Forum menu
Yes is the short answer. I get a monhtly ionity sub everytime I have atrip where I need to charge for more than about 300 miles
Can you just sign up for a single month? Hassle-free cancellation?
Secondly - I've a set of dumb, non grid tie solar panels. It's just wired into fuse board, right next to feed to the EV charger. We're estimating, looking at output that when the house is empty during the day, they have surplus energy at times.
I've a SyncEnergy 2 charger.
Is there some kind of 'automatic" switch that can detect 'unused' energy and just fling it at the EV charger & car somehow?
They will be grid tied. I think all uk installations are. Using excess solar is a feature of the charger normally. When they detect export they start charging.
Is there some kind of 'automatic" switch that can detect 'unused' energy and just fling it at the EV charger & car somehow?
Myenergi charger?
Yes is the short answer. I get a monhtly ionity sub everytime I have atrip where I need to charge for more than about 300 miles
Can you just sign up for a single month? Hassle-free cancellation?
yep just click the link on the app/website to cancel, I do this once/twice a year when I have a lot of trips to do. IIRC you still get access for the remainder of the month once you cancel, so if you cancel after 3 weeks you still get the reduced rate for the last week. Might be worth looking at charge place Scotland app/card too as they have a lot of slower/cheaper (50p) chargers dotted around that may be useful for you if you are parked up anywhere for a while.
They will be grid tied. I think all uk installations are.
They are not. Welcome to new build housing developers saving a few pence...
What do you think grid tie means ?
It would cost them more money to island your solar from the grid.
New builds often will not have mcs certification so generally not eligible for an export mpan but if it's feeding your fuseboard it's almost certainly back feeding to the grid.
Where does the power go then? If they are connected to your consumer unit and that is also connected to the grid then they are grid tied. Do you export or have an export meter? Is there an inverter somewhere?
Shonky forum hence the duplicate answer above 🤬
Fuse are currently saying peak is .2557p on their ev tariff. That's a bit crap when you can have at best 5 hours at .16p
Can you put the decimal point where it belongs so it makes more sense? 😉
I've a set of dumb, non grid tie solar panels. It's just wired into fuse board
I'd be surprised if they were not grid tied - easy test, switch off the mains power and see what the inverter does - if it switches off then it's grid tied.
It would cost them more money to island your solar from the grid.
This.
If it wasn't grid tied there would have to be a system in place that automatically isolated the house from the grid in the event of a power cut.
Ah, so I am currently giving the grid free energy if I am not using it? hmmm. I need to not do that. 🤔
Another question: I paid premium to charge on way home with new car the other day. Looking at Electroverse I cannot set a price cap, instead have to click through each charger to see what the cost is. Is there an app that allows you to filter by speed AND price?
yep just click the link on the app/website to cancel,
Thanks for the (IONITY subscription) tip. I used it yesterday to drive up to Inverness - charged at Edinburgh, Perth and Inverness and already easily made back the 10.50 it cost. I also stopped briefly at Tesla in Aviemore - they should reward you with free energy for negotiating the labyrinth to find it round the back of a hotel in the end of a holiday park 🙂
good to note on the subscriptions - hadn't thought about that - might change the metrics to use it for more of our miles.
Was happy enough we made it out to loch Muick and back on Saturday 53 miles each way - with 34% left on a 52kw E-rifter.
Electroverse reckoned on me getting there with 53% remaining and back to home with 5% Remaining.
used 41% on the way up and 25% on the way back . It was 2c heading out after a night of -3c coming back it was 10c and sunny - and car was parked in the sun heating up all the time we were there. 3.0M/kw on the way out and Averaged 3.6 m/kw for the round trip which for a 1.9m box on wheels I'm ok with.
although its not the perfect all round car - really not sure how far id go traveling in it as my bladder well exceeds its range- but as we already have a diesel one i am quite happy with it for local journeys/ferrying kids about which is about 95% of our driving - that's us had it for 1000 miles. Nice place to sit , comfy , well appointed for being at the cheaper end of the market and pleasant to drive. Only gripes are - no heated seats and the fact that with the factory tires its beyond hopeless in the lightest of dustings of snow.
the kids love the zenith roof system - the mood lighting is actually not distracting in the slightest as its all behind the driver - means the kids are not sitting in the back looking at the total darkness. - The Rockbros sea sucker sticks well to the glass roof as well.
Is there an app that allows you to filter by speed AND price?
