Rolec EV smart charger

[navneeth1986]

Remember, when the car displays 100% fully charged, don’t unplug the cable !.
Balancing only commences AFTER the car reaches 100%.
It will only be pulling about 500 Watts to start the balance cycle, which will reduce as the cycle progress.
MG recommends to carry out a balance cycle once a month on the ZS.

Ok. cheers. thanks.

 

[Mihir]

Remember, when the car displays 100% fully charged, don’t unplug the cable !.
Balancing only commences AFTER the car reaches 100%.
It will only be pulling about 500 Watts to start the balance cycle, which will reduce as the cycle progress.
MG recommends to carry out a balance cycle once a month on the ZS.

Roughly how long should this balancing take on a 7kW home charger?

 

[Mihir]

A few thoughts on Ohme charger. EV Man speaks very high on Ohme charger and I bought one too.
1. Its a smart charger which picks up the cheapest period to charge the car but this is applicable to agile tariff only. With the current soaring prices, I would be surprised if many are still on that pricing. So this feature is more like a nice to have for now.
2. Ohme has integrations with Car APIs for charging. Meaning we do not need to have 2 separate accounts running at the same time - one with Ohme and the other with the car like iSmart. MG ZS EV integration is not in place yet but its on their roadmap and will happen soon.
3. Does not currently have Solar integration.
4. We cannot set the start time for charging currently in scheduling. So if we are on Octopus Go Faster tariff for example, if the off peak rate starts at 9.30pm, we cannot schedule to start at 10.30pm. iSmart app lets us define start and end times both.
5. We need to specify the % of the battery we want the car to be at. They also have a finish time setting. But the charger takes % as priority when not in a schedule. So charger continues to charge until the % is achieved ignoring the finish time.
6. Customer support is excellent. They reply within mins on emails and are pretty efficient in thier answers.
Overall I am satisfied. They arent the best in the market as some of the features are still lacking but they are willing to listen and improve.

 

[Mihir]

Has anyone tried scheduled charging or even charging with iSmart app? It lets us set the start and end times but I tried that yesterday and it did not work. I assumed that it would automatically start charging at the start time. When I tried to start it manually hitting start charging button it always came back as Failed to start. I had to go back to the ohme app to start charging then. I use the andriod version of the iSmart app.

 

[Lovemyev]

Roughly how long should this balancing take on a 7kW home charger?

On the ZS EV ( Gen 1 ) it will depend on what BMS software you are running on.
If you are on the original factory software, then anything between about 30mins - 1 hour.
If you are running on the later BMS software ( Jan15th 2021 ) then it will likely take between 2 - 3 hours.
Regarding the face lift model, I have no idea sorry.
It would be very interesting to find out !.
On the original ZS EV you could physically see when the car was performing a balance cycle, because the charge port MG badge would omit a slow glow.
This facility is not on the latest face lift model, so how do you recognise when it is balancing ?.
Do the charging status lights / bars change their sequence or colour in anyway ?.
If you have a energy meter in your home, you will be able witness how long the balance takes, by keeping an eye on demand.
The original ZS EV pulls about 1,000 Watts to start with, then quickly reduces down to 500 Watts, then steps down gradually down to 300 Watts and finally down to 175 Watts before finishing very soon after this, by shutting down the wall box.
Balance times on the Granny lead are likely to be very similar given the lower demand.
Hope this makes some sense ?.

 

[Mihir]

On the ZS EV ( Gen 1 ) it will depend on what BMS software you are running on.
If you are on the original factory software, then anything between about 30mins - 1 hour.
If you are running on the later BMS software ( Jan15th 2021 ) then it will likely take between 2 - 3 hours.
Regarding the face lift model, I have no idea sorry.
It would be very interesting to find out !.
On the original ZS EV you could physically see when the car was performing a balance cycle, because the charge port MG badge would omit a slow glow.
This facility is not on the latest face lift model, so how do you recognise when it is balancing ?.
Do the charging status lights / bars change their sequence or colour in anyway ?.
If you have a energy meter in your home, you will be able witness how long the balance takes, by keeping an eye on demand.
The original ZS EV pulls about 1,000 Watts to start with, then quickly reduces down to 500 Watts, then steps down gradually down to 300 Watts and finally down to 175 Watts before finishing very soon after this, by shutting down the wall box.
Balance times on the Granny lead are likely to be very similar given the lower demand.
Hope this makes some sense ?.

Thanks for this. I have a facelift ZS EV. And ill keep an eye on how it shows up. I dont think there is a visual way of verifying this. May have to keep an eye on the wattage.

 

[Midville]

Thanks for this. I have a facelift ZS EV. And ill keep an eye on how it shows up. I dont think there is a visual way of verifying this. May have to keep an eye on the wattage.

You can tell on the EV Energy app (if you use that with your Rolec) when you look at the bar chart when it steps down.

 

[Whiskery]

2. Ohme has integrations with Car APIs for charging. Meaning we do not need to have 2 separate accounts running at the same time - one with Ohme and the other with the car like iSmart. MG ZS EV integration is not in place yet but its on their roadmap and will happen soon.

It may have moved forward now as I had an Ohme Pro installed last Wednesday and when setting up the app, it listed the MG ZS EV 2022 Trophy Connect, which I selected. I don't have the car yet so can't try it out but it was listed.

 

[Mihir]

It may have moved forward now as I had an Ohme Pro installed last Wednesday and when setting up the app, it listed the MG ZS EV 2022 Trophy Connect, which I selected. I don't have the car yet so can't try it out but it was listed.

Initially the SR wasnt listed. The one you see is LR. I requested them to add SR and they added in an hour or so.

 

[Solar powered]

I'm an electrician by trade and have a 40 solar panel array which produces 5.5kw of solar electricity on a good day, which is a lot of free electricity that I have very little use for and gets mostly exported to the grid. Hence my first electric car is on order.
The choice for a charger that senses solar and mains electric separately in a system and calculates the best time to charge the car is very very limited so my charger of choice is a Zappi. Along with this I need 2 Harvi wireless sensor transmitters as my incoming electric mains and my solar panels are at separate buildings 35 metres apart. I managed to source new Zappi and 2 x Harvi sensors for £780. I also need to run the 6mm hi-tuff cable 20 metres along the side of my house to the Zappi charger. £80 for the cable from the electrical wholesaler. And I'll obviously install it all myself for nothing. Should take 3 or 4 hours, which other people might pay a local Sparky £80 to £100 for their time. I have a spare way in my fuse board for this circuit so no extra expense there.
I don't know anybody local to me that would install it for me to sign it off for the grant money so that part doesn't bother me. Doubt it would make it any cheaper anyway by involving somebody else and having to pay their time too. My property is a farm and VAT registered and the new electric car will be doing plenty of business errands so we can claim back some of the vat on the charger and materials too.
Hopefully the Zappi and car will work well together.