Slow rate of charging

My EV has been charging at 7.4kw, but from yesterday it’s slowed down to 1.4kw. How can I speed up the rate of charge? Thanks

Curiously my charger behaved similarly over the weekend. On Sunday morning I should have woken up to 100% from 27% but only managed to get to 66%. Then Sunday into Monday it made it from 54% to 93%. All I have now done is to reboot my EO mini and I will try some small top ups during the week. I am on Octopus Intelligent Go so it did the maths and set the charge plan. Previously the system has worked as expected

stuartnewberry Did you solve this?

Still seems to be a problem, whatever I do it will only charge at 1.8Kw. Will have to find a charge point!!

I've just joined the forum as I've got this problem.

Been limited to 1.35kW for the last few days, rather than the usual 6.6kWh or whatever.

Had the EVSE since February - no problems until now.

Tried the car on a Podpoint at the supermarket earlier this evening and it seems the car is not the problem.

Very frustrating! Wife has a daily commute and we've only got three hours cheap electricity at the moment as well.

Has anyone had a solution?

Brian @stuartnewberry @GrahamShaul Did any of your get a resolution to this?

I’m on Intelligent Octopus Go and whilst Octopus recognise the car is plugged in and they generate a charging schedule it doesn’t charge in that schedule so I use the GivEnergy mobile app scheduler. In the app EV settings I have ‘Max Charge Rate’ toggled On. In the charger configuration option I have it set to Standalone (grid). It charges the car at 7.4kWh and also charges the ‘solar’ battery at the same time at 3.6kWh. When not set to Standalone it would charge the car at much lower rate.

SteveClubley thanks very much for the reply.

I changed the setting to 'standalone (grid)' and it didn't seem to make a difference.

However, Octopus have been controlling our home battery via Intelligent Flux (even though we aren't on the tariff any more) and I wonder if that is causing the issue.

I should dissociate Octopus from our givenergy inverter and see if that helps.

There is some advice in one of the other topics about how to remove control from Octopus. Can’t remember which one though.

SteveClubley Surely you just need to revoke Octopus API access (from Account on the portal)

CW

Once I found my Octopus password and got onto the app I dissociated it from there.

Tried the factory reset button on the Givenergy app but it says 'charger offline' so not sure if it worked or didn't work because the charger is offline.

Sorry for all these updates when I'm in the middle of things but then I am always waiting to try something.

Well now the app just says 'charger offline' even though it is lit up outside.

So it currently seems the unit has now just failed completely.

Sigh.

Can you turn the charger off and on again with a physical switch? My installer provided an isolating switch inside the house. There is a reset charger option in EV settings section of the app but you’ve probably tried that.

SteveClubley

Cheers, Steve!

Yes tried switching it off and on at the consumer unit a few times.

Its about the only thing I can do really at present.

[Now flashing blue: 'communication issue.'

Switched off now - will see if it connects next time I switch it on and if not I'll either ring Givenergy or my installer.]

Update - got it reconnected by going through the WiFi process again. Switched to grid mode. Will try tonight as car isn't here now.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'm still curious as to what happened to others who had the same issue - was it a sign of a charger on its way out or was it a temporary issue?

Huzzah - it seems to be working!

I think a factory reset might have done it. Wasn't sure if the factory reset had worked but I suppose that was why it was no longer connecting. It forgot the WiFi settings and had to be re-connected.

Forgot to update all the settings so we ended up unknowingly charging during the peak evening rate which is annoying.

But much less annoying than having to get a new one fitted.

Givenergy claim it was the hybrid mode which limited the charging speed, though I don't remember changing the mode and I would have thought that the instruction to 'max charge' would override the mode.

So I'm back to having no complaints about Givenergy anyway.

DBamford

Glad you got it working.
If you’re on Intelligent Octopus Go and you get their automated charging slots working with the Octopus app I would be interested to know what your GivEnergy app settings are. Currently I’m using the Schedule option within the GivEnergy app between 23:30 and 05:30 for charging but the Octopus control can give slots outside that period but still at 7p rate.

SteveClubley

Sadly I cannot get Intelligent Octopus Go - MG doesn't allow Octopus integration with their app.

And Givenergy and Octopus/Kraken haven't got themselves together to do it at the charger.

Integration always worked seamlessly with Intelligent Flux - I didn't have to do anything once I gave permission.

DBamford I did resolve this though that was a month ago now so I apologise for the delay. I actually found a video on YouTube, though I can't now remember the details. In summary the car had learned that the charging level at my home address was 16A rather than the 32A - ie half or double the speed according to which way round you look at it. Thinking back I thinking back was to initiate a charge during the day time and toggling through the values to get it back to 32A and then somehow that retaught it! But YouTube will fill in the gaps.

GrahamShaul I doubt that was the case. 16A that's a little bit more than a single household socket can provide. Two sockets at full power would trip your fuse already. That never happened to you, of course, otherwise you would know about it. Most likely, your home fuse is 60A, like mine. Artificial limitaton to charge speed was elsewhere, maybe in GE inverter settings. There's a setting for that I know of, you can set max charge speed in Watts.

It is not clear what combination of EV, EV chargepoint or supplier automations are in use by each contributor. There are thousands of potential combinations each with their own quirks that could limit the EV charge rate.

Certainly the VW ID3 can be configured with different charging profiles based on location such as home and work.

A correctly installed chargepoint (EVSE) in the UK can pass up to 32 A single phase to the EV (nominally 7.4 kW), subject to any supply fuse limitations and grid current monitoring/control by the EVSE. The EVSE requires its own dedicated feed from a consumer unit so is not restricted by the capabilities of mains socket ring mains.