Zappi Charging Overriding the MG4 Schedule

@nbenn persistent of Devon here, one last time!

You want a BASIC Zappi charge timer - I'd suggest that is exactly what the Zappi has and I tried to show it before so here it is from a slightly different view.

Only charge the EV 00:30 to 04:30 any day of the week. Is that not what you mean by a basic timer?


Screenshot_20230201-114744.jpg
Screenshot_20230201-114649.jpg


if that coincided with your battery's non discharge time??

There are two good documents on preventing your car discharging a battery for the other 20 hours of the day here


and here (I know you have seen this one)


As to extra CT clamps, I think those suggestions are false as long as there is one on your grid input and your inverter output.

I hadn't picked up on your setup, you don't have a Tesla power wall or similar but a single inverter / box on the wall that both your batteries and solar panels connect directly to so that myenergi sees them as ONE source of generation. Commonly referred to as DC coupled or a hybrid inverter. And so there is nowhere to connect any more clamps.

I hope the timer does it for you, as I said before, I've had 100% success with this BASIC timer ;)

Similarly I hope you manage to get sorted. I've shown persistent interest in this as I don't yet have a domestic battery and your issue has enlarged my knowledge and hopefully greatly informed future purchasing decisions.

Every day is a school day - good luck.
 
DevonMG4 said:
@nbenn persistent of Devon here, one last time!

You want a BASIC Zappi charge timer - I'd suggest that is exactly what the Zappi has and I tried to show it before so here it is from a slightly different view.

Only charge the EV 00:30 to 04:30 any day of the week. Is that not what you mean by a basic timer?


View attachment 14924View attachment 14925

if that coincided with your battery's non discharge time??

There are two good documents on preventing your car discharging a battery for the other 20 hours of the day here


and here (I know you have seen this one)


As to extra CT clamps, I think those suggestions are false as long as there is one on your grid input and your inverter output.

I hadn't picked up on your setup, you don't have a Tesla power wall or similar but a single inverter / box on the wall that both your batteries and solar panels connect directly to so that myenergi sees them as ONE source of generation. Commonly referred to as DC coupled or a hybrid inverter. And so there is nowhere to connect any more clamps.

I hope the timer does it for you, as I said before, I've had 100% success with this BASIC timer ;)

Similarly I hope you manage to get sorted. I've shown persistent interest in this as I don't yet have a domestic battery and your issue has enlarged my knowledge and hopefully greatly informed future purchasing decisions.

Every day is a school day - good luck.
Click to expand...
Thanks Devon. When I say basic I mean that it won't activate outside the set time no matter what. The Boost schedule you've shown above only works (stays charging within that schedule) when there is no surplus on the system. With the DC coupled system I have, it sees the house battery as surplus and so can actually start charging outside this boost schedule during the day (when my battery is set to discharge). A more basic timer in my mind wouldn't take into account any surplus and would only work at the set times. I'm currently onto Myenergi so hoping they can suggest some solution as it sounds like clamps may not be be feasible on my system. I'll check the links again to make sure I've not missed something. Thanks.
 
Minor update on this. Without doing anything and just before I started adjusting settings per feedback on this site and from Myenergi I decided to give the app scheduling a run again just to check.

For whatever reason, it no longer appears to be charging outside the schedule when set to Eco+. I've done this multiple times now with my battery at different levels of charge to ensure this was not impacting it. All seems to be sorted!

The only thing I can see is different to when I was having the issues after just getting it installed is that my schedule is set for every day as the same now. Starting at night, very night. Don't know why that would have made a difference but regardless of the reason my Zappi seems to be doing what I wanted at the outset.

Anyway just wanted to give an update. Thanks everyone for giving your feedback. I learned a lot regardless!
 
Hi all
I’ve had a similar problem since having my home battery installed in December
I would set the car to charge 00:30 to 04:30 (4 hours on octopus go tariff)
The car would charge then at 04:30 it would start draining the home battery
I have called myenergi many times and gone through different things in the zappi menu’s
I even had a new zappi installed last week due to a faulty screen
The technician who came said the problem was due to having a hybrid inverter but he changed a few settings but to no avail
I have been charging the cars over the last couple of nights and found out if I set the timer to finish charging at 04:15 (instead of 04:30) it switches to waiting for surplus energy mode and then starts charging when the solar produces enough energy
Hope this helps
It seems to be working for us at the moment
???????
 
A lot of this conversation has gone over my head, but a couple tips I've learned from using my friend's charger.
(I set the schedule on the car and use the charger on fast with no schedule.)
Importantly, plug everything in with the car unlocked. The charger will go through the motions and then switch to delayed charge. It's at that point I lock the car.
I found doing anything else means the car is likely to start charging immediately.
I've also found, and know others have, that accessing the MG app can sometimes kick off the charge.
 
dzwilkins said:
How many CT clamps do you have? you can set the zappi to only start charging after it see export going to the grid.

