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I'm hiring an EV in Spain for a week (hertz/Polestar 2) so what do I need in my kit bag as a non-EV owner? I've downloaded Electroverse and Zapmap which both show EVs close to where we're staying and I've added a payment method to Electroverse. I assume I could also use a credit card and tap and go?
Depending how many miles you are planning on doing, a subscription that could be cancelled after a month e.g. the polestar charge subscription.
https://plugsurfing.com/partners/polestar-charge-subscription/
Or the Tesla subscription
Thanks for that. Hoping to charge up twice during the week and have found an Iberdrola close by so I'll try that. Polestar cover Iberdrola but at £13.99 for a months subs and 30% discount I'm not sure its worth the faff so will use the Iberdrola app.
100 kw at 70p per unit will be £70
30% off that would be £21 so a bit cheaper, with the subscription, but may not be worth the faff.
The Polestar Charge sub includes Iberdrola
Just make sure you consider any charges associatedwith your method of payment as well.
Right isolating my battery from the EV chargers load by moving it's CT clamp. Fairly sure moving as this picture will mean the CT clamp only detects the house's load.
Right isolating my battery from the EV chargers load by moving it's CT clamp. Fairly sure moving as this picture will mean the CT clamp only detects the house's load.
Ooh. Would you mind reporting back? I have the same issue. Thanks.
Will do.
I hired a polestar from Alicante in May. You can't guarantee that every rapid charger in Spain will be credit/debit card, the nearest one to my parents home at a Repsol petrol station (not on electroverse) was only app activated. However, I used my electroverse card with credit/debit card backup without issue. So you should be fine if you are using chargers that are on the electroverse network. I had an issue at one charger where it wasn't initiating the hand shake, but I got it working eventually. From memory, the cable was heavy and was loading at the car at an angle so I just shifted the cable around into a better position so there was less load on the connection and it worked. I've had that happen before a few times over the years.
I don't think there was an English language option on the charger screen, so I just winged it. In the uk I generally plug in first and then swipe my card, even if it tells you otherwise, it always seems to work, but you might have to try it the other way round.
I hired from Hertz and from memory I seem to recall that the cost for not returning the car at 80%+ charge wasn't too bad. 13euro seems to ring a bell. I think I returned it at around 60%.
With the polestar you just put it in drive and go, there's no 'starting' the car.
On a more general note I was travelling south to Milton Keynes on Friday. Stopped at Newport Pagnall services for a charge and all the big chargers were 'Out of Service'
The next charge point was just off the junction into town, at the Park n Ride station. Much slower, and they wanted 30p (cash!) to use the toilets!
Thanks Banana. Picked it up today and the key has a shell recharge fob attached which you can use and it will be billed back to your car hire contract. No idea on the rate but I imagine it won’t be cheap but at least it’s convenient.
Ooh. Would you mind reporting back? I have the same issue. Thanks.
Appears to have worked as intended, well once I got the CT clamp orientation correct😂
Idle thought today after whacking the washing machine, tumble dryer and a load electric heaters and the immersion heater on for 3 hours of Octopus freebie energy this afternoon....
If you are on OIG and have a water tank rather than on demand hot water, would an hour or two of the immersion heater every morning before 0530 now make economic sense instead of the boiler firing up for an hour first thing? We're on LPG which makes it even more expensive than mains gas. Definitely more environmentally friendly I'd have thought.
and the immersion heater on for 3 hours of Octopus freebie energy this afternoon....
I'm a little wary of this as who's to say what your normal electricity use is (as you only get free power over your "normal" usage at that time (on a Saturday in this case).
I'm on agile anyway so we've been paid to use as much as possible overnight .... And again tonight.
If you are on OIG and have a water tank rather than on demand hot water, would an hour or two of the immersion heater every morning before 0530 now make economic sense instead of the boiler firing up for an hour first thing?
Ask chatGPT.
We're on oil with an old boiler and it reckons for us, if the price of oil is around 55p per litre, then the break-even point between oil, heating and electric heating is around 7p per kilowatt hour.
If I finally make the jump to electric, I will go on iOG and will almost definitely heat water overnight and probably switch on the electric underfloor and a couple of heaters in certain rooms for the last couple of hours of the cheap rate period.
