Hi all, I may have asked this before, but Im looking to get an EV charger, and get myself moved tariff from Go, to Intelligent to make use of the better rates.
However when I try going through myenergi they add a Harvi into my basket. So a couple of questions:
TIA
shawry I don't have a Harvi. Maybe it's needed if Zappi is too far from the meter ? Perhaps more useful for an Eddi, to avoid having to run wiring inside the house to the meter.
What was it you wanted to integrate? Doesn't really integrate with the GE system at all.
You can always get the givenergy charger. It's £100ish cheaper and is working well for me. It does not support intelligent Go yet but that's waiting on octopus
Lab140 You can always get the givenergy charger. It's £100ish cheaper
But perhaps Zappi has more choice of installer ? That could potentially make up the £100 of difference.
You won't need a harvi as long as you are able to connect a CT clamp from your grid tails directly to your Zappi, I believe the Zappi comes with a single 5m CT clamp (like this one: https://www.myenergi.com/product/ct-clamp/), though it is possible to extend if you need to.
My installer (Octopus) used the EV cable with the twisted-pair carriers bundled along with the power. Then the CT clamps can be connected through that.
Snap.
if you also have a harvey ( gives three CT clamp connections ) then the zappi can know what power is being sent to / from the battery so the myenergy app has all the info for its display.
positor1 my zappi (without harvi) seems to have support for 3 external CT clamps (config suggests there's one built-in one).
I have one on the meter tails and one one the inverter output, though because it's a hybrid inverter, zappi can't distinguish solar from battery. So the myenergi app is able to animate where energy is going. Not that I bother looking at it much.
I guess my thing is, I wouldnt know where to put CT clamps, if I get installed through myenergi and get the harvi, Im guessing they would put all the required CT clamps for me?
I was looking at getting Octopus to fit, but there is a 6 week wait, and they do say they will do all the necessary to integrate with my solar, just was unsure if the battery would make that more awkward.
shawry I think the Harvi may be a distraction: the CT clamps would go in the same places whether they attach directly to the Zappi, or via a Harvi. What the Harvi is offering is simplified wiring if the Myenergi device is a long way from the meter. Perhaps needed for Eddi, if you don't want wires going through the house. Zappi is much more likely to be able to wire the CT clamps directly.
Is it a hybrid inverter you have? Worth being aware of https://support.myenergi.com/hc/en-gb/articles/4716922623633-Hybrid-PV-Battery-Set-up-Avoid-Draining where the contributed note shows where to put the clamps. (I've had a bit of a wrangle with my installer: while I asked for it to be done this way, they insisted it wasn't necessary and the Zappi was smart enough to avoid draining the battery. And even on the first followup, they weren't aware of that article, and spent ages fiddling with the Zappi config trying to fix it. I think they finally get it, and will be coming back next week to put in the extra Henley blocks.
(I hope I'm not putting you off... very impressed with Zappi, and it is working well with IOG. It's only when you get extra bonus IOG slots that it goes a little bit wrong, and it really isn't hard to mitigate that.)
So no Eddi, and the Zappi would be the other side of the wall to my consumer box.
I'll just go with Octopus and let them set it all up 🙂
Thanks for all the advice 🙂
My setup
I don't have a Harvi. The Zappi comes with clamps and is rigged up to see "everything" (Grid import export / Solar production / battery input output).
The Zappis grid connection can see all import / export.
The GivEnergy grid monitoring thingy is AFTER the zappi. So when the ZAPPI is charging the GivEnergy system doesn't see demand. This means the battery doesn't discharge when the car is charging.
When the car is plugged in during a sunny day, the solar charges the givenergy battery first, then it gets exported.
The Zappi can redirect to the car.
I can force a battery to car discharge by telling the GivEnergy battery to discharge, this combined with the solar is redirected via the Zappi into the car.
This way I can use the battery as a buffer.
NB: Octopus may decide that during the sunny day it's a good time to make the Zappi force charge the car. This can be confusing!
So no you don't need a Harvi for a setup like mine.
NSR2 NB: Octopus may decide that during the sunny day it's a good time to make the Zappi force charge the car. This can be confusing!
Oh... I hadn't come across that. Even when you've not asked for a charge? But I use a script to turn Zappi to 'stop' mode every morning, to prevent accidental solar charging, which I guess also prevents Octopus from doing that ?
DD Yup. It happened to me the other day.
I used the octopus compare app and realised that the octopus agile (so wholesale) price was 5p/kwh for that half hour. So if it's cheaper than 7.5p/kwh octopus may as well charge your car, and bill you at 7.5p...
You can tell the Zappi to allow say 4000w to go through before it tries to divert power. When I get Octopus Outgoing then I'll do that, as it makes more sense to export all my power and charge the car at night.
So I wrongly assumed that Octopus would only force charge from the grid, however I guess it would use the battery if it could?
That wouldn't be great, as tbh, I could use the cheap rate to extra charge the battery and then export for a profit?
Damn its a minefield!
This is quite confusing isn't it.
Here are two scenarios:
1) Wholesale price is cheap during the day.
Plug car in.
Octopus tells Zappi to charge the car at full speed 7.6kw
MY GivEnergy battery doesn't see the grid pull.
So it doesn't discharge the battery.
I pay 7.5p/kwh
2)I plug car in as it's sunny.
Electricity is expensive so Octopus doesn't tell the car to charge.
Zappi is in eco+ mode so any electricty being exported (Above 1.4kw) goes to the car.
I tell my GivEnergy battery to discharge (3kw going out)
My solar panels generate 3.6KW, so another 3.6 going out.
Zappi charges at 6.6kw for "free".
Hopefully this makes sense!
NSR2 ah, okay, for 1, when you plug the car in, octopus will assume you want to charge, using the last target % you configured, for next morning. And if power is cheap now, it's as good a time as any to start the program.
I was concerned that if the car was still plugged in from last night, it might spontaneously start charging some more, but I suspect that's not going to happen.
I can do that from the zappi as each ME device supports 3 CT connections. An eddi would talk to the zappi to find out use, although wireless comms (Inc harvi) is not permitted in the Uk if you have import/export control the relies upon the device.
If a zappi is close to everything else, then you will be fine to run a CT to it. If not you could wire grid to the zappi and everything else through a harvi.