I don't think there is, but if you haven't looked at it already, you should play around with ABRP
https://abetterrouteplanner.com/
That allows to identify preferred networks etc., so might do it.
peak is .2557p on their ev tariff. That's a bit crap when you can have at best 5 hours at .16p
Oops. 25.57p peak and 5 hours at 16p.
I've run the figures a few times and can't get near the 14p average I get on Octopus for the month.
I also stopped briefly at Tesla in Aviemore - they should reward you with free energy for negotiating the labyrinth to find it round the back of a hotel in the end of a holiday park 🙂
Took me a while to find the Tesla chargers and then they were full as one car had a rear right charge port which blocked another bay. Raining also so a wet walk into Aviemore.
one car had a rear right charge port which blocked another bay
That pisses me off and I'm not even a Tesla driver:-)
Though I suppose they do it to themselves by having ridiculously short cables.
It was a pain charging the eTron at some Tesla chargers because of the stupid location of the charge port and the short cable.
Octopus Intelligent Go - choose this above Octopus Intelligent?
I've a compatible car and charger.
Octopus Intelligent Go - choose this above Octopus Intelligent?
I've a compatible car and charger.
It depends
Ah well, I've gone for Go and will see how it pans out...
Now to figure out how the solar panels will play ball - my charger has a solar button but it won't work...
Any electricians in the house?
If I get an electrician to install one of these - https://www.voltaev.co.uk/products/sync-ev-ct-clamp - connected to my SyncEnergy 2 charger, will that enable the solar trickle charge to the car?
Looks like it 👍
You def. don't need an electrician to install a CT clamp - it just goes around the live cable coming out of your meter or supply (i.e. near the fuse)..... the only thing you need to do is make sure it's the right way round otherwise it will say there's power flowing into the house when it's actually flowing out!
There's two wires that will connect to your charger and there's no voltage on them so fill your boots.
I see the charger does "Auto Solar Charging" - just look in the app for any info on that but it probably won't start charging until the exported power is over 1kW or something like that.
Edit: In the app I guess.
Starting a SolarCharge Session
Once SolarCharge is set up, you can begin a charging session. SolarCharge works exclusively with a Charge Now session, ensuring your EV charges only when solar energy is available.
This setup helps maximise self‑consumption of your solar power, reduce grid usage, and lower the overall cost of EV charging at home.
Their CT clamp price is a bit spicy - you can get them for < £10.
I was watching one of those motorway cops / police camera style programmes yesterday and it got me thinking, has anyone considered how old fashioned car loving criminals are going to operate in a world of EV's? They can't steal fuel or pay in cash so, if you are on the run in an EV, how to you charge it without leaving a finance trail.
There is no-way I could go on the run in my EV, it would take about 2 mins of checking card transactions for the rozzers to find out where I have charged my car,
Now that's a good reason for having a car with crap range 😉
Starting a SolarCharge Session
Once SolarCharge is set up, you can begin a charging session. SolarCharge works exclusively with a Charge Now session, ensuring your EV charges only when solar energy is available.
This setup helps maximise self‑consumption of your solar power, reduce grid usage, and lower the overall cost of EV charging at home.
Thank you. The only hassle to install is that the solar cable is in hall cupboard, and the numpties installed the EV charger the other side of the garage. If they had installed it like some others on the estate, the charger would have been but 3m from the distribution board, instead it is <10m away...
I need to look into how this would play with Intelligent Go. In an ideal world it would be - plug car in - if solar is working, use that, if not / in addition charge overnight to 80%...
The only hassle to install is that the solar cable is in hall cupboard, and the numpties installed the EV charger the other side of the garage.
If it's working how I think it is the solar cable has nothing to do with it: the charger needs to know how much power (if any) is flowing out of the house, rather than how much power the PV is making.
This is because there may be 2kW being made by the PV but if the house is using 1.5kW then there's only 500W left - the idea is to only use properly spare power to charge the car.
Therefore the CT clamp goes around the live cable coming into the consumer unit where it can measure the whole house load.
Do they do a wireless CT clamp [like myenergi]?
Update on a couple of things:
- Solar - I am not going to do this as apparently my charger cannot charge at a flexible rate according to what the solar is generating. I therefore risk my solar being combined with incoming £0.32 middle of the day grid energy. Cheaper to just rely on Octopus Intelligent Go overnight cost of £0.075.
- Octopus Intelligent Go - turns out my car was still registered on the Polestar Energy app with previous owner. One email to Polestar folk and the old owner was deleted off it. 5 mins just now = I am up and running on Octopus Intelligent Go with car as a device. Some free charging already this afternoon it appears as it has scheduled a charge for an hour at 2:30pm, and last nights 80 odd mile top up cost £0.57....Fingers crossed this all just works from here on in.