(As well as run the washing machine, dishwasher and tumble dryer)
who's to say what your normal electricity use is
They define it as the average of the last 10 working days or 4 weekend days (depending when the session is) excluding days when there were other sessions. So it's pretty easy to work out from the usage charts on your account, even easier if you're the sort of geek who's got home assistant and has built automations to do this for you.
Checking results my numbers usually come out close to theirs.
Ask chatGPT.
Actually I'd already gone to the source ai probably scrapped it from - the Nottingham Energy Partnership. But that doesn't really tell the full picture - hence my question.
Boilers are not universally efficient - British boilers are normally oversized for the house they are in and work most efficiently when working hard.....which they rarely do. If you are just using it to heat one room, or one tank of water they are barely ticking over abd are not working at their best. And then there is the length of pipe run to the tank/room. It's a bit of a minefield.
I think I'm going to invest in a smart timer for the immersion tank and see how it works out. Ethically I'd feel better thinking (hoping) the water is being warmed by wind power rather than fossil fuel regardless of cost.
My car didn't charge itself during the freebie hours and waited to do it overnight as usual. Small print says this is likely and you get credited the free hours as long as you were actually plugged in. We'll see.
We found our Ohme often over-charged the car when telling it to do smart charging. We think this is because of a poor signal where it is (signal at and around our house is crap to nonexistent generally, whatever the network). So we just work out how many hours of charge we need during and programme that to happen during our cheap electricity hours via the car, and have not bothered to go. through the rigmarole of getting Renault to renew the functionality that exposes an api to other things (again). We have a number of set programmes for 2 hrs, 3 hrs etc for this purpose.
We are still working out how to interoperate with the house battery, but in fact this year the transition from summer (more solar than we can use, apart from car charging) and winter (solar just reduces the amount of battery we use up during the day) was quite quick. Now (winter) we can charge the house and car batteries enough during the same cheap overnight period unless we have run the car way down and want it super full for the next day for a trip. (House battery is 5 kwh, car is 50.). Summer may be a bit more challenging as really whether you want to charge the house battery at all depends on tomorrow's weather forecast. Our solar system does not talk to Octopus unfortunately.
I'm using a local electrical contractor to install a charger as they've done good work for me in the past. Which one would you guys recommend based on these 2 requirements:
- Integration with Home Assistant
- Ability to deal with voltage spikes. We're in a rural area and this is an ongoing issue with the other charger.
Chargers:
Wallbox Pulsar Max, 7.4kW £1,149
Zappi Eco-Smart 2.1, 7kW - Tethered £1,149
Pod Point Solo 3, 7kW - Tethered £1,149
Oh, and the Polestar hire in Spain was a bit more faff than I was expecting so wouldn't recommend it. Luckily the shellcharge keyfob worked a treat otherwise I would have been buggered as no apps worked and I didn't have an rfid card from any of the app providers. Had an interesting chat with a German who managed to get his towel down ahead of me on the only charger in Carmona that seemed to work and he had driven a Ford Explorer from Germany to Portugal then on to Spain. He had a roof box and was on his 15th charge of the trip so was pretty hacked off.
Without doing the search myself - are all 3 on your list compatible with Octopus intelligent Go and whatever the OVO equivalent is?
And if rural, do you have a working smart meter?
Your installer should be adding surge protection by default...I guess if it's not his sole job as a generalist sparky he might not do this unless you ask him....not sure.
Integration with Home Assistant
Not sure about this....What's the benefit?
I've been with OVO for the four months that I've had my EV and in that time Charge Anytime has been simple and reliable. I set the charge level I want in the app for the car (e.g. 80%) once and only adjust it if I'm making a long journey and then I just plug the car in if the charge is below around 50% and I know it will be back to my required level by 7am next morning. Couldn't be simpler really. I never even have to look at the apps, just plug it in and let it do it's thing.
But OVO decided to double the price (from 7p/kWh to 14p/kWh) with pretty much no notice, so I thought I'd join the herd and switch to Octopus. Can't say I'm impressed so far!
Switching was easy. Just gave Octopus my details and a switch date (25th) and it happened automatically. But everything since then has been a pain and I still can't seem to sign up for intelligent octopus go, so am having to charge at the standard rate, which is almost twice as high as the 14p I was objecting to paying to OVO.
