Which at home charger?

sapixx said:

what is the advantage of having the charged compatible with home solar? I do not have solar panels but not sure why is important to have the charger integrated if I install them in the future. Apologies as I guess this can be trivial for the people who has solar panels...
My understanding is that the power from the solar panels will be stored in a home battery and from there you use it at home or you sell it to Octopus/NG/SP... I guess that the compatibility would be to connect the battery directly to the car but not sure.
Thanks again!

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Sorry for causing unnecessary confusion! I just meant that the Zappi is the best charger to have with solar (it can work out how much is spare and put it in the car), so if you are planning to get solar it might be worth thinking ahead and prioritising the Zappi.

Usually people get a home battery with the solar but if you can fit a lot of panels on your roof you might fill up your battery quite quickly on a sunny summer day and you could then potentially put the rest in a car.

We have Octopus Intelligent Flux, where Octopus control our home battery, which provides generous payment for export, but doesn't have a cheap period overnight for car charging.

Sorry for muddying the waters further, but seeing a few comments from others about charger regrets it is worth thinking ahead when selecting one.

jollyman said:

I don’t call 9 p a kWh paying over the odds do you

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Comparing 7.5p for 6 hours and more to 9p for 4 hours, yes, youre paying over the odds in this situation.

Bam Bam said:

I imagine almost any charger would be fine for the standard Go tariff but you mentioned Intelligent, which only works for a few cars (not MG, but VW) and a few chargers (not Rolec at present).

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The charger has to have a basic scheduling feature - a timer for GO to operate in the 00:30 to 04:30 window. Intelligent works by Octopus controlling the schedule (additional times to the 23:30 - 05:30 window) either by talking to your EV or the wallbox.

Bam Bam said:

Kraken controls our house battery updating the settings every 30 minutes or so - it is an amazing thing!

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Octopus have done an amazing development but need the co operation of other manufacturers to make work with the third party products, car manufacturers like VW, BMW, JLR and many more have integration, EVSE like MyEnergi, Ohme and Wallbox have also done the work.

Bam Bam said:

@sapixx - do you still have the ID4? I don't know how it works if you've got one compatible car and one non-compatible car. You might then be able to get the intelligent tariff but you should check with Octopus whether there might be problems charging the MG.

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If you have a compatible car and a non compatible one you run the non compliant one of a schedule 23:30 to 05:30 and the compatible one with no schedule. Or, you use a compatible wallbox, job done!

Bam Bam said:

Not aware of the features, just that it seemed to have the same sort of features, looked nicer and was cheaper when I was looked (before the Givenergy one came out). The prices might have got closer together since.

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Aye, Zappi is not the best looking unit for sure, it is robust and reliable though.

fred12345 said:

British Gas is doing midnight to 5 am at 7.90p and 29.65p peak... best to shop around, I guess

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The major disadvantage is in your first two words.

Since I was not happy with the 13amp socket for MG4 Trophy charger, since there where instances where it was getting hot, I opted to purchase a BMW charger which has a 16amp industrial socket connection. I have been using it for the last 4 months and have no objections. Is this compatible with the MG4, since I was told that I should not take the risk of changing chargers.

Edilvise said:

Since I was not happy with the 13amp socket for MG4 Trophy charger, since there where instances where it was getting hot, I opted to purchase a BMW charger which has a 16amp industrial socket connection. I have been using it for the last 4 months and have no objections. Is this compatible with the MG4, since I was told that I should not take the risk of changing chargers.

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Unless I'm wrong for some reason - if it works, it works. There are so many different chargers out there so BMW one should not be any different...
I bought 13A (home plug) charger on Amazon and it can be set from 6A to 13A so the socket never gets hot. Unless you say the charger gets extremely hot?

It works and I can choose which current to charge it with. I usually use the 16amp one. No problems so far. But I read around that batteries are very sensitive "animals" and one should always use their respective oem's charger.

Edilvise said:

It works and I can choose which current to charge it with. I usually use the 16amp one. No problems so far. But I read around that batteries are very sensitive "animals" and one should always use their respective oem's charger.

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Not sure that can be in real life, what do you do when you go somewhere, you have to use other chargers... Don't stress too much about it.

Fully agree. That was my reasoning initially. Thanks.

Edilvise said:

It works and I can choose which current to charge it with. I usually use the 16amp one. No problems so far. But I read around that batteries are very sensitive "animals" and one should always use their respective oem's charger.

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Hi Edilvise, what you read is complete tosh and really shouldnt be spread around online .

The wallbox or granny charger as they are called are not chargers at all. They're EVSE: Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment. These AC units plug into domestic supplies and connect to the car. There is a signal line called the pilot line, it carries a 1kHz square wave and the pulse width (the on time) sets how much current the unit can supply. The charger is actually built into the car so youre not in danger of damaging your batteries by plugging in a different make of wallbox. The wallbox and granny charger simply switch on the 240V to the car when any safety issues have been adjusted. The Battery Management System built into the battery will have a converstaion with the cells directly and control the charger with regards to balancing, charge stop and other safety issues etc.

DC charging is as different again, DC Chargers are indeed chargers and they do talk directly with the battery's cells.

I have OHME Pro well pleased with it and great after sales service

johnb80 said:

Hi Edilvise, what you read is complete tosh and really shouldnt be spread around online .

The wallbox or granny charger as they are called are not chargers at all. Theyre EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment. These AC units plug into domestic supplies and connect to the car. There is a signal line called the pilot line, it carries a 1KHz square wave and the pulse width (the on time) sets how much current the unit can supply. The charger is actually built into the car so youre not in danger of damaging your batteries by plugging in a different make of wallbox. The wallbox and granny charger simply switch on the 240v to the car when any safety issues have been adjusted. The Battery Management System built into the battery will have a converstaion with the cells directly and control the charger with regards to balancing, charge stop and other safety issues etc.

DC charging is as different again, DC Chargers are indeed chargers and they do talk directly with the cells

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Thank you so much for the clarification, because I was worried that I can damage my battery. Why do they write this rubbish is beyond me. Thank you so much once again.

Edilvise said:

Thank you so much for the clarification, because I was worried that I can damage my battery. Why do they write this rubbish is beyond me. Thank you so much once again.

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No problem at all, there 's a lot of rubbish online about all aspects of EV's. When I first got my EV I designed, built and used my own wallbox, it was a very steep learning curve but interesting project.