Solar and electric car

[gpd]

I have just had solar with a solis inverter and a pylontech battery fitted. Prior to this install, our EV would charge without issues through our Pod Point home charger. Since the install, we have not had a successful charge on the car.

We initially had the house battery set to charge during our Octopus Go cheap window, as well as the car. The house battery charged, but the Pod Point failed with a solid red light. This indicates that the car is detecting an issue.

We then set the car to charge for the first part of the Octopus Go window and the house battery for the last part. This still caused the car to fail.

We then set the house battery not to charge at all from the grid. So far the car has partly charged twice and failed twice (in 4 days).

Hs anyone seen anything like this before and does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[Murdoch]

What has the solar installer had to say on this matter?

 

[gpd]

Various things at the moment, mainly what we have tried and detailed above, but this should not be happening. It's made the car extremely unreliable.

They are looking at it, but a bit of self research is always good.

I'm interested to see if others are having similar issues.

 

[johnb2713]

Some chargers, I dont know if PodPoint has this, have a maximum supply setting to limit the car charge dependent on load on the grid. If your battery is charging and the car attempts to charge at the same time with such a setting configured it may throttle or stop the car charge. I had this situation with my ZAPPI, it was only charging at 2.2kW at times until I turned off the max grid supply. I know you said you turned off the battery charging and it still failed, is it possible that some other loads in the house are configured to run at the same time eg immersion heater ?
What happens if you set the car to charge outside the off peak hours i.e. when off peak loads aren't running?

 

[Marky0]

I've had a similar experience with pod point but not exactly as you describe.
I have a solis inverter which I can programme to charge or disharge the battery at set time periods.

Providing I make sure that the battery discharge time does not clash with the pod-point charge time I have no issues.
If they overlap, even for a few seconds the pod point will lock up with the red light, and needs a manual power cycle or 24 hours before it corrects itself.
Note there is a random 5-10minute delay between the pod-point app and the actual pod-point turn on/off time. This is due to regulations to avoid surges across the national grid. This has caught me out a few times, so you need to be careful with the timings on your inverter to take account of this delay.

All this is OK but doesn't help when wanting to charge the car during the day without messing about with the inverter discharge timings. I've contacted the pod-point technical help line and simply put they are not interested.

Not fully tested yet, but I think the issue is something to do with the pod-point CT clamp. This is meant to measure the current entering the property from the grid, and ramp down the car charge current if it sees the total load to the house going above ~80A to avoid blowing the main fuse. Makes sure you can run electric showers, cookers and other high current devices without issue whilst charging the car.
With the solar inverter and battery now installed, all the current to the pod point is no longer supplied from the grid. The pod-point CT clamp sees an anomalous low current and I think this then trips it.
I've temporarily moved my CT clamp from the grid feed directly to the pod-point feed so it measures its own current. Had no trips since, up to a car charge current of 16A (previously I couldn't go much above 10A). I haven't tried a full 30A charge yet.
I would be interested if this fixes your issue !

 

[gpd]

I've had a similar experience with pod point but not exactly as you describe.
I have a solis inverter which I can programme to charge the battery or discharge the battery at set time periods.

Providing I make sure that the battery discharge time does not clash with the pod-point charge time I have no issues.
Note there is a random 5-10minute delay between the pod-point app and the actual pod-point turn on/off time. This is due to regulations to avoid surges across the national grid network. This has caught me out a few times, so you need to be careful with the timings on your inverter to take account of this delay.

All this is OK but doesn't help when wanting to charge the car during the day without messing about with the inverter discharge timings. I've contacted the pod-point technical help line and simply put they are not interested.

Not fully tested yet, but I think the issue is something to do with the pod-point CT clamp. This is meant to measure the current entering the property from the grid, and ramp down the car charge current if it sees it going above ~80A to avoid blowing the main fuse. Makes sure you can run electric showers, cookers and other high current devices without issue.
With the solar inverter now installed with battery, all the current is no longer supplied from the grid. The pod-point sees an anomalous low current and I think this then trips it.
I've temporarily moved my CT clamp from the grid feed directly to the pod-point feed so it measures its own current. Had no trips since up to a car charge current of 16A (previously I couldn't go much above 10A). I haven't tried a full 30A charge yet.
I would be interested if this fixes your issue !

I
Thank you. I will give that a goe. We use the car to schedule the charge time and not the Pod Point app. The rest is interesting and I will give it a go. Many thanks.

 

[Marky0]

I have now confirmed that temporarily moving my pod-point current clamp from measuring the house load to measuring only its own current stops the pod-point going into an error mode (flashing red light) even when I charge the car up to the full 30Amps. @gpd do you confirm that this also fixes your issue ? The only question is now where to place the clamp if you have a solar inverter ??
Pod-Point manual says.....

The CT should be clamped around the incoming supply feed. If PV or a storage battery is also in use the “feed in” load from these should be avoided. If possible, only the domestic and Solo “loads” should be measured by the CT.

Where it is not possible to avoid these feed ins (when the feed in is wired into the main distribution board or where the location of the CT is not possible), Pod Point should be contacted to remotely change the profile of the unit to include “PV” feed in supplies

so from the text in bold it looks like its another 2 week wait on the pod-point technical support. Just can't believe that they couldn't troubleshoot this from a support ticket I lodged 2 months ago !!

 

[gpd]

We had the clamps moved further apart and this improved things a bit. When Pod Point finally got back to us, they updated our unit and it now works. It's a shame it took them two weeks, but we now have a working system.

 

[novelsmike]

Our clamps never worked despite several attempts by the installer. Replaced with a ‘more accurate’ unit. Works fine now.