Nice 👍
Shame about the solar.
I need to research more on the solar - do I get MCIS certificate on what is a brand new system (so should pass) and therefore can export, or do I look to bung it into a hot water tank which currently has electric back up for the gas boiler that does the lifting. It would be good to use every penny I can of solar...
We have 3kW of solar at our all electric other place and it provides 95% of the hot water for 6 months of the year.
It's definitely worth putting in a diverter in my opinion.
For us it is cheaper to export everything and get paid (23p/35p) for that and then charge the car at 8p overnight. We are on a combination of intelligent go and flux export though.
It would be good to use every penny I can of solar...
When you aren't getting paid for it yes but if you do get paid for it then this is the wrong way to think.
A good point.
For us it is cheaper to export everything and get paid (23p/35p) for that and then charge the car at 8p overnight. We are on a combination of intelligent go and flux export though.
Are you sure you're getting 35p? Flux Export rate is 30p/kWh in the afternoon when you'll need to empty your battery.
Sorry yes you are correct, misread the digits from the app pre morning coffee. Current afternoon rate is 31.42p.
I've actually got it configured to dump the battery at 11:00pm currently. Yes the rate is not so good then but during the winter my preference is to run from the battery as much as possible during the day before dumping what is left (not much) before cheap recharge. No point dumping at the afternoon rate and then need to run the house in the evening at 1.5p ish less! I am going to add a second dump mid/late morning for the summer months. Load cheaply at 8p then dump at 23p just before/as the sun hits the panels properly. That'll fill it back up and export the excess.
So, a question about charging rates and reality vs advertised. I'm due to take delivery of a PHEV in the next week or so and a work colleague has just got one but is complaining about the real world charging capability. It's supposed to charge at 50kW but he says it doesn't get above 20 when using DC public chargers and he is only getting 2-3kW using a 7kW AC charger. I know that charge rates are affected by temp etc but less than half the advertised rate seems to be a bit much... The PHEV doesn't have any pre conditioning of the battery as an option and I know that many full EVs do but do they also have the same issues? It make the idea of a quick 20 min stop to charge up turn into an hour or more...
It's winter. It's cold , many EVs don't precondition but even those are shed loads better when charging off a good length run.
Charge speed drastically improves when the temperature proves.
But do do the math on plugging in a hybrid in public.
So, a question about charging rates and reality vs advertised. I'm due to take delivery of a PHEV in the next week or so and a work colleague has just got one but is complaining about the real world charging capability. It's supposed to charge at 50kW but he says it doesn't get above 20 when using DC public chargers and he is only getting 2-3kW using a 7kW AC charger. I know that charge rates are affected by temp etc but less than half the advertised rate seems to be a bit much... The PHEV doesn't have any pre conditioning of the battery as an option and I know that many full EVs do but do they also have the same issues? It make the idea of a quick 20 min stop to charge up turn into an hour or more...
you might get a better answer from someone else but my understanding is that older PHEVs charge at the lower rate mentioned and the newer ones charge at the higher rates you mention. Otherwise no idea what he only gets 2kw from a 7kw. My EV at home consistently charges at 7.2kw in all weathers and charges pretty much in line with the advertised DC charge curve. Google what the charge curve is for your car and it should give you a fair idea of what to expect.
Thanks. His is a brand new Škoda Superb iV. Mine will be the same but a Kodiaq. I think there is a setting to limit the charge rate somewhere in the infotainment so not sure if he has messed about with that but he says he’s tried several different chargers. I’ll see what mines like when it turns up…
Is it even worth public charging a phev? Do any of them have batteries big enough to really need a rapid charger?
My EV at home consistently charges at 7.2kw in all weathers and charges pretty much in line with the advertised DC charge curve
Home charging is AC not DC. Assuming the mistype both ours also consistently* charge at the full AC rate at home.
* I say consistently but the Zoe charges consistently when it decides the wind is blowing the right way to actually charge (it doesn't like the chargers earth).
Is it even worth public charging a phev? Do any of them have batteries big enough to really need a rapid charger?
Depends who’s paying and whether or not you have a home wall charger installed/access to a socket for 3 pin. My colleague parks on the street so needs public chargers. I’ve got a Hypervolt wall box so I’ll use that primarily. Although I won’t have cheap rate electricity because the uplift in peak charges (with Octopus) outweighs the saving made when charging such a small battery.