GivEnergy EV Charger vs CTEK Chargestorm Connected 3

£444 against £1,086 — and the question is your consumer unit

A £642 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 £444 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 — £444, 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 8p/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 £444, 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 £539 or the Hypervolt Home 3 Pro at £625 will serve better. But if your home has the right infrastructure, each of these two does something most chargers simply cannot.