Hi,
Trying to get. Zappi charger installed. One company said an Eddi is good to automatically divert excess power to the car.
I wondered if this is something Giv will automate as part of their improvement in the App and general automation processes?
Should I get the Eddi (not cheap!)
Thanks for your advice!🙂
The MyEnergi Zappi is the car charger, which is able to automatically put excess solar energy in to the car battery.
The MyEnergi Eddi is usually used to automatically put excess solar energy in to an electric hot water immersion heating element.
GivEnergy now have an EV charge-point product. Not sure about an immersion controller.
Should you get an Eddi?
It all depends on how much excess solar energy you are expecting to have, and if it will always be used by the car.
If the car is not always at home during the peak solar output, and your GivEnergy batteries are full, then you may have a justification for getting an Eddi.
Try to do some Maths to calculate how many kWh you think may be going spare, that would otherwise be exported to the grid, plus how much money that energy is worth. It will not apply year round, so may be only the 5 peak solar months of the year.
Simon_C thank you so much. Your comments helped me focus and get my head around it, especially the 'summer only' comment.
I don't think I'll bother with the Eddi, it'll make the install more affordable too, as grants are no longer given.
🙏👍
pjb904 My installer suggested that I wait. He said that GE are developing their own hot water diverter, so it will be much easier to incorporate. I don't know any timescales though and it could be simply an unconfirmed rumour, as I could not find anything about this on the GE website.
GE are showing a hot water diverter on page 22 of their brochure.
https://www.givenergy.co.uk/pdf/PRODUCT%20BROCHURE_FINAL%20(ONLINE).pdf
I have not seen their 'Power Diverter' available to order anywhere though.
We had a Zappi installed before our batteries. The value of it is much lower with the batteries, as we rarely have excess after the battery is full. I need to install another CT to make the Zappi work better but havent got round to it.
The new givenergy charger might be a better shout. At least it should play nicely with the battery
Coops79 We had a Zappi installed as soon as we had the PV done, with an additional CT to monitor grid import/export for the Zappi. With it set to ECO+ mode with 100% Minimum Green Limit, the car can sit there all the time, plugged in and only charges when there is more than 200W being export for more than 30 seconds. In practice, at 100% MGL, it will only start to charge if there is more than 1.4kW being exported, that being the minimum the Zappi can charge at.
Tim we have ours set to 1kw export. Problem is that certain loads such as the iron lead to large export amounts as they turn on and off faster than the inverter can keep up. Hoping the ct (which is sitting on my desk) will do the job. Just got to get round to installing it
Depends on your GE setup, if it's a straight AC Inverter with battery then fine, if it's a hybrid then it's a bit of pain.
Reason being CT clamps can't see the DC to DC feed between the battery and hybrid inverter, so it won't know of it's pulling battery or PV.
I've got mine mostly working with a Zappi, Eddi and hub alongside a HY5 and 8.2 battery. That said there are days the Zappi will still manage to grab power from the battery and once it's started it doesn't tend to let go - even with setting an export margin.
As the GE charger can talk to the inverter etc it can be setup to run as it should.
I wouldn't hold out any hope of other charger APIs being supported either, GE have stated it's got to be an official API release and myenergy haven't officially supported theirs. Also it's been a day 1 of the new portal 'would like to' from GEs side subject to that caveat.
The eddis decent at hot water cylinder heating if you have one and with current gas prices it'll be cheaper to heat hot water on Go using the Eddi instead. That's all about options to use your generation instead of exporting it at crappy rates.
I have an HY5 and 3 off 5kWh batteries, and just installed the EDDI. Seems very difficult to get this to work as expected. I have tried the following settings:
Export Threshold - 50W
Response delay - 15 seconds
Export Margin - 50W
So I expected that the inverter would grab any export current if needed to recharge the battery, because by the time the 15 seconds had elapsed it would react and use it for recharge. Also, because the EDDI always had to see 50W of export, then as soon as this 50W appeared the inverter would grab it for recharge, and the EDDI would stop diverting.
However, its not working consistently. The EDDI is sometimes diverting when the battery needs a charge. Also the logic regarding the export margin is wrong. The EDDI seems to simply adjust the amount of current diverted to maintain the 50W export so as the inverter takes it the EDDI adjusts the amount diverted. I suppose in a steady state the EDDI would eventually stop diverting, but this is a dynamic system, and a burst of sun could increase the amount diverted.
Does anyone have examples of what works? I see Tim (above) has a Threshold of 200W and a delay of 30 seconds. Maybe I need to significantly increase my values.
SteveDooley I've gone with 100 watts export threshold and seems to do the job