Best charger for use with Octopus

[Davey S2]

Evening all.

Wife has just ordered a BMW i5 Touring which will be our first electric car.

We will obviously need a charger installed at home although most charging will be done at work so hopefully just the odd top up overnight or on the weekend.

Anyone have any recommendations for chargers that link up with the Octopus app so you can choose tariffs?

I’ve heard that Ohme epod (untethered) is good but does anyone have any experience with these?

Thanks in advance.

[uktrailmonster]

Ohme or Zappi. We have the latter. One of our clients is an installer and said there isn’t much to choose between them. He recommended Zappi so just went with that. Works fine with Octopus apparently, but I have my car (Tesla) connected directly with Octopus, so the charger is in dumb mode.

[DorsetSparky]

We fit Ohme and Zappi lots. Zappi tend to be better if you want to use the rest of their infrastructure - it integrates with solar, immersion heating, etc etc.
Ohme are great if not, I fit them very regularly. Both parents and in-laws have got them now too.

[uktrailmonster]

DorsetSparky said:

We fit Ohme and Zappi lots. Zappi tend to be better if you want to use the rest of their infrastructure - it integrates with solar, immersion heating, etc etc.
Ohme are great if not, I fit them very regularly. Both parents and in-laws have got them now too.

Ah yes, I remember now why we chose Zappi as we are thinking of adding solar at some point.

[_Rodders_]

No issues with our Ohme. We don't have solar or batteries.

[samoht]

Davey S2 said:

Wife has just ordered a BMW i5 Touring which will be our first electric car.
...
Anyone have any recommendations for chargers that link up with the Octopus app so you can choose tariffs?

FWIW, it looks like Intelligent Octopus Go is natively compatible with the i5, so you could use any charger (or even a three-pin) and it would work.

[Paul Drawmer]

The charger will last longer than any electricity tariff.

[MattyD803]

samoht said:

FWIW, it looks like Intelligent Octopus Go is natively compatible with the i5, so you could use any charger (or even a three-pin) and it would work.

It was. But BMW/Mini connectivity with Octopus has been lost as of about 2 weeks ago, apparently caused by some changes on the BMW comms side. There is no fix, nor indeed anything on the horizon (according to Octopus tech team).

Therefore your charger choice is more important than ever, as you ll be using that to control the charging. You need to to check with Octopus as to what chargers they support, but I can tell you for sure that PodPoint are not. (Guess which I have!)

Edited by MattyD803 on Saturday 28th February 08:04

[Ste-EVo]

Davey S2 said:

Evening all.

Wife has just ordered a BMW i5 Touring which will be our first electric car.

We will obviously need a charger installed at home although most charging will be done at work so hopefully just the odd top up overnight or on the weekend.

Anyone have any recommendations for chargers that link up with the Octopus app so you can choose tariffs?

I ve heard that Ohme epod (untethered) is good but does anyone have any experience with these?

Thanks in advance.

We have an Ohme Epod using Octopus Intelligent Go and its great, 18 months in and zero issues, its such a neat little package with no charge cables hanging everywhere. My neighbours with tethered chargers seem to love to leave their cables dangling all over the place which looks a mess IMO (probs my OCD... haha)

Edited by Ste-EVo on Saturday 28th February 08:05

[kambites]

We've got a Hypervolt and it's been fine. The charger doesn't really need to do much, just get one you like the look of.

[Tron Kirk]

I had an Octopus Charge fitted a couple of weeks ago. Main reason was its WiFi connection, which in practice has proved much more stable than the connection to the 4G network, which can be a bit flaky here. No issues so far - all very neat and tidy and it does what it's supposed to.

I also like the idea of not having one supplier play off against the other when/if problems occur. And yes, I appreciate there's an element of lock-in, although Octopus say this is not the case.

[Cylon2007]

I'm on Octopus and have a Zappi charger, just works.

[samoht]

MattyD803 said:

It was. But BMW/Mini connectivity with Octopus has been lost as of about 2 weeks ago, apparently caused by some changes on the BMW comms side. There is no fix, nor indeed anything on the horizon (according to Octopus tech team).

Ah, good info! I had hoped that carmakers had come to appreciate that this sort of integration is highly valued by their customers and wouldn't cut it off (as Jaguar did a year or so back), but clearly not, hence as you rightly say picking a supported charger is valuable.

[300sl-24]

I'm on Intellegent Octopus Go using a Zappi and it has been without fault

[timberman]

We're with octopus and have both the Ohme home pro and the Zappi (different houses)

they both work fine apart from we had a slight issue with the Ohme not wanting to charge to 100% (it kept stopping at 99% for some reason),

the Ohme has got a longer cable (8 metres) but I've never had an issue reaching the cars charging port using the Zappi and the cable storage on the Zappi is better,

they were both about the same price fitted but If I was to get another I'd most likely get the Zappi for no other reason than I prefer the look and cable storage.

[clockworks]

I went for a Zappi because it works 100% with Octopus Intelligent, works with solar if I ever add it, and, importantly where I live, it can use wifi or a wired ethernet connection - no problems with poor mobile reception.
Mine is connected via ethernet.

The only downside with Zappi is it reeds re-authorising every 12 months, and I got no warning from Zappi, just an error message from Octopus that I needed to do the initial setup again.

[Davey S2]

Ste-EVo said:

Davey S2 said:

Evening all.

Wife has just ordered a BMW i5 Touring which will be our first electric car.

We will obviously need a charger installed at home although most charging will be done at work so hopefully just the odd top up overnight or on the weekend.

Anyone have any recommendations for chargers that link up with the Octopus app so you can choose tariffs?

I ve heard that Ohme epod (untethered) is good but does anyone have any experience with these?

Thanks in advance.

We have an Ohme Epod using Octopus Intelligent Go and its great, 18 months in and zero issues, its such a neat little package with no charge cables hanging everywhere. My neighbours with tethered chargers seem to love to leave their cables dangling all over the place which looks a mess IMO (probs my OCD... haha)

Edited by Ste-EVo on Saturday 28th February 08:05

Great

Did you get it installed through Octopus or from Ohme directly?

Going through Octopus seems to be over £100 more than Ohme directly.

I assume it’s straightforward to link up with the Octopus App either way?

Thanks.

[POIDH]

I am on Octopus and SnyEnergy 2 charger.

3 days in and it 'just works' so far, which is a Good Thing.