I think I paid about £920 for my Zappi including all the bits and pieces and installation, so your quotes sound alright to me. I haven’t done the calculations as to how soon I’ll see a return on the solar I’m using to charge the car (not entirely sure it stacks up) but it’s a cool thing to do. I don’t know why it makes me feel so good to watch the electricity trickling into the car from the roof, but it does.

 

About what I paid. Make sure it includes the hub, and if you have solar get them to fit an extra CT clamp to measure the solar generation

 

For the SOLAR PV and the ZAPPI a CT clamp on the main lead into the property measures any export of power leaving and as soon as it reaches 1.4KWh it is diverted to the EV when set on ECO+ as cloud pass the energy fluctuates and the ZAPPi waits on standby rather than taking from the grid. There are of course other settings Fast which uses max power and ECO which used a mix of grid and solar during cloudy weather.
The hub which works with the APP also has a account which can control the charging schedule to take advantage of low tariff rate and will either charge during the day using solar and if not fully charged will charge before a preset time
As for the installation cost I cannot help you as I have had mine since JULY 2018 and received a grant

 

I’ve got a fairly small solar setup, so I have it set to start when 60% of the 1.4kWh is generated and the rest comes from the grid. That means that for me it’s never more expensive than my off peak rate, but free when the sun is out.

 

Thanks all this helps a lot
How does the the whole clamp system work...ie where does the clamp come from ? I think this is the ignorance on my part not knowing how PV works. It was a new build in 2015 and the panels were part of the house but unfortunately no one actually knew how the things actually work hence the reason I don't think they do anything aside from the ticker meter thing ticking away.

the inverter is a Solis-Mini-1000 but can't find anything about it (its not the 4g model).

Looks like a Podpoint is coming in at 599 installed so we're talking £150 difference. If solar does not work, its a £150 that will pay itself off.

 

Why not get an installer to come out and take a look and tell you if the solar is going to work or not? Nothing lost.

 

It is a possibility - So far the quotes I've had are from installers a minimum of 40 miles away so unless they're in the area, I don't think I could get them to check.

 

Find out the kWp rating of the array, 4 would be usable but some new builds only had about 2kWp, this determines how viable charging the car is.
If there is no documentation which I would find strange then count the panels, if you calculate at 300watts a panel this will give an estimate.
Assume you will only get 70 or 80% of the max on a full sunny day for a few hhours.Will there be enough to charge With?

Often its easier and cheaper to use a supplier like octopus with a 4 hour band at 5p to charge the car.

 

Assuming the image attached (my roof) is classed as 3 panels
3x300 = 900w
70%= 630w
Few hours worth...1890w

Car has a 95kWh capacity (83.6 usable) so on a hot sunny day, am I right in saying 10-15 miles at best? This would cover my work trips but then again... the car would not be on charge at home during the hot/sunny period.

Food for thought - I think I'll base it on who can fit what the earliest

 

Assuming the image attached (my roof) is classed as 3 panels
3x300 = 900w
70%= 630w
Few hours worth...1890w

Car has a 95kWh capacity (83.6 usable) so on a hot sunny day, am I right in saying 10-15 miles at best? This would cover my work trips but then again... the car would not be on charge at home during the hot/sunny period.

Food for thought - I think I'll base it on who can fit what the earliest

I'm afraid your system is too small to charge the car purely on solar.
It needs to be providing at least 1400W excess as that is the minimum the car will accept.
Your system obviously can't manage that so (I think) Zappi has a blended mode which uses some grid to top up the solar.
Honestly you're wasting your time with that size of array as it probably barely covers your base load usage most of the time.
You will never get a return on the extra a Zappi costs, especially as you won't even be at home during the day!
Just get a normal charger.

 

Brilliant thanks for this - I'll look at Podpoint and Ohme again in that case although the latter may be out due to the earth rod

 

As your panels are so small you need an EV tariff to charge at low cost time and use you solar to heat water assuming you have a hot water tank which you most likely do not have, so it is all down to a cheap tariff

 

Thanks James - Its a combi boiler so no hot water tank

 

If you get the ohme, the viridian PEN fault unit is an option EVSE Connection Centre with PEN Loss detection - IP30

They have a link on that page to the install done by Artisan on YouTube.

 

I have no idea what the solars actually do. I know they tick away on the meter but that about it.

Hopefully you read the meter every so often and someone sends you a cheque?

 

As good as the ZAPPI is ,I think in this instance it is overkill, the benifit from the ZAPPI with the existing solar output is a non starter. A more basic charger using the car schedule timer would be more appropriate in this case

 

Now that you mentioned an Ohme, if you can get round the EARTH problem, if you are already an OCTOPUS customer, you can purchase an Ohme charger for under £200, they are others on this forum who can be more detailed about this offer

 

Octopus | Ohme (odoo.com)

 

But you'd still need a commando socket fitting with that cable.

I'd go pod-point, personally.

