Home Charger advice needed please

[Adopado]

Jeez - 95A at 230V is 22kW. What the hell are you doing in the hours of darkness?

... at the other end of the scale ... as we use very little during the periods being measured, and just for "fun", we decided to sit quietly by candle light with nothing switched on other than fridge and wifi router to maximise our savings over 1.5 hours ... and we were credited with saving 0.2kWh !

 

[RedMod3]

Mwwwwwaaaaaahahaha

View attachment 1002702

You’re cheating with 3-phase. I’m drawing 19.3 and the immersion hasn’t kicked in yet. I’m flying close to the wire!

 

[RedMod3]

Just checked the voltage on our single phase with my Fluke; it’s 230.6V, so all good. The Zappi will cut the charge rate to the Tesla when the immersion comes on.

 

[PITA]

You’re cheating with 3-phase. I’m drawing 19.3 and the immersion hasn’t kicked in yet. I’m flying close to the wire!

It does feel a bit like cheating...

Especially when I still pay the standard daily connection charge.

But hey ho, hey ho, it's off to the Substation we go...

With a clickerty clack and a tripperty zap, hey ho, hey ho ...

 

[ACarneiro]

Pretty common for me to be pulling 95A in the winter as well.
Exactly the same as @RedMod3 (Immersion heater, heat pumps, car, dishwasher, etc)

That extra hour from IO Go actually does make a difference as very occasionally the 5 hours from IO wouldn’t allow the Powerwalls to get quite to 100%

It’ll be even tighter if (when) we get the second EV in the house…

 

[thax1]

Pretty common for me to be pulling 95A in the winter as well.
Exactly the same as @RedMod3 (Immersion heater, heat pumps, car, dishwasher, etc)

And heating the house from the warming glow of the 100A company fuse…double-bubble

 

[ACarneiro]

And heating the house from the warming glow of the 100A company fuse…double-bubble

I have been to check the tails coming to the meter, out of interest.
The red blinking light on the meter was almost continuously lit and there was a very definite warmth to be felt but nothing too concerning.
A slight hum and vibration was a bit more off-putting, to be honest

 

[RedMod3]

I have been to check the tails coming to the meter, out of interest.
The red blinking light on the meter was almost continuously lit and there was a very definite warmth to be felt but nothing too concerning.
A slight hum and vibration was a bit more off-putting, to be honest

We have 2 EVs but never charge them on the same night; fortunately we never need to. I have been out with a therma imaging camera to check te temperature of all cables and all is well.

Do like this mild weather, so far we’ve not used peak grid power this month.

 

[WannabeOwner]

We have 2 EVs but never charge them on the same night

I just plug mine in ... if they both want to charge then they do (but the PowerWalls notice the load and ramp back from 10kW to 3.5kW)

 

[RedMod3]

I just plug mine in ... if they both want to charge then they do (but the PowerWalls notice the load and ramp back from 10kW to 3.5kW)

Ah, but what controls that? My Zappi limits draw to 95A and our baby Smart is taken care of by a Granny.

 

[WannabeOwner]

what controls that?

Two wall chargers - old Tesla one and Zappi. Cars in Schedule (to charge on overnight Off Peak). I've set their start time 5 minutes apart ... but other than that they both come on same time. Very unlikely that both of them would be "empty", so they either don't charge at all, or both charge for a short time until one done and then the other caries on - maybe the whole of Off Peak if its been somewhere "far"

100A fuse, with the PowerWalls we must using a fair bit when "all on", but its never been a problem

 

[RedMod3]

Two wall chargers - old Tesla one and Zappi. Cars in Schedule (to charge on overnight Off Peak). I've set their start time 5 minutes apart ... but other than that they both come on same time. Very unlikely that both of them would be "empty", so they either don't charge at all, or both charge for a short time until one done and then the other caries on - maybe the whole of Off Peak if its been somewhere "far"

100A fuse, with the PowerWalls we must using a fair bit when "all on", but its never been a problem

Ah Ok. I let Octopus control my Zappi as I’m on IO; octopus have set my 5th terminal on the smart meter to come on for 4 hours so I don’t need to contact them to adjust the times with the 6 hours I’m allowed. The Granny does its charging slowly in that period, but it’s fine as the car’s range is 80 miles in winter and 100 in summer, but it suits us.

 

[KennethS]

Our garage is supplied from our main consumer unit via only a 40amp breaker. We have two of the Gen2 Tesla wall connectors running off the garage supply tethered for load balancing. So we can plug and charge two cars simultaneously and the TWCs allocate the amperage as best needed between the charging cars. Not as high tech as many of you but it works well enough for our needs.

 

[Wybrook]

So I decided to go with British Gas rather than Octopus

Any advice would be greatfully received

Unfortunately I think the first quote will become a significant part of your problem. I was moved onto BG when my supplier went bust and spent four months arguing to get a smart meter, then nine months trying to get them to make the in-house display work properly (including a judgement against them by the Ombudsman which turned out to be less useful than a chocolate teapot).

Eventually I gave up on them ever sorting it and moved to Octopus. Even without mentioning it to Octopus, the in-house display just magically started working properly.

Advice - ditch BG and save yourself months of hassle. It probably won’t solve your problem, but at least you won’t spend hours trying to contact a company who do all they can to make complaining difficult and are desperate to close your complaint regardless of whether they’ve actually done anything.

 

[Badger54]

I’m going to stick up for BG now

Have had an Alfen Pro charger fitted now for the last 2.5 years. I live in an old cottage, on an overhead supply and at the end of the line.
The only issue I’ve ever had is sometimes the HIVE aspect of the charger goes offline, but I can still use the charger.

I’ve charged Vivaro-e’s, my old Etron , the wife’s ID3 and now my M3.

Did have an issue getting the tariff costs updated in the app, but wasn’t really an issue because if I could see the kw/h used and the time then I could work out the cost anyway.

BG aren’t a bad company, they’re just a BIG company with too many fingers in too many pies.

Have heard on the grapevine they’ve binned off their Net Zero department and will integrate the heat pump engineers and electricians into the existing engineer framework.

Octopus doing a great job fitting heat pumps, BG not so .