Rolfe
Moderator
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2023
- Messages
- 10,601
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- Location
- West Linton, Scotland
- Driving
- MG4 SE SR
Yesterday afternoon when I got back I decided to charge the car up. I plugged the Zappi in, then checked my phone to see what schedule I had. This was for 70% by 9 am. I had 11 pm to 11.30, then 11.30 to 5 am. Fine by me.
I changed my inverter settings so that the house would go on to mains power at 11.00 rather than 11.30, and forgot all about it. However, a couple of minutes after eleven I thought I'd check that the car was actually charging, and found it wasn't. I looked at the Octopus schedule on my phone again, and it was completely different. A string of short, discontinuous slots beginning at midnight. So I didn't have off peak electricity from 11.00 after all, despite having set up expecting it.
I looked at the phone several more times before midnight, and saw it change at least twice more. (I wish I could take screen shots from this phone but I have no idea how.) The last I saw, the slots didn't even start till 2 am and continued through to 8.00-8.30. Some slots were only a few minutes long.
Two problems here. One is that it seems you can't rely on getting an off peak slot when you think you're getting one. Half an hour of the house base load at the peak rate isn't going to bankrupt me (although it's annoying when I consider how much trouble I take to avoid that happening, as a rule), but if I hadn't checked, I could easily have turned on the tumble dryer or something.
When I saw the 8.00-8.30 slot I wanted to run the Eddi at that time to get the water up to temperature, but I didn't dare set it in case they changed it again during the night and I ended up heating the water at peak rate price.
The other is that if they're going to split the slots so that the charge is repeatedly cut and restarted towards the end of the night, the battery pack is not going to get a chance to balance. If the power is cut after balancing starts, it doesn't usually resume.
If this is how it's going to work I think it's completely pointless. I'd be better off simply using the Zappi's own schedule to charge from 11.30 till 5.30 every time.
Has anyone else had this problem?
I changed my inverter settings so that the house would go on to mains power at 11.00 rather than 11.30, and forgot all about it. However, a couple of minutes after eleven I thought I'd check that the car was actually charging, and found it wasn't. I looked at the Octopus schedule on my phone again, and it was completely different. A string of short, discontinuous slots beginning at midnight. So I didn't have off peak electricity from 11.00 after all, despite having set up expecting it.
I looked at the phone several more times before midnight, and saw it change at least twice more. (I wish I could take screen shots from this phone but I have no idea how.) The last I saw, the slots didn't even start till 2 am and continued through to 8.00-8.30. Some slots were only a few minutes long.
Two problems here. One is that it seems you can't rely on getting an off peak slot when you think you're getting one. Half an hour of the house base load at the peak rate isn't going to bankrupt me (although it's annoying when I consider how much trouble I take to avoid that happening, as a rule), but if I hadn't checked, I could easily have turned on the tumble dryer or something.
When I saw the 8.00-8.30 slot I wanted to run the Eddi at that time to get the water up to temperature, but I didn't dare set it in case they changed it again during the night and I ended up heating the water at peak rate price.
The other is that if they're going to split the slots so that the charge is repeatedly cut and restarted towards the end of the night, the battery pack is not going to get a chance to balance. If the power is cut after balancing starts, it doesn't usually resume.
If this is how it's going to work I think it's completely pointless. I'd be better off simply using the Zappi's own schedule to charge from 11.30 till 5.30 every time.
Has anyone else had this problem?