Error Charging With Octopus/Zappi/ZS - "Charge Delayed"

[Chris H]

I have "Intelligent Octopus Go" tariff which has been working perfectly up until this week. You just tell Octopus how much charge you want added and by what time (before 11am) and it sets up a schedule and charges me 7p/kWh whenever the scheduled charge is running, even if it's outside the standard 23:30-05:30 cheap rate period. This is great and worked like a treat.
BUT - last Friday I woke up and the car hadn't been charged. Luckily I didn't need to do my 150 mile journey until the evening, so I just boost-charged it at the standard rate (3x more expensive than the cheap rate). Ok I thought, just a blip. It happened again last night; again no extra charge, the Zappi showed a message "Charge Delayed", so I had to use my diesel car as I needed to go out earlyish. If I hadn't had use of a 2nd car I'd be stuffed.

Photo 1 shows the bad sequence; the schedule was due to start at midnight. The first 2 entries are good but "Restarting" and "Charge Delayed" are not normal. Photo 2 shows the car showing cable is connected.
At 8:30am before I went out in the other car I just left the connector in the MG and rescheduled a charge using Octopus to add 20% charge by 11:00 and it scheduled a charge from 9:00-11:00. At 9:00 it started charging and added 11kWh exactly as expected. Photo 3 shows the Zappi log messages for this bit, which is what a good charge should look like.

What's going on? Why is it suddenly unreliable? Is it the car or the Zappi?
If I can't rely on being able to drive my EV in the morning I need to go back to an ICE.

 

[MG steve]

Why not just charge it in your 6 hour cheaper rate window?

 

[Chris H]

Well I thought of doing that, but if it's the Zappi causing the problem then it won't help.
Also, have to do a 140 mile round trip fairly often and I run it down to single-digit % by the time I get home. At an average charging rate of about 6.5kWh/h then 6hrs it's not enough to get up to 100% again for the following day if I need to go again. (6 x 6.5 = 39kWh. The battery is 51kWh, so only 76%). Using the IOG app I can ask it to add 95% charge by 8am and it will do it.
And yes, I could stop at a supercharging station on the way back and top it up at 79p/kWh.
Or I could schedule it myself to continue charging outside the cheap rate at 23p/kWh but again - if it's the charger causing the problem then that's not going to help.

 

[DB Go Rex]

Your message is confusing to me.

What is doing the scheduling...the car or the Zappi?

 

[MG steve]

Is it a lease car?

Schedule the charging for night in the MG app and turn off anything preventing it or duplicate schedules.

39kWh should be just enough for your long trip if above 3.6 miles per kW. Make sure you keep it topped on the days you don’t make the long trip.

 

[MG steve]

Is it a lease car?

Schedule the charging for night in the MG app and turn off anything preventing it or duplicate schedules.

39kW should be just enough for your long trip if above 3.6 miles per kW. Make sure you keep it topped on the days you don’t make the long trip.

I just noticed on the other thread that you have the SR. I don’t think it has the range in winter!

 

[DB Go Rex]

I just noticed on the other thread that you have the SR. I don’t think it has the range in winter!

Stopping for a top up is always an option. 150 miles is doable from 100% in current UK temps.

 

[MG steve]

Stopping for a top up is always an option. 150 miles is doable from 100% in current UK temps.

OP should have gone for the LR ideally so may need a few kWh to make it home with his car. Yes 150 is ok at the moment but not in winter.

 

[DB Go Rex]

OP should have gone for the LR ideally so may need a few kW to make it home with his car. Yes 150 is ok at the moment but not in winter.

If it's a regular weekly trip I get that, but I don't get the aversion to having to stop for 10-15 mins on a trip that sounds like it's well over two hours anyway.

 

[Chris H]

Your message is confusing to me.

What is doing the scheduling...the car or the Zappi?

Neither - Octopus does the scheduling. You tell it how much you want to top up by and what time, then it creates a schedule based on that. I don't use any scheduling on the Zappi or the car. The Zappi is set to Smart Charge, Eco+.

Octopus controls the Zappi via API to turn it on and off at the appropriate times. In the screenshot above the car was sitting at 43% battery, so I asked it to add an extra 60% by 5:30am. This morning I got up to 100% charge, as I expected. The main advantage is that if it requires more than the standard hours then you still only get charged at the 7p rate.
On the occasion it failed, it looks to me like the Zappi threw a wobbly and rebooted when it was told to charge, then for some reason came up with this "Charge delayed" error message when it started again.

 

[Chris H]

If it's a regular weekly trip I get that, but I don't get the aversion to having to stop for 10-15 mins on a trip that sounds like it's well over two hours anyway.

Just over 70 miles each way, takes about 1.5 hours. I make it back without recharging with <20 miles to spare when I can set off in the morning with 100%, but a couple of times I've boosted for 10mins at a supercharging point just to be safe. The 10 minute boost costs more than the entire 100% charge at home, that's the reason I prefer not to.

