GE EV Charger or 3rd party?

Hi all,
First post so be gentle.
Currently puzzling over which EV charger to buy - about to get a used EV so need a charger added to my home setup. We have an AIO + gateway, 3rd party PV inverter, and ASHP (all installed May/June this year). Over summer we've been on Intelligent Octopus Flux and the high export rates have meant we've done quite well. However with winter approaching, I'd like to be able to move to Intelligent Octopus Go for it's 7p/kWh rate which means I can charge the AIO each night 2330-0530 (and run the daily hot water cycle on the ASHP) and hopefully any solar will keep it topped up in the day, minimising any import at >7p/kWh.
According to Octopus, the GE EV charger isn't yet supported on IOG. However, it does offer the best integration with my existing GE kit obviously. I can imagine that IOG integration will come along eventually, but it's been out for a few months now...
Or, the Wallbox Pulsar Max EV charger looks like a good price and is supported by IOG, so if I went for that there's the certainty of getting the cheapest rate. It's a basic charger and doesn't seem to have CT clamps etc to be able to monitor solar export and divert it to EV charging - but at 15p/kWh export, I'd be better exporting in the day and charging the EV at night anyway.
Zappi chargers are highly spoken of (and are supported by IOG) but I'm not sure I need all of the solar monitoring functionality, so finding it hard to justify the extra _£200 cost for one (over the Wallbox option).
Anything else I should be considering?
Anybody with experience of wiring a 3rd party EV charger to a gateway - adding a meter in the slot provided seems to make sense but it would be even better if the GE app could monitor this load as a dedicated icon, by wiring the RS485 comms back into one of the ports in the gateway. The KB article here shows the EV charger wired into the grid side, which at least means the AIO battery shouldn't try and discharge into the EV instead of saving itself for the house loads: https://kb.givenergy.cloud/article.php?id=134&oid=1
Thanks!

tartan_ted84 I can imagine that IOG integration will come along eventually, but it's been out for a few months now...

Lots of people seem to say this, but I can't really see why you can assume it will ever be supported. There are plenty of different brands of chargepoint that are not supported.

I like the Zappi unit it plays well with the Givenergy system and as I do use the excess solar to charge our EV in the summer.

A friend of mine has an OHME unit and says it is very good and intergrates well with Octopus.

tartan_ted84 Presumably your EV isn't itself supported by IOG? Though I have heard that chargepoint integrations are more reliable than car-based integrations. (I went with zappi, but my main constraints was that I wanted untethered.)

DD Good point - no, my EV doesn't seem to be supported (Mazda MX-30) so am looking at the charger options to become compatible that way.

tartan_ted84 Are you aware of the Eon Next Drive tariff? On paper, it seems like a better deal than IOG: the night rate is cheaper (6.9p), lasts longer then IOG (7 hours), and comes with a higher export rate (16.5p). The downsides (I've just asked for a quote - V3): daytime rate is pricey (29p vs IOG 23.71p) and standing charge is higher (64.28p vs IOG 61.27p). But you might never use any daytime power, so that may not matter mcuch.

I think this is a 12-year fix, whereas IOG is variable, and may go up in October.

DD Thanks - I wasn't aware of that tariff! Some great points and info in here - yes I had forgotten that IOG is of course variable. I see the Wallbox charger is promoted by E.ON as well so would be compatible there...decisions.
With the best will in the world I think I'll still end up using some daytime power in the depths of winter, but I haven't gone through a winter with an ASHP yet so don't quite know what to expect.

tartan_ted84 We us the Eonnext EV tariff and so far it works OK for us. The 7 hour window is useful when the car needs a chunk of charging and the rates are competitive and the extra hour or so means the battery bank needs to power the house for 17 hours maximum. Our 12 month fix will come to and end in October so we will see what the next offer is.

Don't forget that IOG is only 5Hrs fixed for any use other than EV charging. When you plug the EV in to IOG, Octopus will plan the charge hours which can be outside of the normal 7p hours and you are still only charged 7p/Hr.
I have a Zappi and it works well.

woofy Don't forget that IOG is only 5Hrs fixed

6 hours : 2330 to 0530

(and if the car charges outside of those hours, all usage is 7p. Though they did a trial recently where only the car usage was cheap - not sure if that reveals plans going forwards ..?)

tartan_ted84 I've got the Full Giv-Energy Setup, Inverter, Battery and EV charger.
The EV charger, is just setup on timed charge every night to use the cheap off peak. If the car is plugged in it charges....
The Battery is also set to fill up on the cheap off-peak, this runs the house through the day. Now if there is good solar, it will ensure battery is full, and then export @ 0.15p / KWh. Between 9pm-11:30pm (Nothing really happening in the house) i've set the timed export up, thus if there is alot of stored energy in the battery, this will be dumped to the grid at 0.15p / KWh.