I had an issue with mine and I contacted myenergi they soon sorted my issue out.

I do have an AC battery so that helps a bit, I have the Zappi 2 setup as follows :-

Zappi is in echo+ mode
CT clamp 1 to the Grid
CT clamp 2 to the solar
CT clamp 3 to the battery - had to change this to the battery setting.

The Zappi controls all charging nothing set on the car.
also make sure you are on the most up to date firmware, as I said contact myenergi the support is good.

hope you get it sorted soon.
Click to expand...
is it export to grid what is measured or is it import from grid what is measured to limit the charging capacity using solar power only? I use an Off grid solar hybrid installation by which export is not possible but grid power can be imported. To avoid the grid is charging the EV the Zappi should limit charging based on import.
 
nbenn said:
Minor update on this. Without doing anything and just before I started adjusting settings per feedback on this site and from Myenergi I decided to give the app scheduling a run again just to check.

For whatever reason, it no longer appears to be charging outside the schedule when set to Eco+. I've done this multiple times now with my battery at different levels of charge to ensure this was not impacting it. All seems to be sorted!

The only thing I can see is different to when I was having the issues after just getting it installed is that my schedule is set for every day as the same now. Starting at night, very night. Don't know why that would have made a difference but regardless of the reason my Zappi seems to be doing what I wanted at the outset.

Anyway just wanted to give an update. Thanks everyone for giving your feedback. I learned a lot regardless!
Click to expand...
@nbenn glad it's all working.

Just for the fun of it below is a myenergi screen shot from valentines day where we managed to capture 14.2 kw of solar and using all the settings discussed in #19 & #21. Touched nothing, didn't change or tweak any settings, just plugged the car in Monday evening and unplugged it just before 14:00 Tuesday and ECO+ just did its stuff perfectly. I think the myenergi tech is just PFM or Pure Magic.

Edit: What it shows is the Octopus Go overnight charge then in the morning as the sun comes up and there is not enough spare PV to meet the 6A minimum EV charge standard, the Eddi device is heating our hot water - pale blue. As soon as there is enough spare generation and as I have the Zappi set to a higher priority, it put nearly 10 kwh into the the car - darker blue. Unplugging the car then automatically sends the spare generation back to heat the hot water. All without any user intervention.

Happy charging :)

1676481427946.png
 
Last edited:
DevonMG4 said:
@nbenn glad it's all working.

Just for the fun of it below is a myenergi screen shot from valentines day where we managed to capture 14.2 kw of solar and using all the settings discussed in #19 & #21. Touched nothing, didn't change or tweak any settings, just plugged the car in Monday evening and unplugged it just before 14:00 Tuesday and ECO+ just did its stuff perfectly. I think the myenergi tech is just PFM or Pure Magic.

Edit: What it shows is the Octopus Go overnight charge then in the morning as the sun comes up and there is not enough spare PV to meet the 6A minimum EV charge standard, the Eddi device is heating our hot water - pale blue. As soon as there is enough spare generation and as I have the Zappi set to a higher priority, it put nearly 10 kwh into the the car - darker blue. Unplugging the car then automatically sends the spare generation back to heat the hot water. All without any user intervention.

Happy charging :)

View attachment 15240
Click to expand...
We have the same charging set up as you, including the Octopus Go tariff. It seems to work well, the only thing I've noticed I can only schedule charging on the MG app for a maximum of 12hours. So I can only set it to 12hrs from midnight, meaning if I want to charge with the Zappi on Eco + after midday, I have to re-set the schedule to 12 midday to 12 midnight. I would welcome your comments. Btw I have a 2023 ZF EV Trophy connect.
 
AmbroseIan said:
We have the same charging set up as you, including the Octopus Go tariff. It seems to work well, the only thing I've noticed I can only schedule charging on the MG app for a maximum of 12hours. So I can only set it to 12hrs from midnight, meaning if I want to charge with the Zappi on Eco + after midday, I have to re-set the schedule to 12 midday to 12 midnight. I would welcome your comments. Btw I have a 2023 ZF EV Trophy connect.
Click to expand...
@AmbroseIan I find that I set noting on the car, it's ready 24/7 to accept anything that is offered by the charger.

In #27 above, the big dark blue bit on the left is the GO 4 hours set in the myenrgi app for the Zappi as per #21 above, the charge mode is left at Eco+. I don't have to manage the myenergi settings either, ie everything is left alone untouched from day to day.

Zappi will only charge an EV if it can deliver 6A, I believe this is a general standard and not a myenergi or MG thing. Consequently, the Zappi will not try to charge the car until it has approx 1.38 kw of surplus solar, so the myenergi system will divert any spare generation elsewhere until that point is reached.

