Solar compatible Home Chargers Poll

[Mach13]

What works well and what's no so good about about your current Solar/Home charging installation?

 

[Jomarkh]

My Zappi works great.
I set it to charge for 2.5 hours over night which it does. If the battery has more than 50% then that drops into the car too. I can also dump surplus solar into the car and force the battery to discharge at the same time.

 

[BugEyed]

ProjectEV - does the job cost-effectively. UI not as good as Zappi, but it works.

 

[Mach13]

My Zappi works great.
I set it to charge for 2.5 hours over night which it does. If the battery has more than 50% then that drops into the car too. I can also dump surplus solar into the car and force the battery to discharge at the same time.

Sounds good... "If the battery has more than 50%...etc" is that the inverter controlling that part?

Am wondering... does your Zappi connect to the inverter in some way for these things to happen?

 

[Jomarkh]

No they are not connected it is just how I set up the Myenergi and Givenergy apps.

 

[manictomb]

Podpoint work well with my solar panels

 

[FrankHedrix]

What works well and what's no so good about about your current Solar/Home charging installation?

It's also about the price.

High powered charging + solar does not make sense. You go beyond your production.

At 20000 km / year, avg. consumption of 15 kWh/100km, you have to supply 3000 kWh / year.
@ 10 Cents/ kWh: 300 EUR / year
@ 20 Cents/ kWh: 600 EUR / year
@ 40 Cents / kWh: 1200 EUR / year
Certainly not worth to buy a Wallbox. I charge with a 16A mobile charger instead of a wallbox.
Actually 0 EUR - it came with the car.

With solar: Slow charging has the advantage that you never get out of the production envelope,
Higher makes no sense for residential solar installations. You could run with 7.2 kW but my 13.3 kWp installation would not allow often to do that (there are other loads, too, like heatpump, pool pump, hot water. So instead of buying a Wallbox + install for 1000+ EUR, just take a mobile charger (200 EUR if you don't have one), and put a wifi switch on/off in front of it. (15 EUR Shelly for example).

Then use some easy Charging Manager like Skypaas.com and that's all you need.
You roll on sunshine, and you safe a lot of money.

 

[Rolfe]

I was wondering about that. On the other hand I'm in line for a £400 grant to get a wallbox because of where I live.

 

[Eclectic]

I have a 3.4kWp system, and 3kW inverter, Tesla 13.5 kWh Powerwall 2. My charge point is a dumb ChargeMaster 7kW unit, and I figure that for the cost of changing it to something like a Zappi or Ohme so as to use the PV array output or Intelligent Octopus tariff is just not worth it. In the middle of Summer I might get a few hours of charge per day into the car, but only when I can produce over 1.4kW from the array. I have some shade at different times of the day and season, so lowering the amount I could put into the car even further.

I charge the MG on Octopus GO off peak, and the Powerwall from the solar PV array, topped up if necessary from the GO off peak, and this takes us right through to the next off peak time slot, so no peak use electric at all. I have only had the system for just on a month, and in the first week, when we had all that sunshine at the beginning of October, the PV easily kept the battery charged, and we used no grid electricity at all - this bodes well for the Summer, as I have export up and running as well now.

I should note that I find the Powerwall eerily accurate in predicting the sunshine hours for the next day (via its built in satellite weather forecast data) so that it only tops up to a certain point, leaving the solar array to bring it to 100%. I find that if I export anything after that, it's only 1-2 kWh (8-16p!)

 

[Kompins]

I cast my vote for the SyncEV as I'm really pleased with it after about 2 years of use. I work from home and we generally only cover about 3000 miles/year so even in winter we rarely were drawing power from the grid. It's very easy to vary the charging current incrementally from 6 to 32 amps in 1 amp steps, perfect to match the PV output. We recently had a Solaredge battery installed, this is charged on cheap rate Octopus Flux overnight. Any surplus after 7pm goes into the car if needed. Saving for a second battery now ?

 

[DuracellBunny]

For me not worth considering compatibility, charging costs me 9p/kWh on Octopus Go off-peak and export brings 12p/kWh with Scottish Power SEG.

 

[EVsince2016]

I have gained significantly more savings from my Eddi solar diverter than Zappi as it's always on, works from 50W up to 3 kW and is a cheap installation to do.

Whilst Zappi is the best and I do get 50% of my charge via Zappi from the sun due to a 6.5kW PV system, the total savings are still less.

If I had a small solar array, say under 4kW, I would just use a dumb chargers timed on night rates and use Eddi.

 

[mg4nick]

Short advice

Focus less on the charger and more on the import/export energy tariff.

Long story

I've installed a 6.5kW system in March (coupled with a 9.6kWh battery). It is facing W-S-W which many would say is not ideal (but such are the local constraints).

I already had an Alfen charger - which came free (some British Gas & Toyota partnership) with my RAV4 PHEV (after some struggles I'm able to control the charging current using some python scripts/libraries which take advantage of the charger maintenance API). If you like to tinker with such things you should consider a charger which has some sort of local API access. The charger apparently supports "talking" to the solar inverter and detect the excess output but British Gas didn't bother purchasing a license for that feature.

Even though I really like the idea of charging the car using solar I'm not sure you often get enough "sun juice" for a nice and stable/constant charging experience. I'm also not sure how good it is for the car battery to intermittently charge (there are only a few days where you get a 100% clear sky - on most "sunny" days you get some clouds which tend to make your solar output wobble a bit).

These days (winter) I mostly rely on the four off peak hours (12:30 - 4:30) of Octopus Go (9p/kWh) for charging the PHEV/MG4. If somehow my house battery is full and the sun is till shining - then I get 8p/kWh for the exported energy (using the Outgoing Octopus Fixed Lite tariff).

During the summer I was on the Octopus Flux import/export tariff. This gave me 3 hours of off peak charging (2-5am @16.51p/kWh) for the same price as the exporting for most of the day. So - for every kWh you export during the day with a fluctuating output due to clouds and other issues you can "take it back" during the night off peak hours with a nice and steady 7kW output.

There is also a peak export rate (between 4 and 7 pm) @27.51p/kWh. This is where my "poor" panel orientation helps me a bit as I get more output in late afternoon (overall I get less output compared to a south facing installation).

Some inverters are able to optimise your export by using the Intelligent Octopus tariff (and with certain chargers you get more off peak hours - check with Octopus). Mine is a cheap & dumb Chinese inverter which only recently started to allow me to change the export current via the web/app interface (before that I had to go to the garage and tap on 4 buttons to get to the export current settings).

Another consideration is probably the future of your charger. If you somehow have a 3 phase connection to your house go for a 22kW charger. While a 7kW charger is enough for your PHEV when you will eventually purchase a fully electric vehicle it may allow you to do a full charge during the off peak hours.

Hope this helps.

 

[EVsince2016]

My 6.75kw system provides 95% of my EV charging in the summer and 50% overall, but I do not have a battery because then I might do things differently.