I've been through the cycle of trying to sign up countless times. Each time I enter my car and charger, it tells me my charger is compatible but when I hit the sign me up button it says I'm not eligible. No indication of why, just not eligible.
The app is full of bugs (at least on an iphone). There is a frequently asked questions section, but I can't find any way to reveal the answers. Some pages (like the list of compatible chargers for the all you can eat tariff) just go to a 404 page not found. I've lost count of the number of times I've had the "sorry something went wrong" error, which never tells you what went wrong and just suggests you try again.
I did try emailing the helpdesk, which claims to be staffed 24/7, but 48 hours later I've had no reply.
I dare say this will all got sorted, but it's not a great introduction and makes me wonder why so many people recommend them. OVO have done some pretty annoying things recently, but at least their stuff worked.
Oh, and I tried to sign up for the electroverse card to use when travelling. I thought the whole point of this was that you could get it to bill your home account. But when I try to add a payment option the only one is a credit/debit card.
Oh, and I tried to sign up for the electroverse card to use when travelling. I thought the whole point of this was that you could get it to bill your home account. But when I try to add a payment option the only one is a credit/debit card.
Could this 👆 be because of this 👇:
Each time I enter my car and charger, it tells me my charger is compatible but when I hit the sign me up button it says I'm not eligible.
Consider Eon Next Drive 7.5p for 6hrs 12-6am, all the house's electricity and you don't need a smart charger.
I did try emailing the helpdesk, which claims to be staffed 24/7, but 48 hours later I've had no reply.
I'd try calling them and actually speaking to human. I needed to remove octopus go fixed from one house/account only a couple of weeks after setting it up and adding IOG to another and the lady I spoke had it sorted in moments even though it was outside of my contract to do it online.
The increase in price at OVO is a worry...I do wonder if the mega cheap overnight deals might come to an end sooner than hoped as the number of EVs wanting it goes beyond niche to the norm.
Oh, and I tried to sign up for the electroverse card to use when travelling. I thought the whole point of this was that you could get it to bill your home account. But when I try to add a payment option the only one is a credit/debit card.
Don't think you can bill to home account presently but you can link the accounts so you get a discount via electroverse.
Switching was easy. Just gave Octopus my details and a switch date (25th) and it happened automatically. But everything since then has been a pain and I still can't seem to sign up for intelligent octopus go, so am having to charge at the standard rate, which is almost twice as high as the 14p I was objecting to paying to OVO.
Try via the website. I found some oddities where sometimes by id7 version was listed as compatible and other times not. I just completed it via the one that said it was. Standard octopus go is 8.5p overnight charging (Vs 7p for intelligent).
Can I just check I've understood this bit correctly too?
With OVO I just plugged in and it was at 80% next morning. With Octopus it looks as though I have to tell it how much I want to to add each night. So, do I have to check my battery percentage each time I plug in and change the value in the app to 80-"current percentage" every night? Or do I just set that value to 100% and let it charge until the car says stop (as it will presumably still stop at the 80% limit I have set in the car)?
Oh, and I tried to sign up for the electroverse card to use when travelling. I thought the whole point of this was that you could get it to bill your home account. But when I try to add a payment option the only one is a credit/debit card.
Don't think you can bill to home account presently but you can link the accounts so you get a discount via electroverse.
I'm pretty sure that my electroverse charges ares paid by Mrs OTS who pays the Octopus bill.
I've had the electroverse card about 18 months though, so it may have changed.
Try via the website.
Yes, I noticed that the website worked a bit better than the app. Fewer "oops sorry, something went wrong" or "404" errors, but still wont let me sign up for an EV tariff, despite telling me my charger is compatible.
I'd try calling them and actually speaking to human.
Did that and got through to a friendly person quite quickly (tick) but he couldn't understand why it wasn't working. He did say that he's message the smart devices people and get back to me by email when they responded, so let's see how long that takes.
you can link the accounts so you get a discount via electroverse.
Any idea where I can find the option to do that? Can't see it on the electroverse page. Looks as though the electroverse card is just something anybody can sign up to and doesn't seem to be linked to my octopus account at all.
