trips or shuts down, taking your essentials down with it.
• Drain the battery quickly, leaving nothing for the rest of the night.
• Shorten battery life if it’s regularly cycled deep to fill a car.

That’s why we don’t recommend simply moving a charger onto your backup circuit without checking the inverter’s continuous rating, the battery’s usable capacity and your other loads first.

Practical ways to keep your EV charged

Plan around the schedule

For most drivers, this is all it takes. A typical daily commute only needs an hour or two of charging on a 7 kW wallbox. A smart charger from our home and wallbox range lets you schedule charging for the hours you have power, and resumes automatically after an interruption. Charging is a “little and often” habit, not a race to 100%.

Charge at a lower rate from backup power

Some smart chargers can be capped at a lower current. With the right inverter and battery, you can trickle-charge during an outage without tripping anything. The car gains fewer kilometres per hour, but it keeps gaining. This needs careful setup, and the right answer depends on your equipment.

Add solar and use the surplus

If you have solar panels, or are planning them, a solar-aware charger can put surplus generation into the car during the day instead of exporting it or wasting it. This works best if the car is at home during daylight hours, which suits people who work from home, retirees and second cars. Our energy resilience page explains how solar, battery and charger work together.

Size a system with the EV in mind

If you’re installing or upgrading an inverter and battery anyway, tell the designer about the car. Inverter output, battery capacity and how the charger is wired (backed-up circuit or grid-only) are much easier to get right on day one than to retrofit later.

What to check before you rely on backup charging

Before anyone connects your charger to an inverter, ask for these to be checked:

1. The inverter’s continuous output rating, and how much is left after your essential loads.
2. Usable battery capacity, not just the nameplate figure, and how much you want to keep in reserve for the house.
3. How the charger will be controlled: a fixed lower current, solar-surplus mode, or a switch between backup and grid.
4. Earth leakage and protection on the new circuit. The installation still needs proper protection and a Certificate of Compliance for the new work.
5. Registration of any grid-tied solar with your municipality or Eskom where required. Read our summary on solar and EV registration.

Our site assessment covers all of this, so you know what your system can actually do before you buy anything.

Choosing a charger if outages worry you

If power cuts are a real concern where you live, a few charger features make life easier:

• Automatic resume after a power interruption, so you don’t have to restart a session by hand.
• Scheduling in the app, so the car charges in the hours you’re most likely to have power, or on cheaper off-peak rates.
• Adjustable current, so the charging rate can be capped if the charger is ever run from backup power.
• Solar-surplus mode, if you have or plan to add panels.
• Load management, which reduces the charger’s draw when the house needs power, which is useful when everything switches back on after an outage.

Not every wallbox has all of these, so compare models carefully. We can recommend a unit that suits your supply and backup setup.

A note on claims you’ll see online

You may see promises of “off-grid charging during load shedding”. It’s possible, but only with an inverter, battery and solar array sized for it, and that can be a substantial investment. Treat any blanket promise with caution and ask for the numbers behind it: inverter kW, battery kWh, the charging rate during an outage, and how many kilometres that adds per hour.

The bottom line

For most South African drivers, load shedding is a scheduling problem, not a charging problem. A smart wallbox on a dedicated circuit, set to charge when you have power, covers daily driving comfortably. If you want to charge during outages or from the sun, plan the solar, battery and charger as one system. Our installation team can wire it up safely, and you can request a quote when you’re ready.