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7kW EV Charger Options Advice
I’ve had an EV with wall charger for over 3 years and this is my perspective, in no particular order.
- Where does your main supply enter the house, is it close to where you can place the charger? Adding a Henley block in your meter box to the tails that go to your consumer unit with a supply then going to an external, IP65 consumer unit for your charger is the ideal solution. I guess this could be added at the CU if possible but the main point is to separate the charger and “rest of house load”. Also note that the charger will use a current clamp on the house tails to manage load which may be more awkward at an existing CU (but the installer’s problem really.) Separation allows you to separate out your house load and any future battery system from knowledge of your charger. If added to an existing CU it will become much more awkward without additional automation from something like Home Assistant which I personally find non-trivial.
- Having an EV opens up good tariffs for charging from the likes of Octopus and EDF. This will allow you to charge the car at 7p/8p or similar. Future battery/PV will allow you to export at 12p (currently) and separating the charger from house load will mean you can export excess rather than dump it into the car when it starts charging (why forego 12p when it only costs you 8p?) There are some non-complex considerations concerning import/export simultaneously but separation helps this.
- Even if you don’t go with Octopus for an EV tariff get a charger that is supported by Octopus Intelligent Go. Check other suppliers compatibility as well. Having the supplier scheduling through the charger is much better than scheduling through the car because (a) it allows you to use more than one car on the tariff; and (b) the car typically starts charging immediately, possibly at higher cost depending upon the time of day, until it informs the supplier it is plugged in.
- Hypervolt Pro 3 is a nice charger with a good app, 10m cable choice and helpful support but it doesn’t play at all well with mesh wi-fi systems. It may be ok with a mesh system if you can set up a separate 2.4GHz only “guest” network but I have had problems with that approach with my ASUS system. I’ve had to get a 2.4GHz only WiFi extender to keep my Hypervolt attached to the network. This isn’t a signal strength thing, but, my current theory, a band steering/interference thing with mesh networks. It could just be an ASUS problem! It is possible to connect it via Ethernet.
- It is possible to use a cable from the meter cupboard/CU that has a built in Ethernet cable. This may improve your options for subsequent Ethernet routing. You’ll probably pay more for it of course but could be worth it.
- Zappi has the best PEN fault detection built in but see the earlier points about customer service. All others, as far as I am aware, just check for overvoltage and crap out. This happens way more often in summer than you may imagine if you have PV and/or lots of neighbours in the area with PV. DNO may be able to make adjustments but for me it requires a new cable from the substation!
Hope this helps, if I think of anything else I’ll add it.
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