Charging speed variation

[redr11]

Morning all,

When I charge at home with my Indra charger, I don’t always get 7kW speed, which is frustrating when (like today) I need a full charge and it has only added about 10% overnight.

I’ve got screenshots from my previous two charges and to clarify - I do nothing differently in terms of plugging it in, settings etc.

Anyone else suffer this? I’d say it happens once a month (I generally charge once or twice a week) which is not the end of the world but still frustrating.

 

[TonyP]

Some wall boxes will reduce power if they see other high loads in the home to protect the main fuse.... i.e. power balancing. Did you have any high loads on in the house when the charger power was reduced?

 

[redr11]

Some wall boxes will reduce power if they see other high loads in the home to protect the main fuse.... i.e. power balancing. Did you have any high loads on in the house when the charger power was reduced?

Thanks for the response - no, it was at night, everything was off.

I am currently charging and it’s back at 7kW

 

[linkandnavi]

What wall charger do you have installed?

 

[redr11]

What wall charger do you have installed?

Indra Smart Pro

 

[linkandnavi]

Indra Smart Pro

I don't know them specifically but from a quick look online they do provide load balancing (I.e. they'll throttle output if they detect a high load on the house so as not to blow the cutout fuse). Do you know what capacity fuse your house has? It'll be 60, 80 or 100amp. When the installer set up the charger they will then have had to enter the house's main fuse rating, probably via the app, so that it can balance appropriately. Screenshot of mine below.

If the fuse is too low for the load, or if the app has been incorrectly set lower than the house is rated for, then it could be throttling. If the former, it's doing its job and you'd need to ask your DNO to upgrade your cutout fuse to a higher rating. If the latter, then the setting needs to be adjusted to the correct rating.

It does look like it's being throttled. The power delivery is too consistent for it to be a fluctuation.

Do you have a smart meter where you can see hourly/half hourly usage? I.e like the picture below from my Octopus account?

It would be useful to compare the charger usage vs the house's power usage. It might be that you think there is nothing running at the same time but actually there is that you haven't thought of (heat pump, immersion heater, electric heater) etc. If the smart meter shows high usage at the same time as you were receiving 2 kW from the EV charger, you can probably assume it's a balancing issue.

I had a problem where my solar batteries were completely draining overnight and we're showing a 1 kW constant usage despite me being convinced that everything was off. It took me days to work out they my two year old had flicked a wall switch in my garden office and turned my electric heater on. I was using all my power heating my office through the night in July... Point being that it's easy to think there's nothing else drawing power but there could be and worth triple checking.