EV home charging weirdness/CT clamp

Quite a specific one so thought I’d start a new thread.

Audi>Pod Point>Intelligent Octopus. No issues at all for 2 years. (after removing the PP app which was confusing schedules)

Couple of days ago my Octopus app completely lost my car details. Annoying, but I could still charge as a plug and go type affair-so no scheduled charging. Octopus were no help so I decided to reinstate the Wi-Fi on my Pod Point charger so I could schedule night time charges. Woke up this morning to no charge and the Audi app saying technical fault occurred. So, revert back to remove Pod Point app completely from the system but now it’ll only charge for 10-20 seconds and cut out.

After a bit of faffing, checking the wiring I noticed the CT clamp was in a really odd place-from the main consumer unit with the direction arrow pointing towards the CU. (There is a separate breaker for the charger). I’m pretty sure it should be pointing towards the load so reversed it and tried again. I got about 30 seconds this time. Better, but no cigar. I tried relocating the clamp to the live from the main fuse cutout to the smart meter with the direction arrow towards the meter. It seemed more obvious as there’s no direct link from the EV breaker to the CU. Hey presto, it works….for now. So, why the hell did it suddenly decided to stop working after 2 years?

Shouldn’t the CT clamp be on the incoming main before the CU? It is there to detect the overall current coming into the house and throttle back the charging current if the overall current is looking likely to blow the master fuse which is usually a 80a or 100a fuse.

This is how it is on our Ohme set up.

Had a Zappi fitted a week ago. CT clamp is on the live wire just after the main house fuse. No direction arrow that I can see.

Could the PP charger have done some kind of firmware update that made it realise the clamp was in the wrong place?

Yes, It effectively is on the incoming main, after the big magnetic circuit breaker cut out jobby. So before it gets to the CU. It seemed odd to have it downstream of the CU when the EV cabling bypasses the main domestic CU.

Good point on PP update. It’s still not connecting to the IO app so I’ll try the PP app again tomorrow. Bizarre.

If the original installer screwed up the installation and couldn’t get it to work because the CT clamp is in the wrong place, they can bypass the current limiting feature. Could be that it updated itself when you connected it to WiFi and the current limiting got turned back on.

They can disable it remotely if it causes a problem (usually with home battery storage).

You don’t say which one you have, but here’s an example for the PP Solo. The full document includes various jumper settings, etc…

Smart energy monitoring
The Solo provides a load curtailment feature to limit the maximum demand of the property. The external current clamp (CT) should be connected to the “blue” screw terminal block CON9/J301 in the Solo. Connect the two clamp wires to GND and EXTC (external clamp). The clamp should then be clipped around the main input supply cable close to the domestic energy meter.

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/podpoint-website/PP-D-130012-15-Solo-Smart-Charger-Install-Guide-1.pdf

All manuals here… https://pod-point.com/technical/installation

Cheers timba, yes it’s the Solo 3 and the CT clamp is now in the correct position according to the diagram. As Flaperon suggests, almost certainly overridden by the original installer to force it to work. Wonder how many other installations they’ve done the same for.