Using PV charging at home without CA charging me!

Hey ​@Nealeb 

What charger are you using with Charge Anytime? If you have solar you should have a compatible charger. Is the granny charger the only charger? 

The best option is to use a charger which is compatible with OVO, granny chargers should be avoided where possible and only used in emergencies.

Abby,

thanks for the comments, but I think that that misses the point.

To answer your specific questions first, though. I have an Ohme charger as there was no choice - it comes as part of the package with my Audi. It was only after installation that I discovered that this was no longer compatible with CA although fortunately I could connect my Audi and CA directly and use the Ohme charger as a dumb device. That bit all works fine.

Options might be replacing the charger with a solar-compatible charger (I believe that such things exist) or buy the DC charger option for my PV inverter/control box - for another £3K or so!

So why was I using a granny charger when I already have a working charger? Another part of my problem is this very sunny weather when I produce so much PV energy that my system keeps disconnecting from the grid to avoid over-voltage. So, after persuading my wife to do some baking and lots of washing machine use, I hit on the idea of using my granny charger. The idea is to soak up some of the PV energy to a point where I can keep my grid connection intact and upload energy to the grid without overloading anything. And, indeed, that theory worked and I exported more energy yesterday than the day before. I could not use the Ohme charger as 7kW would be too much and need import from the grid but the 2.3kW charger was just about right. I have already used my Charge Anytime quota for this month, so this was a two birds with one stone exercise - charge car with free energy.

Then, last night, checking my app, I found that I had, quite unexpectedly, been charged for this, even though none of the energy came from the grid. I was surprised by this as I had not involved Charge Anytime at any point in doing this. In essence, then, my question is how can I use my granny charger to make more efficient use of the energy I am generating myself without Ovo charging me for the privilege? 

At the moment, I am still waiting for my SEG account to be set up (paperwork taking longer than PV installation) but once it is in place, I shall be in the strange situation of earning money by running a 2kW electric fire in the garden to maintain my energy export by dumping excess energy! I have contacted my installer, just to see if I can throttle things back a bit on the PV generation side but I would really just like CA to get out of the way! How can I tell it not to interfere with something that does not concern it?

Having just reread what I wrote, my apologies if I sounded at all impolite. Not my intention and a mix of frustration at the situation and trying to get all the facts in order in a written form which often sounds a bit more abrupt than a friendly face-to-face conversation.

I certainly agree that under normal circumstances, a granny charger is an emergency-use only device, but in my case these are not normal circumstances! I needed something to reduce the PV energy that I was trying to export and this was both a convenient way to do it and serving a useful purpose in topping up the car battery. If this very sunny weather breaks, then it will all become a bit academic anyway but I hate not having control of a situation like this. Comes of a mix of being an engineer who likes twiddling all the controls and an obsessional interest in the numbers!

I’ll drop an email to the support team and see if they can help.

OVO can only reconcile PV usage via a compatible charger. Anything else is ‘seen’ by the meter and therefore counted as used. That’s why they have specific solar PV compatible chargers listed.

Contact the support team by all means but I’m fairly sure that’s what they’ll say.

Depending on your inverter control, you might find a peak shaving adjustment or similar when it’s needed.

Hey ​@Nealeb 

No not at all, I can absolutely understand it sounds quite frustrating so absolutely no worries.

I’m glad to see BPLightlog has stopped by since with some helpful advice also.

I did double check with the Charge Anytime team on this to be sure but they’ve confirmed that as you can’t use Charge Anytime with your Ohme the solar element isn’t compatible as it’s set up via the car. If you have to use the Solar they would suggest deleting your vehicle from Charge Anytime, to use the solar setting on the Ohme charger then set up Charge Anytime with your vehicle again afterwards. That way you can charge your car and the charge won’t show in the Charge Anytime app. 

I’m sorry it’s maybe not the answer you were looking for as you say, the other fixes are on the more costly side. 

Do let us know how things go.

Because I have an Ohme charger which does not talk to CA, I have CA configured to talk directly to my car. Thinking about this, what is happening is that the car tells CA that it is charging and that it is at home but does not know that energy is coming from a PV source rather than grid. So I get charged in both senses. Either I run an extension cable down the drive so that the car does not realise that it  is at home, or as Abby suggests, I delete/re-add the car on those probably relatively rare occasions when it is required - out of CA quota at the end of the month combined with very sunny days when I have so much PV energy that my grid connection drops out (due to over-voltage) and I want to dump excess energy somewhere to allow the grid connection to remain for SEG purposes. 

Why do we British always find new and elaborate reasons to bitch about sunny weather? 

I am waiting for a CA team response but I think I now understand the problem better as a result of this conversation. Yes, a solar-aware charger that is also CA-compatible is the elegant answer (I think) but I’ll have to wait for my SEG payments to build up in the piggy-bank to pay for one. So that’s not going to be soon!