Best Home EV Charger? 🪫🔋

[HGUS]

Haven't a clue, there seems to be so many out there.  Does anyone have any experience/recommendations please?  Anything I should watch out for?  Pros/Cons?

[rayaans]

Zappi V2 is good. Great customer service when the locking solenoid stopped working under warranty. Guy was out within 2 days to sort it.

[HGUS]

5 hours ago, rayaans said:

Zappi V2 is good. Great customer service when the locking solenoid stopped working under warranty. Guy was out within 2 days to sort it.

Thanks rayaans.  Other than the locking solenoid have you experienced any other niggles or things that you wished it has/does that it hasn't/doesn't?  Do you run it off solar panels or just the standard mains electric?

[Shahpor]

I also have a Zappi, which is very good.  Their customer service has been excellent so far.

My only minor gripe is that their software can take a while to update sometimes when you make a change.

I run mine with my solar panels and the surplus energy feature works well when my house Battery is full.  Only downside is that it doesn't 'talk' to my SolarEdge system, so if I don't manually change the SolarEdge charging profile, the car will drain the house Battery first before using the grid.  But this is a general problem with the available systems and not a specific MyEnergi thing.

[rayaans]

15 hours ago, HGUS said:

Thanks rayaans.  Other than the locking solenoid have you experienced any other niggles or things that you wished it has/does that it hasn't/doesn't?  Do you run it off solar panels or just the standard mains electric?

I have only had the solenoid issue and it was quite a common problem with the earlier ones. The new part has been revised and no problems since.

I run mine from the mains electric. 

[PaulWhitt20]

+1 for the Zappi. Ours seems to work fine.

Installed by

Home Charging Points For Electric Vehicles v5 - Evolution Solutions

Happy with the install as well. Ours is in the garage.

[Chris UXe]

Hi John, you may find this link below to a comparison of EV chargers in What Car? magazine helpful. I had a Hypervolt installed in the garage and it's been faultless.

Best home EV chargers | What Car?

[HGUS]

5 hours ago, Shahpor said:

I also have a Zappi, which is very good.  Their customer service has been excellent so far.

My only minor gripe is that their software can take a while to update sometimes when you make a change.

I run mine with my solar panels and the surplus energy feature works well when my house battery is full.  Only downside is that it doesn't 'talk' to my SolarEdge system, so if I don't manually change the SolarEdge charging profile, the car will drain the house battery first before using the grid.  But this is a general problem with the available systems and not a specific MyEnergi thing.

Many thanks Shahpor, that's useful to know.

1 hour ago, rayaans said:

I have only had the solenoid issue and it was quite a common problem with the earlier ones. The new part has been revised and no problems since.

I run mine from the mains electric. 

I guess problems do occasionally occur, that's life!, but as long as they are rectified quickly and don't keep re-occurring that's good.  Glad to hear that you've not had any further issues. 

1 hour ago, PaulWhitt20 said:

+1 for the Zappi. Ours seems to work fine.

Installed by

Home Charging Points For Electric Vehicles v5 - Evolution Solutions

Happy with the install as well. Ours is in the garage.

Thanks Paul,  happy to hear that yours is working fine.  Another positive for Zappi.

39 minutes ago, Chris UXe said:

Hi John, you may find this link below to a comparison of EV chargers in What Car? magazine helpful. I had a Hypervolt installed in the garage and it's been faultless.

Best home EV chargers | What Car?

Thanks for the link Chris.  I have had a look at a number of comparisons but haven't yet made any decisions.  Just trying to gauge what people use on here and how they have performed.  More like trying to get from a number of horses mouths in the real world.  I'll put Hypervolt down as another positive for consideration.

[HGUS]

My current energy supplier is Octopus, has anyone had any experience getting an EV Charger via them?

[Kevin Williams]

I also have a Zappi. I have had no problems with it. My local installer is fitting a Zappi for my next door neighbour in a couple of weeks. I think my Zappi must be into my wifi because its received a couple of updates...

Zappi Datasheet.pdf

[ColinBarber]

2 hours ago, HGUS said:

My current energy supplier is Octopus, has anyone had any experience getting an EV Charger via them?

You don't need to go through your energy supplier.

 

But, as an aside, if you want to switch to Intelligent Octopus and don't have a compatible EV (e.g. a Lexus UX300e) then you need a charger that they can control (e.g. Ohme) - they don't control Zappi (yet).