In my case as we have an Eddi, the excess solar will be sent to the hot water tank, even though the Zappi has a higher priority than the Eddi. Because of this higher priority, once enough spare generation is reached, then Zappi will take over from Eddi until the solar day moves toward the end and once again below 1.38 kw of surplus where Zappi can't do its thing and hands back to Eddi, light green / blue in the graph. All hands free!

If you have a hot water tank but no Eddi I'd get one, if your not about to buy a battery, as you need somewhere for this lower level excess to go, it can't go to the car.

A further nuance, is that it's rarely sunny enough for the example in #27 and often the sun goes in and out behind clouds. When the surplus falls below that magic figure then the Zappi stops charging, the car goes through loads of cluncks & clicks as it shuts down from charging and when the suns back, more clunks and it starts charging again. This little charging dance of the car can be best part of a minute and is totally inefficient. So I have the Eco+ threshold set to 70%. If the surplus falls to 1kw say, Zappi only needs 70% green energy and will take the rest from the grid and so 'rides' those dull moments without shutting down the charging. I chose 70% as that means the grid charge at that point equates to what I'd pay off peak on Go if that makes sense - 70% free and 30% @ 42p is realy 100% at 12p !!

I'm going to revise down to 60% I think for Eco+ threshold based on my observation of partially cloudy days. It doesn't mean I charging with an excessive amount of peak power, I'm just riding the dull periods briefly a little more efficiently.

I hope that answers your question and makes sense, if not just ask again.
 
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Just to add my 2p to the PV, Zappi and battery discussion having been running both an EV and solar etc for over 18 months.

DC coupled home storage batteries are more efficient than AC as the solar panels generate in DC, you need to invert it to get it to AC which has some losses - you'll do this when you want the battery to support household demand.
That said you can't monitor a DC batteries use via a CT clamp as they only work in AC, so you can't set a Zappi up to 'see' if it is using the battery instead of solar.

There is some mucking around involved getting a Zappi charging cycle to not steal from a DC battery. Due to being on Octopus Go I tell the PV/battery system to charge between 00:30-04:30 and I can set a home battery % limit to charge to. This enables me to lock out the home battery once it hits a % target, so if I've got 75% in the home battery left but set it to 50% on the Go period it'll discharge in support of demand down to 50% and stay there or charge up to 50% on the Go period too.

As I'm also charging the car on a schedule in the Go period on the Zappi, it'll pull from the grid as required at up to 7kw depending on the state of charge in the home battery (which only supports up to 2.6kw of output).

Daytime PV charging involves leaving the charger in ECO+ mode at 100%, I've set an export margin of 50w and a delay charge timer of 30 seconds. This ensures that the PV system is generating more than it can use (so the Zappi sees 1.45kw of export prior to starting to charge the car) and the charge delay timer means the Zappi hangs onto the a charge for 30 seconds after it's dipped below the 1.45kw export value.

There are odd occasions where the system gets a sniff of power from the battery and hangs onto it - this is usually during a high transit load, ie kettle, cooking where the battery steps in to support the PV towards the end of the day.

Due to the car usage profile I'm only running around 20% of its total charging on PV, but that's still a fair chunk of the 4mwh the car has used in the period.
 
Yandards said:
Just to add my 2p to the PV, Zappi and battery discussion having been running both an EV and solar etc for over 18 months.

DC coupled home storage batteries are more efficient than AC as the solar panels generate in DC, you need to invert it to get it to AC which has some losses - you'll do this when you want the battery to support household demand.
That said you can't monitor a DC batteries use via a CT clamp as they only work in AC, so you can't set a Zappi up to 'see' if it is using the battery instead of solar.

There is some mucking around involved getting a Zappi charging cycle to not steal from a DC battery. Due to being on Octopus Go I tell the PV/battery system to charge between 00:30-04:30 and I can set a home battery % limit to charge to. This enables me to lock out the home battery once it hits a % target, so if I've got 75% in the home battery left but set it to 50% on the Go period it'll discharge in support of demand down to 50% and stay there or charge up to 50% on the Go period too.

As I'm also charging the car on a schedule in the Go period on the Zappi, it'll pull from the grid as required at up to 7kw depending on the state of charge in the home battery (which only supports up to 2.6kw of output).

Daytime PV charging involves leaving the charger in ECO+ mode at 100%, I've set an export margin of 50w and a delay charge timer of 30 seconds. This ensures that the PV system is generating more than it can use (so the Zappi sees 1.45kw of export prior to starting to charge the car) and the charge delay timer means the Zappi hangs onto the a charge for 30 seconds after it's dipped below the 1.45kw export value.

There are odd occasions where the system gets a sniff of power from the battery and hangs onto it - this is usually during a high transit load, ie kettle, cooking where the battery steps in to support the PV towards the end of the day.

