An additional point I’ve noticed with my BMW X1/Hypervolt/ChargeAnytime, is that it will only ever charge at 16A/3.7kw from the grid, whilst the car/Hypervolt/CU etc all support the full 32A.
I did find another thread on this forum that asked a similar question, but I couldn’t find an answer.
So does ChargeAnytime control and limit the maximum rate to 16A?
If so, why?
+1
Atm I'm thinkng that if you have a CT clamp from the CP back to your meter the CT clamp is telling the CP to restrict power. I'm also not convinced that's the case either. Let me have a look around to see if there are any likely causes.
Peter
+1Ok. I can't find anything on the SpeakEV forum which seems to suggest this isn't a common problem. I've also asked ChatGPT which is good a giving a broad range of options but not so good on detail. I've discounted most of what it said but it did give me a clue as to what it might be and something to check.
Has it ever worked at 7kW? The CP might be restricted to 3.5kW with an internal switch setting and it could have happened for this reason. When setting up a CP you need DNO approval to run at 7kW. If the engineer allowed to CP to function prior to DNO approval then they set them to 3.5kW initially. Did you get DNO approval? Do you know what is the CP set to internally?
Another reason would be you are on a looped supply. If you are you would only be allowed to run at 3.5kW until you are unlooped. Your DNO or electrician would be able to tell you. If you are on a looped supply your incoming DNO fuse will be 60A. When you get unlooped your fuse will get changed to 80A.
Let me know if you have any thoughts on that.
Peter
Thanks for the comments Peter.
We are on a 100A supply and its capable of a lot more that 3.7kw. I have seen 10kw+ before on the monitor. We have DNO approval through (G99 I think its called but not sure).
I’m pretty sure this is not the CP or the car itself, as we can supply 7.4kw with house batteries.
What I see when ChargeAnytime kicks in on the CP there is a charge supply of 16A, so this must be coming from OVO. I can then easily add another 16A from the house batteries to ramp it up to 7.4kw.
But on grid supply with ChargeAnytime its only ever 16A.
I’m wondering if the OVO Hypervolt integration scripts somehow tell the CP to run at 16A. Although not sure why they might do that.
+1Thanks for the feedback. It's outside of my area of expertise but I would say that this sounds like a CT clamp restriction issue from your grid supply because the clamp is not seeing the battery contribution. This is confirming that the CP is capable of 7.4kW and OVO are not restricting it. The 10kW will be from a commercial CP not your house supply. A Hypervolt would never supply more than 7.4kW. The highest setting for that is 32A.
I would recommend you get CP qualified electrician to confirm that you haven't got a CT clamp restricting your pull from the grid.
I think G99 is related to export but I could be wrong with that.
Peter
When I mentioned 10kw I’m talking about grid supply to the house (i.e if we have a lot of heavy load appliances on the go). That proves to me we aren’t limited via the grid 100A to around 4kw.
I know the CP runs at 32A as we’ve seen that with grid+battery.
All circuits between grid and CP are either 100A or 32A.
We can run the CP at 32A when adding house supply battery to the grid supply.
Therefore I can’t see any limiting factor on-premise other than the possibility OVO scripts to the CP restrict to 16A.
I’ll contact OVO and see if thats the case.
+1Ok with the 10kW. I now see where that came from.
What you are saying is still consistent with a CT clamp limited to 16A from the grid. You can supply another 16A from the battery but the grid-current-limiting-mechanism is not seeing that.
So the CP is happy to add the 16A current limited input *2 from the grid (determined by the CT clamp, not OVO *1) and add another 16A from the battery.
As I've said, these is just my thoughts on your issue based on comments that I've seen several times by different people on SpeakEV (a good source of information) but I agree with you that you need inputs from other sources in order to find the root cause
I hope it gets resolved soon.
Peter
*1 I genuinely don't believe OVO would deliberately restrict your charging rate to 16A when it is better for them to run the CP at 32A for the slots cheaper for them. However, a conversation with them may reveal that they are somehow inadvertently restricting your charge rate and fix it.
*2 There may have been a genuine reason why a CT clamp was restricting your grid power to 16A but it may have been a temporary restriction that was not subsequently changed to 32A. That will be a setting in the CP.
Thanks Peter, interesting points.
I’ll see what OVO come back with on my query. I’ve also got the EV/Solar installer coming in next week to verify.
What confuses me though is that if I assumed that the solar/battery wasn’t even present, the CT clamp and wiring for the CP would still be the same. But I know the CP can’t be limiting to 16A because it happily charges at 32A when the house battery has charge.
I didn’t think the CT clamp itself had any limits, but maybe the programming within the CP does. It was just the supplied CT clamp by Hypervolt so unlikely to have a 16A limit.
Either way still doesn’t make sense.
I’ll update the thread once I know more.
