Battery discharging when EV CHARGING

Hi all, I’m new to all this…and trying to set my system up to work as I need it.

I have a question about why my battery discharges first when my ev is connected to the charger?

I am with “intelligent octopus” and have a Zappi charger. I also have a GivEnergy 9.5kw battery and solar panels.

Instead of charging the car from the grid it always drains my battery first and leaves me with zero battery over night….

Does anyone know how to stop the battery discharging first? I want the battery to serve my home not my car?

Also what does the discharge setting do in the app? Should it be in dynamic or schedule?

Any help appreciated, thank you.

Mark

Dynamic aka eco is usually the best.

Plus add a timed charge for the battery at the same time the car charges.

And set the charge to percentage to be what you want the home battery to be at at the end of the timed charge. It should charge up to that value OR if already above that value discharge down to reach it and then stay at that level till the end of the timed charge.

Or alternatively, move the GE CT clamp so that instead of monitoring the whole house, it only monitors the house circuits rather than house and car charger. That obviously depends on the wiring e.g. do the tails split after the meter, e.g. go through a Henley block, with one set going off to the car charger and the other going to the house consumer unit.

You would loose the ability to monitor the car chargers use from the GE system, but perhaps you can monitor that in another way (e.g. via the car charger system itself or by using home assistant or similar)

Thank you for the advice and replying.

It’s good advise, my main issue is intelligent octopus, it’s supposed to charge the EV any time from 2330 - 0530, but if the car is plugged in octopus will decide when to charge when it wants at the same overnight tariff which makes it difficult to set a schedule for the battery.

I might be better off being on octopus go, which is a defined four hours every night which is easier to schedule.

I have no idea about the CT’s options sorry.

Jones2156 stick with IO as the overnight rate is cheaper and longer. You would have the exact same issue with Go.

Discharging the battery into the EV overnight isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as you have enough left in the battery for the following day.

Rather than trying to figure out the right overnight charge level every night, various automations exist. Take a look at www.github.com/salewis38/palm as an example.

Been charging my EV on Intelligent since April with the charger as a separate item so the battery is unaffected. No problems so far but we haven’t been charging the battery at all apart from a couple of tests to make sure it works. Ours was wired like this from the start but if you want to change it you just move the ct clamp (google it) or get an electrician if not confident. Probably take about two minutes! As for the charging period the last EV charge I did night before last was 9.30 to 5.30am but is normally between 11.30 and 5.30. Before the solar was up and running we used to run the dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer in these times with no issues at all on Intelligent for the previous year.

The other option is set the battery discharge rate to 0 overnight.

Either manually or via some form of automation.

This very same question has been asked and answered many, many times. A search would have found the answer that covers the majority of users. Eco mode with a Timed Charge covering the cheap period.