Which home charging point?

[danp]

T.B. said:

Thanks, I hadn't realised that you could get pedestals to mount a wall unit on. They look a good solution.

It's having the ability to charge during the Octopus Go low periods that I'm looking for a dual socket set up. Overnight the load used by the house should be minimal so I would hope with suitably sized cabling we can achieve 2x 7kw? Question for the electrician I guess!

It's not so much serious mileage (circa 70miles daily for me), but ensuring both cars would be fully charged and (in winter) pre conditioned as well.

How big is the house fuse? Ours is 100amp and we could have had 2 x 7kW chargers but didn’t bother in the end, just used the one charger for both EVs.

Guess it depends on what else you have in the house (electric showers, double ovens, jacuzzis etc)

[RichardM5]

danp said:

T.B. said:

Thanks, I hadn't realised that you could get pedestals to mount a wall unit on. They look a good solution.

It's having the ability to charge during the Octopus Go low periods that I'm looking for a dual socket set up. Overnight the load used by the house should be minimal so I would hope with suitably sized cabling we can achieve 2x 7kw? Question for the electrician I guess!

It's not so much serious mileage (circa 70miles daily for me), but ensuring both cars would be fully charged and (in winter) pre conditioned as well.

How big is the house fuse? Ours is 100amp and we could have had 2 x 7kW chargers but didn’t bother in the end, just used the one charger for both EVs.

Guess it depends on what else you have in the house (electric showers, double ovens, jacuzzis etc)

With the Zappi you can set an overall power draw limit. If you have two, or more, Zappis they can be configured to share the available available power between them.

[LordGrover]

V2G - anyone have one of these?

Seems like a good idea and possibly a money saver.

[danp]

LordGrover said:

V2G - anyone have one of these?

Seems like a good idea and possibly a money saver.

I’ve seen pilot projects over here but only for the Leaf which uses Chademo, CCS doesn’t support it yet.

eg https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/vehicle-to...

[LordGrover]

What about Indra?

[T.B.]

danp said:

How big is the house fuse? Ours is 100amp and we could have had 2 x 7kW chargers but didn’t bother in the end, just used the one charger for both EVs.

Guess it depends on what else you have in the house (electric showers, double ovens, jacuzzis etc)

100A as well. Scheduling to charge between 0030 and 0430, they would be the only units drawing considerable load. (maybe the dishwasher to save a few extra pence)

[essayer]

House we’re buying has single phase 80A. There is an ASHP (16A), and electric range cooker (32A)

I want to charge 2x7kW as we have two EVs.

The house actually has 3 phase on the grounds - it supplies some water company infrastructure which is sited within the plot. The wiring all runs quite close to the domestic supply. What would be the options with adding the remaining two phases or somehow adding more capacity to the domestic supply?

[gmaz]

essayer said:

House we’re buying has single phase 80A. There is an ASHP (16A), and electric range cooker (32A)

I want to charge 2x7kW as we have two EVs.

The house actually has 3 phase on the grounds - it supplies some water company infrastructure which is sited within the plot. The wiring all runs quite close to the domestic supply. What would be the options with adding the remaining two phases or somehow adding more capacity to the domestic supply?

I think you will need to speak to your DNO

[essayer]

I’ve just looked again and the 3ph supply is actually serving the property.

So I think I can do one of

2x single phase 7kW chargers
1x 3ph 22kW charger and 1x single phase 7kW
2x 3ph 11kW chargers

DNO permitting of course. Or I could fit commando sockets to power my, ummm, outdoor lathes

[LordGrover]

I think I've decided on the Zappi.

Two reasons swaying my choice; solar panels and no earth spike, as well as it seems to be the most feature rich of those I've looked into. With the Hub, Eddi and Harvi I should get a decent solution.

[Ken Figenus]

Absolutely baffled as a techie geek by all this EV stuff - don't even think my incoming Taycan CT even comes with any cables to charge it??? Def need a 3pin that will pull an actual max domestic 13 amp and a Type 2 for untethered public chargers. So many questions remain! Like:

Do I really need a £700 smart charger or can I just connect car Type 2 into a commando 32A with RCD like this https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/LDB32slash3S... I know a Taycan has charging profiles you can set and timers onboard... So set for 00:30 start on Octopus and just let it go till desired charge level reached. Or just press 'direct charge' if you know you need to max it for next day - do I really need an app and all that gubbins to go wrong?

Optional questions :

Is Octopus the only company doing low rate charging for 4 hrs overnight?

Do they load the day tariff to make up?

Are granny 3pin chargers limited to 10A and 2.3kw rather than what my kettle can pull at 3.1Kw 13A

I just called a company in Liverpool who sell a 16A charger on a 13a plug (sic) but after digging deep through waffle it became apparent it was 10a too. Why chose to lose 25% pace on these slowest chargers as I can see big issues visiting my rural mum 170 miles away...

I'll leave it there for now but woukld be very grateful for advice before I chicken out!