[Flairbear]

I also own a Zappi charger and have found it to be very reliable. One point to note is that, like you mentioned, the software updates can sometimes be a bit slow. While this might be a minor inconvenience, the fact that it integrates well with your solar panels and effectively utilizes surplus energy when your house Battery is full is a huge plus.

[HGUS]

15 hours ago, Kevin Williams said:

I also have a Zappi. I have had no problems with it. My local installer is fitting a Zappi for my next door neighbour in a couple of weeks. I think my Zappi must be into my wifi because its received a couple of updates...

Zappi Datasheet.pdf 418.83 kB · 3 downloads

 

1 hour ago, Flairbear said:

I also own a Zappi charger and have found it to be very reliable. One point to note is that, like you mentioned, the software updates can sometimes be a bit slow. While this might be a minor inconvenience, the fact that it integrates well with your solar panels and effectively utilizes surplus energy when your house battery is full is a huge plus.

Many thanks for your comments guys.  It does appear that Zappi are very popular, well at least on this Forum.  Glad to hear that there's been no major problems with them and good customer service.  Could it be that slow software updates might be down to WiFi?  Anyway, slow software updates wouldn't necessarily be a show stopper for me.

 

[HGUS]

14 hours ago, ColinBarber said:

You don't need to go through your energy supplier.

 

But, as an aside, if you want to switch to Intelligent Octopus and don't have a compatible EV (e.g. a Lexus UX300e) then you need a charger that they can control (e.g. Ohme) - they don't control Zappi (yet).

Thanks Colin,  I was only taking Octopus into consideration as I'm already with them and thought it would be a good place to start to see what they have to offer.

On the Octopus website it shows the following:

With ref to your comment, not sure that I fully understand.  I'm in the process of getting an RX450h+.  Are you saying that I may have issues if I were to switch to Intelligent Octopus?

[Phil xxkr]

On 9/14/2023 at 9:16 AM, Shahpor said:

I also have a Zappi, which is very good.  Their customer service has been excellent so far.

My only minor gripe is that their software can take a while to update sometimes when you make a change.

I run mine with my solar panels and the surplus energy feature works well when my house battery is full.  Only downside is that it doesn't 'talk' to my SolarEdge system, so if I don't manually change the SolarEdge charging profile, the car will drain the house battery first before using the grid.  But this is a general problem with the available systems and not a specific MyEnergi thing.

I seem to recall Anthony Dyer covered this off in one of his many vids? 

[Shahpor]

1 hour ago, Phil xxkr said:

I seem to recall Anthony Dyer covered this off in one of his many vids? 

He did, by changing the profile manually.  That's were I got the idea from 🙂

[John Hutton]

John

re intelligent octopus.

the answer currently is clear -  you can not currently have intelligent octopus with a Lexus unless you have an Ohme unit.

I have just switched over to Go Octopus for my NX450H+ with a Zappi charger. Once you get the programming of the system right you can use just surplus energy that you would have exported or charge in the 4 hour window early morning for currently under 10p per Kwh

you can also top up your solar system batteries if you have them for the same cheap rate.

seems to work ok but one downside is that if you go foe either of the octopus car tariffs you can no longer get 15p per kWh for any exported energy - it reverts to their standard rate which is just over 4p.

for a plug-in hybrid I think go octopus will work well as you can easily fully charge in the 4 hour cheap window - not so sure about using it with a full EV however

hope that helps

John

 

 

 

[HGUS]

4 hours ago, John Hutton said:

John

re intelligent octopus.

the answer currently is clear -  you can not currently have intelligent octopus with a Lexus unless you have an Ohme unit.

I have just switched over to Go Octopus for my NX450H+ with a Zappi charger. Once you get the programming of the system right you can use just surplus energy that you would have exported or charge in the 4 hour window early morning for currently under 10p per Kwh

you can also top up your solar system batteries if you have them for the same cheap rate.

seems to work ok but one downside is that if you go foe either of the octopus car tariffs you can no longer get 15p per kWh for any exported energy - it reverts to their standard rate which is just over 4p.

for a plug-in hybrid I think go octopus will work well as you can easily fully charge in the 4 hour cheap window - not so sure about using it with a full EV however

hope that helps

John

 

 

 

Thank you very much for your info John.

[ColinBarber]

8 hours ago, John Hutton said:

one downside is that if you go foe either of the octopus car tariffs you can no longer get 15p per kWh for any exported energy - it reverts to their standard rate which is just over 4p.

