Questions for anyone with a Zappi Glo + Predbat and GivEnergy system

[TheSargey]

Howdy folks,

I'm about to take the leap into EV having a relatively stable solar/battery system for the past few years. My solar/electrician has suggested the Zappi is probably the best/least hassle - I just wanted to get peoples opinions on their own setup here.

Doing a bit of reading, I'm confused a little about the placement of the CT clamp/henley blocks, specifically when using Predbat and Octopus iGO. In this situation would you want the charger/EV to be split via a Henley block and CT so that it is effectively split away from the house load, or would you want it all bundled in and then let Predbat figure it out? I'm just thinking that I'd like to have the control of whether I want the battery to feed the car or not, whether it should all come from the grid etc. In such circumstance is there a situation where you'd want the house to continue on battery power and the car on grid only? I'm assuming this could only be done if it is tailed off correctly with henley blocks etc.

Sorry, might be getting myself a little confused here so any advice more than welcome.

Many thanks in advance.

Sarge

[gcoan]

best advice is to split the EV charger with a henley block before the CT clamp for your inverter then the EV can charge with no risk of your batteries discharging to support the load

you can do it the other way around but when you get extra IOG slots, predbat is always playing catchup, realising there is an extra slot, changing the plan and stopping the battery discharging

[TheSargey]

Morning Geoff, thanks as always for your help.

So, just to clarify, if you do it that way the car will only ever charge off the grid and not from battery or solar? Or am I confused?

[gcoan]

Morning Geoff, thanks as always for your help.

So, just to clarify, if you do it that way the car will only ever charge off the grid and not from battery or solar? Or am I confused?

If you have the EV connection before the CT clamp for the inverter then the inverter won't see any car charging load as part of house load.

If you want to charge the car off solar that would otherwise be exported, yes you can do this, but with overnight IOG rates being less than the flat export rate, its usually not worthwhile to do so.

And if you want to charge the car off your battery (incurring of course twice the conversion losses) you can do that, you'd just need to set a force export of the battery at the time you want the car to charge

[TheSargey]

Great, so ultimately with the pricing as it is on iGo it's just best to allow it to charge off grid when instructed by Octopus. Don't try and do anything fancy.

From what I understand you get the overnight cheap rate (as you do with Go) but there's also potential outside of this for Octopus to choose to charge the car as well. That then means the house can benefit again from low rates at this time right? So if there's any space in the battery (and solar isn't going to max it out) it'll be worth having an automation to top up the battery to export later on - is this already plumbed into predbat? Im assuming so!

Thanks again sir, always indebted to you for your advice.

Sarge

[gcoan]

From what I understand you get the overnight cheap rate (as you do with Go) but there's also potential outside of this for Octopus to choose to charge the car as well. That then means the house can benefit again from low rates at this time right? So if there's any space in the battery (and solar isn't going to max it out) it'll be worth having an automation to top up the battery to export later on - is this already plumbed into predbat? Im assuming so!

yes predbat will plan forced exports to maximise your income, emptying the battery before the start of the overnight cheap rate period. It should usually leave your battery full in the morning from cheap overnight charging

The rules for extra slots for iGo are changing, best you read what Octopus say about these

[TheSargey]

Aha, so they're capping the charge limit, fair enough it did seem a bit unbelievable that you get both the overnight period plus interim during the day.

Many thanks again for your input Geoff, really appreciate it.

Sarge