With OVO I just plugged in and it was at 80% next morning. With Octopus it looks as though I have to tell it how much I want to to add each night. So, do I have to check my battery percentage each time I plug in and change the value in the app to 80-"current percentage" every night? Or do I just set that value to 100% and let it charge until the car says stop (as it will presumably still stop at the 80% limit I have set in the car)?
You are in a Kia - like me - so yeah, kind of sucks a bit. Octopus have not (yet) buddied up with Kia for their smart charging. Sounds like Ovo have. So the 'smart' bit is the charger not the car. The car is just a thing plugged into a bit of wire attached to the charger. So yes, at the moment in a Kia you have to have a quick look at the Kia app and see how much charge you need and then go into the Octopus app and put that into the amount you want it to charge you by. Or.....do what I do and just leave it at charging something possible inside 6 hours of charging (so for me with a 64kw/hr battery that's 6hr*7kw=42kw/hrs. then 42/64= 65%. I leave it set at 60% for a bit of wiggle room) and set the car to stop taking charge at 80% and leave it to it. Every charge routine will report as a 'fail' as it hasn't managed to put in as much as I told it to (before the car stopped accepting any more) but I can't see a downside to this other than it might have programmed the charge time in a more environmentally friendly way if it had known there was less charging to do.
Long term I hope Octopus will start working directly with Kia (seems bizarre that they are not already given the market share Kia has) and it'll be even better.
Integration with Home Assistant
Not sure about this....What's the benefit?
Only really a benefit if you're into (or considering) home automation when you can integrate everything and have it all controlled from a single app with a dashboard that you've designed to fit your needs. Otherwise it's about as much use as having an Esperanto language option in the app.
Consider the Hypervolt 3 too - looks neater on the wall than the likes of zappi and ohme.
I'm pretty sure that my electroverse charges ares paid by Mrs OTS who pays the Octopus bill.
May be different for those that already have it set up. But it can't be added at present.
With Octopus it looks as though I have to tell it how much I want to to add each night.
You set a level and a time in the app once and just plug the car in. No need to check current charge. No need to open the app unless you want to change the settings. Car setting for max charge trumps the octopus setting. Note if you have battery care level set in the car and set 100% in the car for next charge it will reset to the care setting after the first charge segment (this is in our VW). Might be different with a smart charger if the charger doesn't tell the car the charge has stopped and just stops delivering power but keeps the session open.
Any idea where I can find the option to do that?
There isn't one, you email them once you are on one of the go tariffs.
So, the nice man I spoke to on the phone was true to his word and got back to me by email quite quickly. Unfortunately it was to tell me that my car/charger combination was marked as ineligible for IOG and to try just the regular octopus go instead.
I replied to point out that when I entered my car and charger into their web site it said Congratulations your charger is eligible for IOG and suggested that they update the web site as it was misleading. I'd gone back to the site so I could copy the "Congratulations..." message into my email reply and it then had the "make the switch" button. So, for a laugh, I clicked it and lo and behold it signed me up. So, five minutes after support told me I couldn't sign up i was signed up!
I signed up for the variable option so the 7p price will no doubt increase soon. The ~3p/kwh increase in my standard (day) rate seemed too high a price to pay to fix the 7p EV rate for a year though as I doubt I'll actually bother to do much load switching. I might actually look at their £30/month option as I probably spend more than that most months. Either way, I'm not expecting these prices to stay this low as more people switch to EVs. In that sense I guess I'm part of the problem.
Thanks @convert I don't think OVO was talking to the car though (just the charger). In fact, the reason that it was so simple in practice was that it didn't seem to be that smart. For the four months I was using Charge Anytime it seemed to be exactly that. I'd plug in and it would start charging and keep going until it hit the 80% I'd set in the car then stop. Didn't seem to matter when I plugged in, it always started straight away and I never actually saw it stop and restart once it was going. Possibly explains why they couldn't continue to offer that at 7p/kwh.
It's a bit more of a guddle but your 60% option sounds as though it would work OK for me too. I can live with it telling me it's failed every day as long as it is actually at 80% when I want it to be.
Thanks @oldtennisshoes I can't see an option to "pay by octopus" though. If I try to add a payment option the only option is to add a payment card. Maybe I need to do something from my octopus account rather than my electroverse account though.
