If something is open to be gamed, people will game it and then everyone else will end up suffering the consequences of the providers needing to clamp down. IOG is a perfect example of something that most people can be trusted to use appropriately but open to be exploited by the more selfish amongst us - I have no doubt over time it will become more and more 'closely managed' (or the charging rates will eventually have to stop being so favourable, a la OVO recently).
Recommendations for an EV charger for home??
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Soldato
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i do agree... it happens all the time unfortunately. our work is in the process of hugely reducing people WFH. it wont affect me as i am hitting my max time allowed at our place before i am let go (7.5 working days and counting!!! 
)
but despite most people WFH perfectly sensibly a few fairly senior people apparently were caught moonlighting when WFH (there are other reasons too). rather than just sacking them, they are dialing back the entire WFH policy. but i digress!.
)but despite most people WFH perfectly sensibly a few fairly senior people apparently were caught moonlighting when WFH (there are other reasons too). rather than just sacking them, they are dialing back the entire WFH policy. but i digress!.
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Pretty much all rules exist because people will take the proverbial.
@bigmike20vt i wasn’t arguing against car control, I was just putting across octopuses view of the matter.
There are plenty of ways to game it with car control also. But the biggest issue for me is not all cars are compatible and I’d much rather have the stability of a fixed piece of hardware that handles the interface than the car which changes, potentially fairly regularly.
That said, not all chargers are compliant with all suppliers, in fact it’s more likely to just lock you in to a single supplier. That needs to change and fast.
No one will pay anther £900 to get the best rates when moving from BG to octopus if you were unfortunate enough to install a hive charger….
There is a standard that all charge points should support (OCPP) but that didn’t seem to have worked for this purpose.
@bigmike20vt i wasn’t arguing against car control, I was just putting across octopuses view of the matter.
There are plenty of ways to game it with car control also. But the biggest issue for me is not all cars are compatible and I’d much rather have the stability of a fixed piece of hardware that handles the interface than the car which changes, potentially fairly regularly.
That said, not all chargers are compliant with all suppliers, in fact it’s more likely to just lock you in to a single supplier. That needs to change and fast.
No one will pay anther £900 to get the best rates when moving from BG to octopus if you were unfortunate enough to install a hive charger….
There is a standard that all charge points should support (OCPP) but that didn’t seem to have worked for this purpose.
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I would prefer to go with Octopus but I'm tied in on a fixed rate until October 2026 and so will cost me £100 to move!
Added to which, I had to get a smart meter installed and Octopus were talking 4 weeks lead time whereas when I called BG they get it done the next day! (so I guess there is nothing stopping me swapping now its been done?)
Lastly the difference seems to be 7p per kWh overnight with Octopus rather than 9p per kWh with BG - I didn't realise the Octopus tariff gave reduced rates for other times of the day though? How does that work??
If on Intelligent Octopus Go and allowing it to control with smart scheduling, it may decide to give you a charging slot outside of the standard overnight hours (either because it's of benefit for them or because you need more charge than overnight can give you), you then get that slot cheap for your whole supply.
As per discussions above though, if you deliberately try to game this by forcing your car to take longer to charge or telling it more charge is needed than is true, then it looks like they're starting to slap wrists a bit.
Soldato
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Its not a guarantee however when you plug your car in it will charge it when the grid has the cheapest energy for octopus.... which may or may not be outside the 6 hrs between 11:30pm and 5:30am. You just tell it what time you need your car charged for and then either (depending on your set up) what percentage you want to add into your car, (if octopus control your charge point or alternatively what you want your car to be charged to (if octopus control your car directly).
also if you need more than (roughly) 40kwh in your car (bear in mind some effiency losses) octopus will practically always give you a boosted charging window outside of 11:30 - 5:30am
i am hoping i get lucky today. whole sale energy is pretty cheap right now and my wife will need 20kwh going into her car for tomorrow so i will get her to plug in as soon as she gets home.
no guarantees or anything but even 30mins on cheap rate extra is money saved .
if your car charges for even a few mins within a 30min window, you get 7p energy for that entire half hour.