[JonnyVTEC]

Kettle is on for a couple of minutes at most, charger on for hours is one the reasons for the different (not sure how many kettles exceed 3kW either)

[Toaster Pilot]

Ken Figenus said:

Absolutely baffled as a techie geek by all this EV stuff - don't even think my incoming Taycan CT even comes with any cables to charge it??? Def need a 3pin that will pull an actual max domestic 13 amp and a Type 2 for untethered public chargers. So many questions remain! Like:

Do I really need a £700 smart charger or can I just connect car Type 2 into a commando 32A with RCD like this https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/LDB32slash3S... I know a Taycan has charging profiles you can set and timers onboard... So set for 00:30 start on Octopus and just let it go till desired charge level reached. Or just press 'direct charge' if you know you need to max it for next day - do I really need an app and all that gubbins to go wrong?

Optional questions :

Is Octopus the only company doing low rate charging for 4 hrs overnight?

Do they load the day tariff to make up?

Are granny 3pin chargers limited to 10A and 2.3kw rather than what my kettle can pull at 3.1Kw 13A

I just called a company in Liverpool who sell a 16A charger on a 13a plug (sic) but after digging deep through waffle it became apparent it was 10a too. Why chose to lose 25% pace on these slowest chargers as I can see big issues visiting my rural mum 170 miles away...

I'll leave it there for now but woukld be very grateful for advice before I chicken out!

Buying a Taycan and then trying to cheap out on home charging, amazing.

32A Commando to Type 2 devices do exist - Ohme is probably the cheapest if you’re an Octopus customer (£199). To comply with electrical regulations though, a commando socket intended for vehicle charging should be installed with the same earthing as a dedicated hard wired charger - so an earth rod or PEN fault detection device, which pushes the install cost up.

[essayer]

Taycan does 11kW charging so either

- 7kW charger installed on a spare way of the consumer unit or new consumer unit split off the meter tails
- if you have three phase you can get a 11kW three phase charger fitted to charge 50% faster

Don’t piss about with commando sockets, dongles etc. Get a decent Type 2 charger with a tethered cable. Drive home, plug in, done.
Not drive home, open boot, untangle charger cable, plug in on wall, plug in to car ..

[LordGrover]

I was all set to order a Zappi but the lead time is up to six weeks including installation.

Switching to Hypervolt. Still quite a new product but looks better, and either has or will have all Zappi's features and more.

Having to wait for Western Power to unloop my supply now though...

[gmaz]

LordGrover said:

I was all set to order a Zappi but the lead time is up to six weeks including installation.

Switching to Hypervolt. Still quite a new product but looks better, and either has or will have all Zappi's features and more.

Having to wait for Western Power to unloop my supply now though...

I saw this YT video of the Hypervolt the other day, which is clearly a paid advert for them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL9aFwzWSwA

I was surprised to see a Raspberry Pi inside it, as those are designed more for learning & software experiments rather than for outdoor "industrial" use.

[OldGermanHeaps]

gmaz said:

I saw this YT video of the Hypervolt the other day, which is clearly a paid advert for them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL9aFwzWSwA

I was surprised to see a Raspberry Pi inside it, as those are designed more for learning & software experiments rather than for outdoor "industrial" use.

Running the os from an sd card wont be very robust in the long run.

[dapprman]

Can't see any problem with a Pi behind the scenes, also could make upgrading easier if more processing power is required.

Do rather like the look of this, also on watching their official videos how Alexa still will do what it wants, not what you say (I'm glad they left that in).

I'm assuming the RCD would replace the noisy box BP Chargemaster install (to remove the need for an earth rod), Silence would be a big plus point for me as my fuse cupboard is inside the house.

Alas nothing on their website about how they link in to solar power - with Zappi there's the Eco mode.

[OldGermanHeaps]

dapprman said:

Can't see any problem with a Pi behind the scenes, also could make upgrading easier if more processing power is required.

Do rather like the look of this, also on watching their official videos how Alexa still will do what it wants, not what you say (I'm glad they left that in).

I'm assuming the RCD would replace the noisy box BP Chargemaster install (to remove the need for an earth rod), Silence would be a big plus point for me as my fuse cupboard is inside the house.

Alas nothing on their website about how they link in to solar power - with Zappi there's the Eco mode.

The problem with pis are they use an sd card to run the os. This is fine for occasional use but for 24/7 use the sd cards wear out rapidly. I know this from a misguided attempt to use pis for digital signage devices for one of my customers, we had a trial at 30 sites and within 3 years most of the sd cards failed, the callouts and travel time wasted to replace them rendered the project unprofitable.

[NDA]

Ken Figenus said:

Do I really need a £700 smart charger or can I just connect car Type 2 into a commando 32A with RCD like this https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/LDB32slash3S... I know a Taycan has charging profiles you can set and timers onboard... So set for 00:30 start on Octopus and just let it go till desired charge level reached. Or just press 'direct charge' if you know you need to max it for next day - do I really need an app and all that gubbins to go wrong?

I bought an EV a few months ago and had a Commando socket rather than a dedicated/tethered charging point. It's 32amp and charges at around 31mph rather than 11mph from a domestic 3 pin socket.

It's not quite as cheap as you think - the special RCD it needs (type B curve I think) as well as the earth spike start to make it quite costly.

But it works fine for my Tesla.

Were I to be doing it today (rather than 6 months ago) there are charging points which have the necessary RCD's (PEN protection etc) all built in, which make the installation as cheap as a Commando socket.