Thanks @nixie I guess it is different if you car is supported rather than just the charger. I don't have the option to set a level in the app, just a percentage to add.
Integration with Home Assistant
Not sure about this....What's the benefit?
Only really a benefit if you're into (or considering) home automation when you can integrate everything and have it all controlled from a single app with a dashboard that you've designed to fit your needs. Otherwise it's about as much use as having an Esperanto language option in the app.
Consider the Hypervolt 3 too - looks neater on the wall than the likes of zappi and ohme.
We're on Agile Octopus rather than IOG as we're retired so can load shift without becoming completely anal about it so September's bill averaged 14.56p/kWh. The new EV will be plugged in during the day at points so HA should be able to cherry pick the best 1/2 slots for charging.
I signed up for the variable option so the 7p price will no doubt increase soon.
Just after I got my car in May 2021 it went up from 5p to 7.5p then stayed there throughout the price rises and went down to 7p some time back. So I don't think it's going to be that volatile.
As an aside some of the sloppiness of dealing with your account is unbearable.
These companies - efficiency and all that.
The competition is non-existent, simply passing you hoops to jump through and then messing with the tariff after a while.
It's dismal for a supposed major economic groundswell.
Amen to that @rone I do think the relentless drive for efficiency in everything is just making our lives that little bit worse with every passing year.
Of course, I'm part of the problem as I just switched supplier to try to reduce an already low rate of 14p/kwh for charging my EV to a probably unsustainable 7p/kwh. Although, to be honest, it wasn't the cost that made me switch. Had OVO given a bit more warning and a bit more explanation for the change I might have stuck with them as I was happy with the service. But to suddenly double the EV charging rate with almost no notice was unacceptable in my book so I felt I had to register my displeasure by switching supplier.
Still not really feeling the love for IOG though. Had my first charge on the new tariff last night. Since Octopus can't talk to my car (Kia EV3) directly I have to tell it what percentage I want it to add each night (compared with OVO where I simply plugged it in and it would be back to 80% next morning).
Yesterday evening it was sitting at 65% so I told it to add 15% so I would be back at 80% this morning. It looks as though everything worked as planned (no error messages) but the car was only at 76% this morning. So it only added 11% not the 15% I asked for.
I looked at how many kwh it claimed it added and what it thought the capacity of the battery was and that came to 14%. So still not quite the 15% I asked for and I guess the rest is charging losses.
So, not only do I have to tell it how much to add every evening, I have to also try to estimate the charging losses ☹️
Of course, one solution would just be to set a bigger value that I'll ever need (say 60%) and let the car stop the charge when it reaches my desired percentage. That should work and I can just ignore the error message I'll get every morning. But it does defeat the purpose of smart charging as I'd basically be forcing it to plan a schedule that started as soon as the cheap rate kicked in and then have that stopped by the car long before it finishes. If we all do that then Octopus can't balance the load (as it thinks we all need far more than we really do) so will presumably have to increase the rate or restrict the tariff to cars that it can talk to directly.
That's the problem when you don't have a smart charger. I was lucky that I got one of the last grants for a smart charger (Ohme)
That's the problem when you don't have a smart charger.
He will have a compatible smart charger....otherwise no IOG. The problem is the car is not on their list of compatible devices too - only the charger.
Yes, it's in Octopus' interest to get all (most - they will never manage all realistically) car on their systems too.
Yes the charger is smart enough. Indra Smart Lux. The clue is in the name 😀 but octopus don’t know the state of charge of the car unless they can communicate with that directly I guess.
I thought the chargers were supposed to act as a bridge between the car and octopus.
He will have a compatible smart charger....otherwise no IOG.
I think you an be on IOG with just a compatible car - smart charger not required.
(might be wrong though)
I think you an be on IOG with just a compatible car - smart charger not required.
Yes I had a couple of weeks with it configured using a 3 pin plug, works fine as long as they can control the car.
I think you an be on IOG with just a compatible car - smart charger not required.
(might be wrong though)
Maybe. But in Roverpig's case knowing he has a Kia EV3 I knew the car would not play with IOG so he had to have had a smart charger.