 

I know a lot of BS is spouted about the apparent "problem" in fitting an earth electrode and connecting a charge point up as a TT installation, but the reality is that there aren't that many installations where it's impossible to fit one. For years every house had an earth electrode for the protective earth, it was the normal way houses here were wired. It's still the normal way that houses are wired in many other countries, too.

The only installations where fitting an earth electrode can be a problem is where there either isn't space to put one far enough away from incoming services (rare, but can happen) or where the soil is of such poor conductivity that it's not practical to get Ra low enough (very permeable sand and gravel soils for example). Even then it's usually possible to fit one, by going deep enough and using something like bentonite around the electrode (or the new conductive concrete that's just come out). There are other concerns, like making sure there's not something conductive that's still connected to the PME PE within touching distance of the car parking area, but again these aren't that common. Driving an earth electrode used to be a bit of a workout in some soils, but the advent of SDS drill adapters that fit the nut driver on a rod makes it pretty easy to get even a long rod in in most soils.

Interestingly, conductive concrete may mean that it's simple to just fit a good earth electrode in new builds, and we may even see a switch back to using TT, rather than PME if conductive foundations become a reality in the domestic sector (they already are in some commercial installations, where TT is the normal earthing system used). Conductive concrete may also mean that shallow earth pits can be used, rather than rods driven deeply into the soil.

 

I have a podpoint and very happy with it. The tethered unit is neat enough certainly looks better than the OHme granny style brick imo. You get up to 15m of cable in the install I actually needed 17m and the installer fitted at no extra cost, it doesn't require an earth stake.

I think the cost for a tethered installed now is £599 after grant. It was installed a week after I put the application in.

 

We’ll a zappi is still a self contained install without earth or pen fault etc needed separately. And you can integrate with an eddi to redirec spare solar elsewhere even if not used to charge. And does load balancing if you need to keep below a certain amps limit on your house. I think it also balances across two chargers. Some of those aren’t unique to the zappi but it’s more than just a solar diversion option

my solar is only 3kw so I rarely use to charge, I just do octopus go overnight which gives me 50% top up for £1.50

 

We’ll a zappi is still a self contained install without earth or pen fault etc needed separately. And you can integrate with an eddi to redirec spare solar elsewhere even if not used to charge. And does load balancing if you need to keep below a certain amps limit on your house. I think it also balances across two chargers. Some of those aren’t unique to the zappi but it’s more than just a solar diversion option

my solar is only 3kw so I rarely use to charge, I just do octopus go overnight which gives me 50% top up for £1.50

I agree... I already had a type 1 rolec which i replaced with a zappi and lots of ct clamps!
Basically because the rolec didnt have pen fault detection, I chose the zappi because it was cheapest overall... just a straight swap with no new bits in circuit or earth rods. Also meant the replacement took less than an hour to complete. Testing much simpler as it was just the one box on exactly the same cables.
Benefit to me was much better control over the solar energy and the car charging.
I think it was the only option to replace that easily.

And like mrklaw, I charge at night on octopus and that is easy to do too.

 

The issue of open PEN fault protection is interesting, as, in terms of safety, nothing is as good as a properly installed earth electrode and suitable RCD. All of the built-in, or add-on, open PEN fault protection devices are less safe, although they do comply with the changed regulations. The bottom line is that if you want to be certain that the touch voltage of an exposed conductive part, relative to the local ground potential, is always within the safe limit you really have to have a local earth reference. Using secondary forms of supply sensing to estimate whether the touch voltage might be too high is never as safe as having the charge point PE directly connected to local earth potential.

 

Thanks all - very interesting comments.

In short, I now have 3 quotes for each of the main players discussed with 2 of them being an issue with installation date.

Podpoint: 2-4 weeks
Zappi - 3-4 weeks
Ohme: Next Friday!

For the Ohme, it comes to £599 fitted (standard install) and this is with a Matt:e device which is I think what Johnny Read eluded to or something similar.
On the basis these are around £150, installation is around the £300 mark, this puts the actual charger at around the 400-450 mark.
I know Octupus are doing a special offer at £200 but I think this is only the device and I would need to arrange fitting etc but more importantly, I am not switched to them yet so we are back to the delay side of things again.

For the difference of £150 that I may or may not ever re-coup via solar and I may be looking at moving house in 2-3 years time, I think this is a good compromise unless anyone shouts or has concerns

@barneyd Unfortunately not. Again going towards the ignorance side of things - we initially spoke to EON who were the providers during the initial few years (and assigned by the house builder) to get the solar panels added to our account but it never happened.
We then switched providers, had our smart gas meter replaced by old-school, and eventually it was forgotten about.

Even right now, I have no idea how to get them "provisioned", who to speak to and what they currently do when they're sun-bathing.

Will revive this- it is a shame if there is a saving, we've not had it for 5-6 years and due to the gadgets, we already have a fairly hefty elec bill