This is being changed - you can combine with Intelligent and a lite 8p version for Go:

 

Until very recently, customers couldn’t combine an Octopus EV tariff with Outgoing Octopus for the simple fact that both tariffs were such stonkingly good deals that combining them was effectively a ‘double discount’. We regularly review our tariffs based on market changes and wholesale energy prices, and recently made the decision to change this.

We’re offering customers on Intelligent Octopus the standard Outgoing Fixed price of 15p/kWh because the grid flexibility their smart charging unlocks means greater cost savings.

But we’d never want Octopus Go customers to miss out – so we created a Lite version of the Outgoing Fixed tariff to give you extra reward for your solar too.

 

https://octopus.energy/blog/outgoing-faqs/#goandoutgoing

[eightk]

If you have a plug in hybrid or just don’t do many miles with an EV don’t discount the granny charger on a 3 pin plug - we’ve had various EVs and 99% of the charging has been at a lowly 10 amps via a plug socket in the garage.

[HGUS]

On 9/15/2023 at 7:49 PM, ColinBarber said:

This is being changed - you can combine with Intelligent and a lite 8p version for Go:

 

Until very recently, customers couldn’t combine an Octopus EV tariff with Outgoing Octopus for the simple fact that both tariffs were such stonkingly good deals that combining them was effectively a ‘double discount’. We regularly review our tariffs based on market changes and wholesale energy prices, and recently made the decision to change this.

We’re offering customers on Intelligent Octopus the standard Outgoing Fixed price of 15p/kWh because the grid flexibility their smart charging unlocks means greater cost savings.

But we’d never want Octopus Go customers to miss out – so we created a Lite version of the Outgoing Fixed tariff to give you extra reward for your solar too.

 

https://octopus.energy/blog/outgoing-faqs/#goandoutgoing

Many thanks for the info and link Colin.

[HGUS]

12 hours ago, eightk said:

If you have a plug in hybrid or just don’t do many miles with an EV don’t discount the granny charger on a 3 pin plug - we’ve had various EVs and 99% of the charging has been at a lowly 10 amps via a plug socket in the garage.

I may well be using a 3 pin, it all depends on which comes first the Lexus or the Charger.  🐔/🥚 Will probably be using a 3 pin at other locations as well.

[PWOOD]

I have a Zappi and my installer recommended it as had issues with lots of others and CS was good. I have called for some help with app and confirm very good. Its not very smart as doesn't play with Octopus but I'm with OVO. Luckily although it will not connect in usual manner OVO app allows you to connect to your cars manufacturer (if listed) and then use the OVO app to set smart charging. 10p/KWH. You set the departure time and it will charge according to demand on the grid. Works overnight well. Not sure if Lexus and OVO is compatible but you can check. I have an older Zappi which uses WiFi so no SIM card. All new chargers have a SIM card (afaik)  and after a period of years ( manufacturer specific) you will have to pay a monthly fee for the data. 

[AWC]

On 9/14/2023 at 3:32 PM, HGUS said:

My current energy supplier is Octopus, has anyone had any experience getting an EV Charger via them?

The Ohme Home Pro works well and is compatible with the Intelligent Octopus tariff giving you 7.5p per kWh from 23:30pm to 5:30am.

[HGUS]

20 hours ago, PWOOD said:

I have a Zappi and my installer recommended it as had issues with lots of others and CS was good. I have called for some help with app and confirm very good. Its not very smart as doesn't play with Octopus but I'm with OVO. Luckily although it will not connect in usual manner OVO app allows you to connect to your cars manufacturer (if listed) and then use the OVO app to set smart charging. 10p/KWH. You set the departure time and it will charge according to demand on the grid. Works overnight well. Not sure if Lexus and OVO is compatible but you can check. I have an older Zappi which uses WiFi so no SIM card. All new chargers have a SIM card (afaik)  and after a period of years ( manufacturer specific) you will have to pay a monthly fee for the data. 

 

19 hours ago, AWC said:

The Ohme Home Pro works well and is compatible with the Intelligent Octopus tariff giving you 7.5p per kWh from 23:30pm to 5:30am.

Many thanks for your comments guys.  I've been with Octopus for a number of years and they have served me well.  However, I am prepared to move on if necessary subject to cheap tariffs and getting the flexibility/ease of use that I want.  Ohme is also on my list to consider.  I've still got sometime as no vehicle delivery date yet, in fact still at the 'Order being processed' stage.