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Easee One vs Ohme epod vs Ohme Home Pro

13K views 17 replies 8 participants last post by  Travelo  
#1 ·
I originally had an Ohme home pro with earth rod, and had nothing but trouble with continual cut outs and poor customer service. Since moving to Easee I've had no problems whatsoever, and live the convenience of the tethered cable. Now I've been advised by Motability they propose to change the Easee unit to the Ohme epod untethered. Has anyone had any good or bad experiences with the Ohme epod, and is there an option for them to fit an untethered cable at time of installation? Also, what's their customer service like these days, as I'm looking at the change with some trepidation.
 
#2 ·
Perhaps you could ask for an Ohme Home Pro instead, which is tethered.
You can't really "fit" a cable to an untethered chargepoint, just plug in a cable when you want to charge. Some manufacturers provide the ability to lock the cable in place permanently, making it effectively tethered, but unfortunately, from what I've read, you can't do that with the Ohme ePod.
 
#3 ·
The Ohme Home Pro has built in Open PEN protection which means it doesn't require an earth rod.
It's possible the issues you were having related to the way it was installed.
Customer service with every company is pretty useless these days and is no longer a reason to decide on one thing as opposed to another.

The Easee One had a few concerns earlier in the year when there was a kickback about the way they had implemented an RCD within the unit which was software driven rather than physical hardware.
I think the fix in it's home country was to ensure a suitable RCD unit was installed in the supply.

It's odd though that they have simply told you they would be swapping it out for the ePod.
Perhaps it's going to be a regular thing to update EVSE as well as folks cars but it might be someone has had a panic over something and instigated the change for reasons which only make sense to them.

Oddly their choice of ePod is providing something where the cable doesn't lock in at all. Unless they decided it's better the cable gets yanked out rather than tripping an idiot postman who ignores all the obvious signs and barges his way through to dog biting territory.

That said, I've just bought an ePod myself.

You could ask them to leave the Easee One alone as you like it or provide compelling reasons why they want to muck about.
You could possibly have them fit an eye to the wall so you can padlock the cable in situ if that's a concern.

It would be great if you could find out and report back with their reasoning.

In the meantime the ePod should be fine for you if installed correctly.

Gaz
 
#5 ·
I would query why they want to remove the Easee One first of all.
If it works for you the last thing you need is a step in the wrong direction.

Gaz
 
#6 ·
Motability advise it's because they're concluding their relationship with Easee, so as the Ohme unit will come with a three year warranty and it's costing me nothing I'll probably go with it. Only bugbear is my preference for a tethered unit, hence I'll be pushing for the home pro.
 
#7 ·
The only thing for it then is to insist it gets installed by someone competent and familiar with the process of installing the unit along with everything that goes with it.
Tell them you don't want a repeat of the hassle you had with the first one.

Gaz
 
#9 ·
The rod might not have been the problem but the Ohme Pro or ePod don't require it.
If the rod has been poorly installed it could be the unit was tripping due to that but without Ohme interrogating the logs we can't say what the issues were.
It might have been a faulty unit.

The ePod will probably be OK for you but you need to have them supply a cable to use with it, ideally not a great big fat heavy thing.
You'll then be able to leave it plugged in similarly to your tethered preference.

When I get mine installed I'll just put an eye on the wall to help retain the cable if I then wanted to leave it plugged in I could use something else to wrap the cable round.

When I did use a tethered unit myself it was less of an ordeal because the cable was lightweight and the bracket I used along with installing it in a logical way rather than how everyone else seemed to install the same thing made life easier. I much prefer socketed though so I can put the cable away.

Hopefully I can do something so I can reduce the length of cable I need.
What might be useable is a coiled cable which might also be something you could consider if you end up with the ePod.

To explain further it's like the curly coiled air hoses they used to have on some forecourts to blow your tyres up. Not sure if it would help or get in the way though.

Gaz
 
#11 · (Edited)
If you have a smart meter and an Ohme Home Pro then unless you have solar, it seems to be a good unit and the one that works best with Intelligent Octopus. This means you can get 7.5p/kWh electricity 23:30-05:30 and at the moment, day time slots as an when, at the same rate. I have one (but no API to my Peugeot) and my vehicle fuel cost has basically disappeared as 'noise' in the overall electricity costs. But the caveat is that I'm retired so can easily plug in during the day and run other appliances like dishwasher and washing machine at the same time, and they're on the cheap rate too, plus my mileage is only about 4-5,000 miles year in the BEV.

If you're content to 'dumb down' the EV or don't have API integration, then the Ohme seems to work well, especially with Intelligent Octopus. But pepole do seem to have problems with it if they are determined to use their car or it's app as the primary way to set charge schedules. Some of the Ohme implementations of the car APIs seem flaky. And if the API isn't implemented, then setting anything in the car is likely to confuse/override the Ohme.

If you don't have your car's API on the Ohme, or opt to not use it, then you will have to calculate and add the requisite charge each time you plug it in. (Personally, I don't find this a problem, but some people get niggled by it). Having the API implemented on the Ohme gives you the ability to just set it permanently to, say, 'charge to 80%' just once, and leave it at that. Which is fine if it works smoothly, but doesn't always seem to.
 
#12 ·
I have an Ohme Home Pro and had many issues with it at first that were caused by my mains supply voltage being too high. Ohme customer service were great. They updated the firmware in the unit, then monitored and sent me detailed logs which showed the unit was frequently receiving too high a voltage, causing it to throw a fault. I sent the logs to my DNO who, after a few weeks, sorted the issue. Ohme then monitored the logs again and showed me that the problem was solved (which I knew anyway as it stopped faulting). I've had no trouble with it since. Whenever I've sent the customer service people a question they've got back to me within a day or two, which I find quite acceptable. I did initially ask customer services if they could raise the voltage fault threshold in the unit, as I've seen elsewhere that people have done that, but CS said that with recent regulation changes they were no longer allowed to.
 
#13 ·
Hello Barry.l have had the Ohme pod fitted through Motobility and like you was very happy with my Easee untethered which I used as a dumb charger on my economy 7 tariff setting it from 2.30 until 7.30 am worked a dream, I have to say I wasn’t happy with the Ohme to start with but after manually setting my start and stop times in it works fine i never had a tethered lead as I prefer to plug in about every 10 days to charge and my Peugeot app doesn’t work for the settings so I entered the cheap rate times of 22.30 to 0 0.30 then 02.30 to 07.30 and it worked brilliantly it got the price wrong the first time but I contacted their advisor who said I has input the wrong price, I put in 00.9 instead of 0.9 per kw as soon as I changed it , it worked perfectly
 
#14 ·
I have the ePod and I have to state that whilst it works fairly well, I find the lack of documentation from Ohme on its use is pretty poor. Both from a user perspective as well as from an installation perspective. Ohme customer service is hit or miss. Either you get someone competent, or nothing at all.

In terms of styling and design, it is a decent bit of kit. Happy thankfully on that front.
 
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