Cont: Electric Vehicles II

[Dabop]

ok sorry i misunderstood

an upgrade to your home panel in the us costs about $5k and since it involves the utility a master electrician must pull a permit, so it’s not a diy job. i would consider that a significant expense

of course as dabop pointed out slow charging options exist without necessarily needing to upgrade your home electrical, whether or not those are options for you depends on your circumstance.

As Rolfe mentioned a 7kw home charger can put in quite a bit of power ( 7kw/32A supply is easily be used on a 60A house feed with monitoring- hell one of my neighbours has one (a Zappi with Harvii 'whole house monitoring) on his offgrid house lol- he's (like me) completely offgrid for electricity and only has a 8kw Solis inverter to boot!!!
8kw is only 34A!!!

It ramps up and down as the household uses more or less power...

It puts about 40kWh a day into his Atto 3 in good solar conditions and can even charge (up to just under 30kWh) overnight from his battery bank (he's got just over 40kWh of battery storage available from his 'house bank' that's recharged by his 10kw solar array...)

40kWh is pretty much a 2/3 charge on his Atto ( its the older Gen 2 model from 2023, with a 60kWh battery pack and a 420km/260 miles range on a full charge- so his 'daytime' 40kWh is 280km/173 miles a day he could travel, if he had to charge at night only, with the houses battery bank being the current limiting factor (he could always add more batteries to the house) lol) he's limited to a 'measly' 210km/130 mles a day travelling distance...
Even in Australia, that's a lot further than I would want to drive to work and back every day...

(if I did that in my Hilux- that's spending about $60 a DAY in fuel!!!!- I'd want a pretty good paying job to do THAT in lol)
A $300 a week fuel bill?? ouch...

 

[Rolfe]

My installer is currently looking at my Zappi, because after nearly two years of trouble-free operation it has started losing touch with the Eddi, which is the master. The cause appears to be that the position of the car, parked beside the Zappi, is interfering with the wifi signal. The weird thing isn't so much that it started out of the blue, but that it doesn't happen every night. I'm wondering if making the Zappi the master would cure this, or just introduce a new set of problems.

 

[Dabop]

My installer is currently looking at my Zappi, because after nearly two years of trouble-free operation it has started losing touch with the Eddi, which is the master. The cause appears to be that the position of the car, parked beside the Zappi, is interfering with the wifi signal. The weird thing isn't so much that it started out of the blue, but that it doesn't happen every night. I'm wondering if making the Zappi the master would cure this, or just introduce a new set of problems.

First thing to look at is if the wifi signal is strong enough, second is how many users are on the same channel- the Zappi range all work (afaik) all are still on the 2.4Ghz range- which is getting VERY overcrowded these days and can cause dropout issues...
Your phone can be the first step- look for your Zappi's network on the phone in your wifi settings on the phone and see what the signal strength at the Zappi charger itself is like )ie standing next to the charger)- a weak signal could cause dropouts, and also be affected by nearby objects (like the car lol)

(I use a network scanner called Fing from Lansweeper on android on my phone from the Playstore- it shows the signal strength. how many devices are using the same channel (theres only a handful of channels on 2.4Ghz)- you don't get 'your own channel' and if you are in a location with lots of nearby houses, the channels may be getting swamped with everyone's devices 'shouting at once' (think of trying to hold a conversation in a crowded pub- that's what can happen on a crowded channel- its hard for 'anyone' to hear lol)

I live on a secluded bush block, with the nearest neighbour over half a kilometre away- and just in my block, theres nearly 15 devices in range (ok, quite a few of those are my security system lol) on four different networks!!!

 

[novaphile]

I have a 7 kw Zappi and I had no idea it could do that! As far as I know it has never actually had to do it.

But before I got the Zappi I was charging the car using a 13A socket that was in the garage when the house was built. I didn't need to install anything in order to run my car. The car was only drawing as much as a fan heater and less than my oven or my electric kettle.

The reason for the Zappi was primarily to be able to take advantage of the insanely cheap overnight electricity tariffs available. For that, one needs to be able to get more than about 10 kwh into the car in the six-hour slot available every night. The Zappi gets about 35 kwh into the car in the same time.

Similar for me.

I already had a 15 amp connection in the wall to service a previous window air-conditioner.

The electrician tapped into that line and put an outdoor double GPO under my carport for me.

By a weird twist of fate, the 'granny charger' for the car, has a 15 amp plug, but only charges at 7 amps.

These days, I charge in the afternoon, after my house battery is full, and the car fills up with free electricity from the solar panels.

 

[acbytesla]

You guys keep talking about the amperage. Could you add the voltage. Are we talking about 15 Amp at 120VAC or 220 VAC?