[Xtopher]

Unless you invite a friend with a compatible car round for a charge while you’re signing up…

You have to do at least 1 smart charge every 30 days too. So you need to invite them round every few weeks and do a successful charge

 

[Xtopher]

Why don't they get it working with pod point. It's a smart charger that works over net it turn charging on or off on command.

It's by far the most numerous charger surely.Every EV on my road has a pod point charger it's the one I see most frequently attached to houses.

The pod point chargers could easily be made to work but podpoint is owned by EDF so maybe they won't allow it. Or octopus don't want to because of this ?

Have you requested the integration via the app/website and encouraged other owners to do the same? ID3 is far more popular than Enqyaq, yet Enyaq is currently being tested for IO but I don't think ID3 is, so can only conclude that Enyaq has been requested more (they use a 3rd party for integration that supports both ID3 and Enyaq so its not an API issue).

 

[Xtopher]

There is the new Plug & Charge protocols, which can use CCS-like signalling for negotiating AC charging, but at present very few cars actually support it (VAG MEB platform is one), and you'd need the support from both the charge point and the vehicle, but at least that way, you could tell which one of your possibly compatible cars is physically connected to which one of your compatible charge points at potentially different locations. This would increase the complexity of a standard home charger by requiring something akin to a powerline modem in there, as well as running a full IP protocol stack on that interface (in addition to any local, or 'cloudy' networking it does). This therefore increases the price point of the charge point.

I thought PnC was also DC only? Interesting to see its on the AC side too.

 

[Xtopher]

Interesting insight thanks.

One thing, I'm sure its in the specs, but how does Plug and Charge play with multiple companies/apps offering different rates to the same charger? Say with my Enyaq (and V3.1 which has PnC), I rock up to Ionity (which supports PnC), I can charge using either my Skoda PowerPass (Elli), Octopus Electo-whatever or Bonnet. Is there scope to be able to pick which one would be used for PnC? At the moment, Skoda are saying their implementation will only work via PowerPass. AFAIK, and I've not seen it in the wild, you can install the cert from the SkodaConnect app which I assume is somehow linked to PowerPass. Would be ideal if you could plug in and it was like hey, you've signed up with these 3 providers, which one do you want to use, but I'm also wondering if they've missed that trick with it and you can only have one cert and whoever Ionity sign up with is who you're left with if you want to use PnC. PowerPass being VWG, its likely only to work in their little world rather than a real standard to open up operability like it should.

 

[Xtopher]

My understanding is for cars that cant get the SoC, the app offers a number of kWh you want to put in (bit like Zappi on boost). So it will assume you get say 7kW and work out how many half hour slots you will need and go from there. So you could well get extra slots anyway if it thinks you need a lot of charge.

 

[Xtopher]

I assume there's some constraint to prevent abuse of the system? Eg can I tell it at 4pm that I want 28kWh by 8pm and get peak-time energy at cheap rate ?

Don't think they ever guarantee that if you tell it that you will get cheap rate. It works the same as telling them when you need X% by, as you can do that if they know the SoC too. It only tries to schedule it as best it can is my understanding so if you tell them you need so much charge, it will probably just say its not possible. Hopefully someone with it can chip in.