Due to the car usage profile I'm only running around 20% of its total charging on PV, but that's still a fair chunk of the 4mwh the car has used in the period.
Click to expand...

This is basically my experience also. It does seem odd to me that you can't set a hard timer on the zappi that ignores what's going on with the battery and solar and just charges at the times you set it to.

Per your experience I can mostly get it to not charge but sometimes like you said it gets a sniff and starts up. Can be frustrating when it depletes the house battery and I need to use more expensive electricity. It's not often because I only plug in about once or twice a week at most so doesn't bother me enough to do more to stop it.
 
Yandards said:
Just to add my 2p to the PV, Zappi and battery discussion having been running both an EV and solar etc for over 18 months.

DC coupled home storage batteries are more efficient than AC as the solar panels generate in DC, you need to invert it to get it to AC which has some losses - you'll do this when you want the battery to support household demand.
That said you can't monitor a DC batteries use via a CT clamp as they only work in AC, so you can't set a Zappi up to 'see' if it is using the battery instead of solar.

There is some mucking around involved getting a Zappi charging cycle to not steal from a DC battery. Due to being on Octopus Go I tell the PV/battery system to charge between 00:30-04:30 and I can set a home battery % limit to charge to. This enables me to lock out the home battery once it hits a % target, so if I've got 75% in the home battery left but set it to 50% on the Go period it'll discharge in support of demand down to 50% and stay there or charge up to 50% on the Go period too.

As I'm also charging the car on a schedule in the Go period on the Zappi, it'll pull from the grid as required at up to 7kw depending on the state of charge in the home battery (which only supports up to 2.6kw of output).

Daytime PV charging involves leaving the charger in ECO+ mode at 100%, I've set an export margin of 50w and a delay charge timer of 30 seconds. This ensures that the PV system is generating more than it can use (so the Zappi sees 1.45kw of export prior to starting to charge the car) and the charge delay timer means the Zappi hangs onto the a charge for 30 seconds after it's dipped below the 1.45kw export value.

There are odd occasions where the system gets a sniff of power from the battery and hangs onto it - this is usually during a high transit load, ie kettle, cooking where the battery steps in to support the PV towards the end of the day.

Due to the car usage profile I'm only running around 20% of its total charging on PV, but that's still a fair chunk of the 4mwh the car has used in the period.
Click to expand...
Using a hybrid solar inverter all can be set within the inverter ( or APP) One can use the batt pwr for back-up and or for normal home load. Connecting the Zappi on the home load the batt pwr can be used for charging the EV as desired, following the settings made in the inverter, Batt pwr for backup load can be preserved as desired.
 
dzwilkins said:
you can set the zappi to only start charging after it see export going to the grid.

I had an issue with mine and I contacted myenergi they soon sorted my issue out.

I do have an AC battery so that helps a bit, I have the Zappi 2 setup as follows :-
Click to expand...
An AC battery? Do You mean a batterypack with build in DC/AC inverter and BMS able to synchronise with the home pwr ( grid)? A so called "home-battery".
In this setup the Zappi needs solar pwr flowing to the grid to start charging, pwr which can not be used for charging EV or home batt any more. An MG4 internal charger I think it needs 1.6 KVA to start charging.
In this setting will the Zappi stop charging the MG if the set export pwr becomes insufficient and is Zappi dynamically loading keeping the set export rate till the MG charger stops charging due to not enough pwr. In the case a lot of solar pwr is wasted.
 
DeMille said:
Using a hybrid solar inverter all can be set within the inverter ( or APP) One can use the batt pwr for back-up and or for normal home load. Connecting the Zappi on the home load the batt pwr can be used for charging the EV as desired, following the settings made in the inverter, Batt pwr for backup load can be preserved as desired.
Click to expand...
Nope not a DC coupled battery as the Zappi is just another demand on the home side of the network. The inverter won't know its just for the Zappi. An exception to this is any of the setups that are end to end, ie Solaredge inverter and their car charger setup with their DC coupled battery.
The Zappi can't distinguish between the PV and home storage battery on a DC coupled battery inverter setup. It's purely reliant on seeing export to the grid which most inverter setups do by a few watts in normal operation.
You either provide household demand support via the home storage battery which the Zappi might grab hold of or no household support whilst the Zappi is in operation to prevent it 'stealing' the household side battery.
The international standard under type 2 dictates that the minimum charge point delivery is 1.4kw so the MG will charge at 1.4kw.
If you have an AC coupled battery (arguably less efficient) or use Myenergys home storage battery (so all equipment on their ecosystem) you can prevent the home storage battery being discharged into the car.

The myenergy forum is solid reference point for setting stuff up, used it extensively whilst I was optimising my own setup.
 

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