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Soldato
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it depends on you car. when i am working it out i assume charging at 7.2kwh about 6 - 6.5kw will go into my car every hour
my ipace has an 84kwh usable battery so 10%-100% is gonna be around 12hours
my wifes i3 is about 28kwh usable so around 4.5hrs to completely top it off.
interestingly (or not) i find i have (slightly) more charging losses when charging the i3 vs charging the ipace. something somewhere is a little more efficient in the ipace. at 1st i thought it was margin of error however it is consistently the case over the last 18 months...
we usually charge the i3 to full.......... however my ipace we only charge to full when going on a long road trip, so probably a dozen times a year (if i go to my folks i have to 100% it each way as its 200 miles plus what ever travelling i do up north visiting family and mates). the rest of the time i tend to charge it from 25%-80% (give or take) which with no unusual journeys is once every 10 days or so.
my ipace has an 84kwh usable battery so 10%-100% is gonna be around 12hours
my wifes i3 is about 28kwh usable so around 4.5hrs to completely top it off.
interestingly (or not) i find i have (slightly) more charging losses when charging the i3 vs charging the ipace. something somewhere is a little more efficient in the ipace. at 1st i thought it was margin of error however it is consistently the case over the last 18 months...
we usually charge the i3 to full.......... however my ipace we only charge to full when going on a long road trip, so probably a dozen times a year (if i go to my folks i have to 100% it each way as its 200 miles plus what ever travelling i do up north visiting family and mates). the rest of the time i tend to charge it from 25%-80% (give or take) which with no unusual journeys is once every 10 days or so.
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roughly 10% per hour for a 70kwh battery
So as people are saying, it depends on your battery size, but the calculation would be
Hours to get from 10 - 100% = (Cars Battery Size Kwh x 0.90) / 7
For a 58kwh ID.3 : (58 * 0.9) / 7 = 7.5 hours
For a 75kwh Tesla : (75 * 0.9) / 7 = 9.7 hours
Technically the chargers deliver more than 7kw, but there are charging losses both in the car and also in the charger itself, so 7kw's is a good easy figure to use for what actually goes in your battery.
Right, so I opted to go for Octopus but then BG rang and offered me £150 credit to stay, so with the £100 cost of breaking my contract, means that they have a buffer of £250.
Doing some rough calculations based on the 7p per kWh from Octopus and the 9p per kWh with BG, I came out with the following:
- Based on unchanged usage (ie. before the EV charging is added) - Octopus are roughly £48.00 cheaper over the year
- Add in a full charge every week (64 kWh for my Model Y if Google is to be believed - although I'd never let it get to 0% - so lets say 60 kWh per week) - approx. 3,120 kWh across the year = £218.40 for Octopus and £280.80 for BG
Do these calculations look about right to anyone?
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The reason I went for the Zappi.
Also it was recommended if I wanted a home battery and solar panels which I probably won't because we save that much on Intelligent Go.
Soldato
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Another happy zappi user here, into my 4th year now. Works well with IOG and HA.
Soldato
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octopus also have their own branded charger. not sure of costs but it apparently works well with solar too so functionally equivalent to the hypervolt and zappi
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I’d stick with the big mainstream brands which are compatible with the most energy providers smart tariffs.
Zappi has a 3 phase version or perhaps something like an Anderson if you are feeling flush and you want something that looks particularly nice.
I’d also get a charger with a cable built in (aka ‘tethered’). They are so much more convenient and It means you’ll have your type 2 charging cable with you as 99% of the untethered chargers always have the cable left draped over them as no one can be bothered to remove it any tidy it away every day.
Zappi has a 3 phase version or perhaps something like an Anderson if you are feeling flush and you want something that looks particularly nice.
I’d also get a charger with a cable built in (aka ‘tethered’). They are so much more convenient and It means you’ll have your type 2 charging cable with you as 99% of the untethered chargers always have the cable left draped over them as no one can be bothered to remove it any tidy it away every day.
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Thanks, I just saw the Anderson which looks better, the house is in Cyprus so no special tariffs.
We have something called net metering
for every Kw of electricity we feed to the grid we can take one back for free, our PV system should generate 17MW per year so hopefully cover must have our usage
We have something called net metering
for every Kw of electricity we feed to the grid we can take one back for free, our PV system should generate 17MW per year so hopefully cover must have our usage
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What about this? 
For now
If the trend follows everywhere else, as soon as solar penetration hits a point, net metering goes away very quickly.