Help me choose an EV charger..Podpoint or Ohme

Dear Collective brains,
I'd be very helpful if you can help me with a dilemma.

I'm about to order a EV on lease and have been offered a very good fully installed price for either a PodPoint or Ohme (Pro, I think) charger..

I'd rather wait for the GE charger to integrate with my PV and battery, as I want to make use of any excess PV electricity and prioritise the battery for the house, BUT there are many unknowns for the GE box such as full installed price, availability, and can it charge at a rate lower than 3kw or 7kw (making use of the fluctuating excess and export (after my battery has been filled). I'm on a decent fixed single rate tariff until Oct 23..

I'd love to hear the experience of anyone with these two different charges and their GE PV battery system.

At the moment I'm leaving towards the ohme as the app offers granularity of charging, e.g charge upto x% by a particular time so I could put in a manual schedule as a workaround.

I also use Home Assistant so I'm also looking if I can lever that to provide so smarts.

Ultimately, if lack of integration makes using these 2 chargers a pain (fighting with the GE battery), I would consider charging on a 3kw plug in cable for while and fit the GE EV box down the line...
..
Thanks!

There's a couple of work arounds:

Install the EVcharger in such a way that the Givenergy Inverter just can't see it, therefore it just ignores it as a load (with the downside that the GE portal won't be counting any of that load towards your usage totals)

Some have reported success with a Zappi and certain set of settings and CT clamp positioning.

Wait & Fit a GE one (if you dig around the GE Knowledgebase for the App instructions you will find a few pages near the end of what it can and can't do.

Manually pause and resume battery discharge via the app.

Use HA or whatever to control it although you need to find chargers that you can adjust the power output on the fly to. I believe Pod Point is now somewhat in Home Assistant but I'm not sure to a point beyond start & stop. You'll need to have a rummage. Ohme isn't and you can't adjust the output power without interrupting the charge which I didn't want as it's hard on the car.

I have Ohme & an Indra. I've reverse engineered both so I can control them but I don't use home assitant so your on your own with that part.

Hoggy thanks for that tidbit...

For others I think this is what is alluded to...

https://kb.givenergy.cloud/assets/App%20User%20Guide%20FULL.pdf#viewer.action=download

Eco Mode
The vehicle will charge from
excess solar only at a minimum
of 6A (1.4kW).

Eco Plus
The vehicle will charge at a
minimum of 6A (1.4kW) from a
combination of excess solar and
grid power. If excess solar
exceeds 6A (1.4kW), this will be
diverted into the EV.

Boost
The vehicle will charge from a
combination of solar and grid
up to the “Max Current” limit
Slider (A).

Inverter Control
The vehicle will charge based
upon instruction that it has
been given by the GivEnergy
Inverter.

The GE charger is apparently going to be available end of Sept but then it has been reported to be available in August but that was pushed back...

I am in same position I need for the winter an EV charger and just today switched to Octopus Go to be able to make use of cheap energy between 12:30 and 4:30am.

I have a 5.2 kWh battery which does a great job of smoothing my solar generation out for charging the car at 6A.

So the Eco Plus mode sounds great as it will automatically take above 6A if available.

I am intrigued by Inverter control and if that means a new Inverter with this feature is required or that my one installed in January will be able to make use of that feature and what it means?

OP I have delayed buying a charger and just use the granny set at 6A and then the battery nicely smooths out any clouds. It does mean a lot of paffing but I have the time to paff at the moment.

I have to do some analysis to see if it is worth waiting for GE charger or choose something else...

dp100 PodPoint or Ohme

The new PodPoint Solo 3 is said to be able to match your grid export and could be the most expedient option for you if those two chargers are the only ones on offer. The Zappi we have also varies EV charger output from 1.4-7.3kW, to soak up what would otherwise be exported. The GE one would be good to have but if it's going to delay you getting an EV, I'd go with a Zappi (if that is an option in your deal) or the PodPoint Solo 3.

We have 2 EV's. A Kia Soul & Renault Zoe. For both of them we use the ohme charger we bought through Octopus at half price. (Not sure if they do that deal now).
We have been on Octopus Go, Agile & variants of Go Faster for the last few years, but have now switched to "Intelligent Octopus" as the ohme charger has been integrated with that tariff. I understand Intelligent Octopus will also control the charge rate in the ohme to use the most environmental friendly times to charge the EV like Octopus Agile used to.
The ohme, does allow charging at different rates, not just the 7.4kW. With the Soul, it is possible to set it for 3 different levels of charge (Max, 7.4kW, Reduced 6kW & Minimum 4.2kW) but the ohme also now has a facility to set it to a vehicle called "Solar" and the charge rate can be reduced to 1.4kW or 2.4kW. This is very handy when you have excess solar PV generation & a battery as the battery smooths out the load (when a cloud obscures the sun) and takes up the excess when it gets brighter.

Hi.
Thanks kindly Woodlands Tim M_J and hoggy
The info you have provided is really useful.

On reflection I’m going to take advantage of the offered charger as for for only £180 (on salary sacrifice) get something installed for cheap which I could easily swap out later for a GE, which sounds great - thanks M_J for the useful info link.

I was going to go for the pod point, as I’ve realised it’s the solo 3 on offer and the latest variant offers variable charging down to 6A/1.6kwh ‘apparently’. However, thanks Woodlands for throwing in this extra curveball as this is the first I’ve heard about the Ohme having this new ‘solar’ add on/workaround.

I may go with the pod point solo 3 however as I think it’s design is neater for the tethered versions, and I can link it with home assistant to enable/disable charging based on my GE battery and home load status…..

I’ve got a day to decide and will chip in if i find more useful bits on the web.

I can’t but help feel that despite EVs and PV batteries being around for a few years, we’re still in an early adopter phase as waiting for the tech to bed in and catch up. I find it crazy that the EV and charger vendors haven’t realised that the tech savvy clients interested in EVs are the same group of consumers also interested in PV and batteries. Good on GE for having a battery storage centric solution and wish it was already on the market…

Cheers!