GivEnergy EV Charger vs CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3

> GivEnergy EV Charger — Maker in administration. GivEnergy Ltd entered administration in April 2026. Clearance stock is still on sale, but the manufacturer warranty and app support are no longer guaranteed, so treat it as a short-term buy at a clearance price rather than a five-year purchase.

£440 against £1,086 — and the question is your consumer unit

A £646 gap between two home chargers normally means one is luxurious and the other is sensible. Here, the gap means something more specific: these chargers are designed for different electrical supplies. The GivEnergy EV Charger at £440 is a single-phase, 7kW tethered unit whose party trick is drawing energy from a home battery into your car. The CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3 at £1,086 is a three-phase-native, 22kW untethered unit built more like commercial infrastructure than a domestic wallbox.

• GivEnergy — £440, 7kW, tethered. The charger for homes with battery storage and a single-phase supply.
• CTEK — £1,086, up to 22kW, untethered. The charger for homes with three-phase power and a taste for industrial-grade engineering.

The GivEnergy's one real argument — and it's a good one

Battery-to-EV charging. Most chargers with solar divert will use live generation from your panels — sunshine in, electrons out, car charged. The GivEnergy goes further: it will drain a home battery into the car. That means you can fill a GivEnergy (or compatible) battery overnight at 9.5p/kWh on Octopus Go, then feed it to the car the next afternoon without touching the grid. On a 9.5kWh battery, that is roughly 40 miles of driving at well under half the daytime rate.

Without a home battery, the argument collapses. The GivEnergy's app is basic compared to the Ohme Home Pro or Hypervolt Home 3 Pro. It has no live tariff API — just scheduled charging. Its 5-metre cable is adequate, not generous. At £440, it is cheap, but the Rolec EVO is cheaper at £356 with a longer warranty. The GivEnergy is a specialist. Effective in the right setup, ordinary everywhere else.

Who the CTEK is actually for

The Chargestorm Connected 3 weighs up to 24 kg and arrives with a built-in Type B MRCD, a MID-approved energy meter, dual Ethernet ports, and OCPP 2.0.1 support. It is, bluntly, a car-park charger that happens to fit on a garage wall.

On a three-phase supply at 32A, it delivers 22kW — roughly three times the speed of anything single-phase. A 60kWh battery goes from 20% to 80% in under two hours rather than five-plus. For households that already have three-phase (common in rural properties with heat pumps or workshops), that speed is tangible.

The cost, though, is not just the £1,086 unit. Install runs £900–£1,300 typically, and dynamic load balancing requires a separate NANOGRID Air gateway. There is no first-party smart-tariff integration — no direct link to Octopus Intelligent Go, no OVO Charge Anytime support. Scheduling happens through third-party OCPP apps like Monta. That is fine for someone comfortable with the ecosystem; it is a meaningful gap for anyone who expected plug-and-play tariff optimisation.

If you have three-phase and want to compare alternatives, the Zaptec Go 2 at £638 is the obvious rival — see the Zaptec vs CTEK comparison for that pairing.

Single-phase buyers: neither of these

This is the awkward truth of the comparison. On a standard UK single-phase supply — which is most homes — the CTEK delivers about 7.4kW, the same as chargers costing half its price, and you are paying for three-phase hardware you cannot use. The GivEnergy delivers 7kW and only earns its keep if you own a home battery.

A single-phase household without battery storage should be looking at the Ohme Home Pro for tariff intelligence, the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro for an all-round package, or the Rolec EVO for pure value. This comparison page exists for a narrower audience.

The verdict

Buy the GivEnergy EV Charger if:

• You have a GivEnergy or compatible home battery and want to charge the car from stored cheap-rate electricity
• You want a sub-£450 tethered charger that integrates with a whole-home energy monitoring portal
• Solar divert and battery drawdown matter more to you than app polish or tariff automation

Buy the CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3 if:

• You have three-phase supply and want 22kW home charging with built-in Type B RCD and MID metering
• You need OCPP 2.0.1 and ISO 15118 readiness for future-proofing or workplace reimbursement
• You are comfortable scheduling via Monta or another OCPP back-end rather than a first-party app

For the majority of UK households — single-phase, no home battery, wanting smart-tariff support out of the box — neither charger is the right pick. The Ohme Home Pro at £559 or the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro at £624 will serve better. But if your home has the right infrastructure, each of these two does something most chargers simply cannot.