Zappi & Hyundai Kona 64kWh here both of which are supported on OIGo. 15 x panels, Gen 2 3.6kW hybrid inverter & 2 x Gen 2 9.5kWh batteries & an Eddi (not used much now). Good 6hr cheap rate window & Zappi seems to integrate OK. Can't believe GE's own charger is not yet supported on IOGo. Bit of an own goal that one & was not available when we had our system installed.
We tend to plug our car in the evening every 2-3 days & it's set to charge from the car timer at the start of the cheap rate + anything else Octopus wants to do with it - not seen much evidence of that though. Tend not to charge the car on solar during the day because I can earn more by exporting excess solar. All works fairly well although like many I have had a few hiccups along the way since the system was installed in March '23. Still fine tuning bits of of it 18months later.

CGoode it's set to charge from the car timer at the start of the cheap rate + anything else Octopus wants to do with it - not seen much evidence of that though.

If you're using the car's timer, you're not allowing Octopus to do anything else it wants. My car is set to accept power at any time, and Octopus turn the zappi on and off as required.

DD Humm. Looks like I'll have to get the car manual out & do a bit of reading! Snag is, if I set the car to charge at any time then it will drain the house batteries outside of the time I have paused battery discharge to stop that happening - which is basically the IOGo cheap rate period.

CGoode Snag is, if I set the car to charge at any time then it will drain the house batteries outside of the time I have paused battery discharge to stop that happening - which is basically the IOGo cheap rate period.

I think you've already seen the Octopus intelligent go "warning" thread, so no point rehashing that here.

Actually... I guess it is possible to set car timer to be 2330 to 0530, you could still allow IOG to control the zappi, and then the car would only actually accept charge during the standard window, and would just ignore any extra slots IOG offered. Ie would only charge during the intersection of IOG slots and car timer window. Comes with the risk of under-charging of course.

DD
Last autumn if you got a solar quote from Octopus they were offering GivEnergy equipment, so I would be very surprised if they do not integrate the GE EV charger, They must have quite an installed base of GE solar systems.

Unless the majority of people, like me, found that you could get a higher GE spec for less money from other installers.

Over winter, you may find that the ASHP dictates your choice of tariff more than charging the EV, depending of course on how often you charge.
We have 19kWh of batteries and 24 panels but in winter these aren't significant if you are running the ASHP for most of the time - as you should be - to maximise efficiency.
In January this year we used 2000kWh but being on Agile the average cost was around 14p over a 24 hour period, after optimising the use of batteries.
Much better than being on a cheap overnight EV tariff which is expensive most of the time unless you have 50kWh+ of storage.
We have the GE charge point but just set that to charge overnight which on Agile is usually around 12 - 15p.
Since changing to Agile at the beginning of January, we have averaged 13.5p/kWh over grid imports of 6600kWh. This has saved well over £1000 compared to the Flex tariff. We've been exporting at 15p also during the summer.
Key to this success is using My Energy Optimiser software to manage the battery charging on Agile. It's completely set and forget. If you like playing around with settings all the time, you can achieve similar results with other software but for those you may need to devote a lot of time and run your own hardware.

Brassy quite an installed base of GE solar systems.

Yes. (I have one .) But a much much smaller base of EV chargers. They don't install GE chargers themselves.

Yes, given intelligent flux, they should be comfortable integrating with the GE API. Perhaps it just doesn't work reliably enough?

downfield Over winter, you may find that the ASHP dictates your choice of tariff more than charging the EV, depending of course on how often you charge.
We have 19kWh of batteries and 24 panels but in winter these aren't significant if you are running the ASHP for most of the time - as you should be - to maximise efficiency.
In January this year we used 2000kWh but being on Agile the average cost was around 14p over a 24 hour period, after optimising the use of batteries.
Much better than being on a cheap overnight EV tariff which is expensive most of the time unless you have 50kWh+ of storage.

I’d echo @downfield ’s comments.

I don’t have an EV but I do have two 9kWh ASHP’s (the required design was for a 15kWh system but there wasn’t any MCS accredited 15kWh units at the time) and I too face the same situation of winter consumption exceeds battery storage.

Investigated lots of tariff options for last winter and ended up with Agile+15p fixed as I believed this was the cheapest way of buying electricity through the day. I’m pretty happy with the results with average unit rates through the winter of 18.5p (October 23), 19.8p (November 23), 14.88 (December 23), 16.95 (January 24), 13.89 (February 24), 12.70 (March 24).
Worth highlighting that for most of the winter I only had a single 5.2kWh battery which wasn’t quite enough to get through the 4-7pm evening peak so there was some peak-time import as well as the cheaper rate charging.

For comparison my January 2024 home consumption was 717kWh and ASHP 1142kWh, total solar generation (14kWh of panels) was just 269kWh.

Obviously if you have a smaller ASHP, super-insulation and lots of EV charging your figures could be quite different