+1An update would be great. It's always useful to know what we got right/wrong/missed things. Thank you.
Peter
+1
Peter
Hi Barry, we have a BMW also but decided to use the ChargeAnytime to control the Hypervolt Home Pro 3 rather than the car. It seems to work well and the car is always 100% charged by 9am (which is what we set). It does stop/start charging at all sorts of weird time intervals, its not just when OVO show excess of green energy. Can’t quite work that out, but seems to be doing its job.
Only had the PHEV 3 weeks, so I am awaiting next months bill to see if OVO apply the discount down to 7p. The app shows a certain amount of cost savings, but I want to see that reflected in the bill to be sure.
I also compared the the daily usage before and after car charging. Seems to be roughly £2.50-£6 difference depending on how much charge we required. But thats at the full rate.
Hi oho, it sounds like we’re on a similar journey except I’m holding off on the 7kWh charger for the time being. Your daily costs seem similar to mine and I guess the main difference if OVO ChargeAnytime is controlling the charger instead of the car but I can’t see that having any impact on the amount of charge.
Barry - I agree with Aho’s remarks which reflect my own experience.
Are you looking at your energy hub on the OVO website? It details your home and car usage and the cost of both.
Yes, it’s not particularly helpful to see statements on the charge anytime app telling you how much you have saved. A better approach would be to state what had actually gone in your battery. I have deleted the app. I did not think it was particularly helpful beyond assuring me in the middle of the night that my vehicle was charging: but I found it to be inconsistent.
The kaluza app gives you the data with a breakdown of the KWh actually charged on a daily basis. I simply multiply the daily figure by 7p and the result seems to tie in with what I see on my account on the OVO web site. I think the data originates from there so not too surprising.
Also, your slow charger delivers at the rate of 1.4 Kw whereas a modern dedicated charger will charge at 7.4 Kw, substantially faster and OK for an overnight charge.
My own view is that I don’t want to leave things to chance and the installation of the home charging point has given me trouble free charging on a daily basis.
Hi BobTom, I don’t see an Energy Hub on the main OVO website so what menu option is it under? I’ve tried searching for the Kaluza app but can’t find any details of it so what exact name does it go by in the App store? Once we get to the bottom of charging costs we’ll look at a dedicated home charger.
The OVO energy hub online after logging in to your account with OVO although the data is posted slightly in arrears. The figure stated for ‘Your cars costs’ represents the discounted charge aggregated for the month. You can also see ‘Your homes costs’ on the same page. The tab at the top allows you to switch between Kwh and cost of electricity consumed. You won’t see anything displayed on 1st month.
The other place is the Kaluza app itself which should be linked to Charge Anytime data and you should get a figure displayed for your daily charge.
I hope this helps.
OVO team have come back and stated they are sending 32A instruction to the Hypervolt and believe the problem is the Hypervolt unit. I also have a case open with Hypervolt who are saying its an OVO problem as they control it under charge anytime. Although they are still investigating.
Anyone else with a Hypervolt Pro 3 and charge anytime had these issues?
Sounds like a bug or mis-configuration.
+1The Hypervolt also has a hardware current limit setting that should also be considered if nothing else works.
Any control, either on the Hypervolt app or command from OVO will not override the maximum current set in the unit if it has not been set to 32A at the time of installation.
The hardware current limit within the unit is normally a screwdriver operated miniature rotary switch to allow a maximum current to be set from 32A in discrete steps all the way down to 6A. 16A is one of those settings.
Peter
Its not that as we can run it at 32A with grid+battery. The app also states 32A maximum is set in the config. Back to Hypervolt I think.
Ok its now sorted.
For anyone else who has this issue, and their installers make the same mistake….
Inside the unit the 4 dip switches were correct set at 32A. But the rotary switch (the ALM dial) was indeed the problem (thanks Peter).
The installers had interpreted the direction wrong on the dial. It was pointing to 3 instead of 8, which is directly opposite. Therefore set at 16A instead of 100A for monitoring the main incoming supply.
The reason I was able to get the CP running at 32A previously with grid+battery is because the solar/battery sit further upstream from the CT clamp and hence were not restricted by the ALM dial.
+1
Glad it got sorted.
Peter
Ok its now sorted.
For anyone else who has this issue, and their installers make the same mistake….
Inside the unit the 4 dip switches were correct set at 32A. But the rotary switch (the ALM dial) was indeed the problem (thanks Peter).
The installers had interpreted the direction wrong on the dial. It was pointing to 3 instead of 8, which is directly opposite. Therefore set at 16A instead of 100A for monitoring the main incoming supply.
The reason I was able to get the CP running at 32A previously with grid+battery is because the solar/battery sit further upstream from the CT clamp and hence were not restricted by the ALM dial.
Thanks so much for feeding this back
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