Fair enough and mea culpa.  I was responding to a comment made by someone else that the discussion about electricity grid strain needs to be pub talk.  

Godwin died as a consequence of being attacked by all of his neighbours on Saturday 11th July.

He'd misunderstood the G99 Consent granted by his DNO, and simultaneously exported 16A to the grid from each of his two solar inverters and his home storage battery.

The resulting high current in the Neutral created thermal stress in the underground cable feed from the local substation.
This caused a breakdown in the insulation, taking out all three phases just before the start of the World Cup game between England and Norway.

Is this thread now back on topic?

@jamespa Trying not to drag politics into this topic (I am not a political animal and am uncomfortable in talking politics anyway) but, the pension I paid into for all 49 years of my working life was an entitlement that I had paid for. Somewhere along fairly recent years, pensions became a ‘benefit’!

Thats how many people see it, but if it were truly funded by contributions 'from the past' then there would need to be some sort of investment fund (which would probably be 'bust' given increased lifetime) into which contributions were put which is drawn on to pay the benefit.  There isn't, because it's funded from current taxation, not from contributions you or I paid in the past.

Part of the 'settlement' we have in society is to support elderly people (and others).  That's fair enough but there is, it seems to me, a legitimate arguement over the scale of that support and whether those who can easily afford to live without it should enjoy  support at the same level, particularly when they are generally living longer than was ever expected and there are many other demands on the funds that can reasonably be extracted from the productive members of society.

I, by the way, am over state pension age so I realise this argument is counter to my own interests.

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(I am not a pub-goer and am TT but that is beside the point)

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Actually I think that's very much on point.

From my experience, the days of the pub being the heart of social intercourse are long gone. Most pubs these days are glorified restaurants and the drink prices are far too high for people to "just pop in for a quick chat". Certainly the pub is still a social hub for certain subsets of any given community but not for the majority, I think.

As a result, trying to move any discussions like this to the pub is not necessarily effort best spent unless you happen to be a pubgoer already. Perhaps we need a renewables version of tupperware parties. Certainly around me suggestions of a get together to swap ideas and tips (some renewables related, some gardening related, some completely different) have met with enthusiastic uptake so perhaps the neighbourhood barbecue could become the new pub.

As to talking to others in the pub (I am not a pub-goer and am TT but that is beside the point) I think one would be regarded as a nerd at the very least. Even without the drinks with friends side of things, other than when interested folks come to ‘Visit a Heat Pump’, I have found that ‘MEGO’ is the usual result! Perhaps I have the wrong technique for evangelising.☹️ Regards, Toodles.

This discussion needs to be moved to your local pub. The more you tell others about this, the better informed they'll be.

All of us need to become much more grid-savvy and understand how to 'treat it well'.

Never had to bother before ( IE with fossil fuels) so why should I bother now?  It's all a plot.  We are entitled to infinite amounts of everything immediately, and if we don't get it then the government is at fault.

That's the reaction I get in my local pub to any suggestion of this nature, and this is the polite version.  The less polite version additionally invokes immigrants and 'benefit scroungers', often from people who are almost certainly themselves on benefits, because they are over the state pension age and thus presumably taking the state pension.

That said I definitely agree that the public need to be informed to a level way beyond that aimed for by the wealthy proprietors of many of our media outlets, and talking about it in the pub is one way to do this notwithstanding the possible reaction.

A PEN fault refers to a problem with the protective earth and neutral conductors, potentially leading to electric shock or fire. 

Hmmm.

Those are issues which you would expect to be addressed by the RCD or RCBO. Ie they offer protection for for the connecting cable to the charger, not just the charger itself.

Our PEN fault detection system is triggered if the supply voltage between live and neutral conductors spikes above 253V or dips below 207V for more than 5 seconds

That's more stringent than any regulation I've come across.

But I think there should also be an immediate cessation of the charger operating if the voltage falls below 186v, rather than waiting 5 seconds. That's the bit of the EREC G98 certification which prevents DNO engineers being killed when working at the local substation.

Once normal voltage is sensed for 30 seconds, the charger resumes its normal operation

And I don't like that either.

Once 'normal' conditions are detected, there should be a fixed delay plus a randomised delay before a charger restarts.

If there were a dozen Hypervolt chargers installed for a set of flats, then they would restart simultaneously after 30s, thereby causing a surge demand and an associated voltage drop..

Low Carbon Technology (LCT) should be designed to be 'grid friendly'.

If in doubt... use common sense!

This discussion needs to be moved to your local pub. The more you tell others about this, the better informed they'll be.

All of us need to become much more grid-savvy and understand how to 'treat it well'.

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Pen Fault Detection

A PEN fault refers to a problem with the protective earth and neutral conductors, potentially leading to electric shock or fire. 

Our PEN fault detection system is triggered if the supply voltage between live and neutral conductors spikes above 253V or dips below 207V for more than 5 seconds. Upon detection, the charger disconnects the live, neutral, and earth connections to the vehicle, halting the charging process. Once normal voltage is sensed for 30 seconds, the charger resumes its normal operation, often indicated by the standby blue LEDs.

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Perhaps I shouldn't be worried about the high voltage itself but if we're in a sunny period where PV generation fluctuates because of cloud cover then the Hypervolt is pretty much useless.  Normally I'm not bothered as I don't charge the car during the day as I'm making the most of my export allowance and I don't want that going into the car.  Evenings, night time, early mornings are no problem.  Octopus are wanting to move to a more "always plugged in" model in order to make better use of wholesale pricing and grid balancing (their words not mine.)  That brings different problems but is a bit moot as I'd have difficulty with this during the summer months at the moment.

The installer checked and could see the inverter was showing voltage spiking over 254V.  Not continuously but spiking nonetheless and this was corresponding to the red light on the charger.

The timelines you've posted here have insufficient information to refer to this as 'spiking'.

There isn't sufficient granularity to determine whether the voltage is going above 253v for a few milliseconds or a minute at a time. The sample rate seems to be at 1min intervals, and we don't know if the metering has been configured to display the average or maximum reading which occurred during that 60seconds.

This drawing shows 'spikes', but there's not that much energy in them because they don't last for long.

Fast transient spikes like that can be removed using a (low pass) filter

I use filters 'in reverse' to prevent any high frequency transient spikes originating within my solar inverters from being passed back to the rest of the house.

I also have a spike filter fitted within the isolation switch that supplies my TIG Welder, for the same reason.

I contacted Hypervolt support who did some troubleshooting and produced some graphs showing that the voltage was going over 254V and the charger was shutting down to prevent damage to the car

Ah... so that appears to be an admission that the charger itself is unable to handle voltages much above 253v, rather than it being a requirement to implement a Standard.

Remember that a DNO will pass the supply as being within specification based on a 10min rolling average.

The Hypervolt charger doesn't seem capable of operating under those conditions.
Isn't that what we'd call a design deficiency?