 

[Chris H]

OP should have gone for the LR ideally so may need a few kW to make it home with his car. Yes 150 is ok at the moment but not in winter.

The LR was an extra £5k for a slightly older car (extra 25% of the price I paid). And yes, I have briefly charged a couple of times, when I arrived with 53%. I expect to have to boost every time when it gets colder.

 

[fred12345]

Can't help but I would assume the problem is between the charger and octopus communicating ... I use 3kW granny charger and that gives me about 30% charge in 5 off-peak hours for my SR Trophy. If you have 7kW charger, that should give at least 70%-80% charge for 6 hours on Octopus? Try using the charger only for those cheap hours and see what happens, might be enough...
Have you spoken to Octopus about it?

 

[DB Go Rex]

Neither - Octopus does the scheduling. You tell it how much you want to top up by and what time, then it creates a schedule based on that. I don't use any scheduling on the Zappi or the car. The Zappi is set to Smart Charge, Eco+.
View attachment 31644
Octopus controls the Zappi via API to turn it on and off at the appropriate times. In the screenshot above the car was sitting at 43% battery, so I asked it to add an extra 60% by 5:30am. This morning I got up to 100% charge, as I expected. The main advantage is that if it requires more than the standard hours then you still only get charged at the 7p rate.
On the occasion it failed, it looks to me like the Zappi threw a wobbly and rebooted when it was told to charge, then for some reason came up with this "Charge delayed" error message when it started again.

Maybe one to report to Octopus support or even Zappi. Either Octopus is doing something that Zappi doesn't like anymore with the API or something has changed on the Zappi end. I'd make sure you have the latest version of the Zappi firmware as well.

 

[MG steve]

The LR was an extra £5k for a slightly older car (extra 25% of the price I paid). And yes, I have briefly charged a couple of times, when I arrived with 53%. I expect to have to boost every time when it gets colder.

Sorry I misunderstood you and thought public charging was something you wouldn't do. Maybe you could charge at the destination or find a public AC charger within walking distance, I assume no Tesla open chargers on the route?

 

[Chris H]

Sorry I misunderstood you and thought public charging was something you wouldn't do. Maybe you could charge at the destination or find a public AC charger within walking distance, I assume no Tesla open chargers on the route?

Tesla open chargers? Haven't heard of that. Do you mean free? I can use 150kW superchargers en route but they only deliver max about 50kW to the MG. I wouldn't expect Tesla to cost less than other chargers. Anyway this isn't the point of the thread, it's about having no charge in the morning because of a failure to charge.

 

[Chris H]

Maybe one to report to Octopus support or even Zappi. Either Octopus is doing something that Zappi doesn't like anymore with the API or something has changed on the Zappi end. I'd make sure you have the latest version of the Zappi firmware as well.

I have updated to the latest firmware a little while ago, I checked and it's still the latest. Nothing wrong with the API, it works 95% of the time, worked perfectly again last night. It's just that I need 100% (or near to it) guarantee that I can get in my car in the morning and go somewhere. The more I look at it the more I think it was a blip in the Zappi

 

[Chris H]

Can't help but I would assume the problem is between the charger and octopus communicating ... I use 3kW granny charger and that gives me about 30% charge in 5 off-peak hours for my SR Trophy. If you have 7kW charger, that should give at least 70%-80% charge for 6 hours on Octopus? Try using the charger only for those cheap hours and see what happens, might be enough...
Have you spoken to Octopus about it?

I need 100% to get me 150 miles.
Looking at the logs you can see that at midnight the Zappi was instructed to charge, it started communicating with the car but then decided to reboot instead of charging, then wouldn't charge after it restarted. This shows the issue is either a blip in the Zappi, or an issue between the Zappi and the car. Octopus clearly did its bit. Anyway, I'll see how it goes in the next couple of weeks and if it happens again.

 

[MG steve]

Tesla open chargers? Haven't heard of that. Do you mean free? I can use 150kW superchargers en route but they only deliver max about 50kW to the MG. I wouldn't expect Tesla to cost less than other chargers. Anyway this isn't the point of the thread, it's about having no charge in the morning because of a failure to charge.

Tesla charger open to non Tesla cars, not all but the list is growing and can be up to half the price of other rapids. Best I have had was 7.27kW in 5 mins. Call Zappi technical support, reboot everything and ensure Zappi is in ECO+ plus mode.

 

[fred12345]

I need 100% to get me 150 miles.
Looking at the logs you can see that at midnight the Zappi was instructed to charge, it started communicating with the car but then decided to reboot instead of charging, then wouldn't charge after it restarted. This shows the issue is either a blip in the Zappi, or an issue between the Zappi and the car. Octopus clearly did its bit. Anyway, I'll see how it goes in the next couple of weeks and if it happens again.

when you plug the charger into the car and lock the car, you see blue lights lit on the car charging indicator? if yes, it's the charger not starting when it's supposed to start.
I see two starting times on octopus 23:30 and 00:00 - check if that's the problem. What happens at 23:30? That works?
Set it only from 00:00 and see what happens.