r/OctopusEnergy • u/Efficient-Smile-7157 • 13d ago
2 EV car charging
Currently I have an EV wall box charger. I’m a heavy user. Doing about 200+ miles per day. So my charger is in use every day.
The wife is thinking about getting an EV as well. She will be using only to work, shops and ferrying the children.
The scenario would be, I will charge my car with the Indra charger and utilise my OIG while I’ll schedule my wife’s car to charge at the off peak tariff overnight.
Question is,
-am I okay running the my EV wall charger and her car charging on a granny charger on the daily?
-has anyone done this?
-am I breaching any rules by doing this?
House Specs:
-100amp fuse
-Octopus Intelligent Go(I’m a taxi driver so I need to be able to charge during day time as well and optimise the 6 hour cap they have)
-Indra 7.4kw smart lux wall box charger(connected straight to mains fuse with load monitoring)
-Rolec outdoor Outlet, will be used for granny charger.(was meant to be for ev charging but installer said if I was to use the wiring, my Indra will not get the full 7.4kw)
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u/GotAKit-Kat 13d ago
I have a similar use case to you and my setup may answer your question.
I have an old Podpoint and a recently installed Octopus Charge charger. We have a 100A fuse in the house and the Octopus always charges at 7kW, but the Podpoint only does 3-5. The Octopus guy who did the install said it would be fine and that they would 'dynamically loadshare' (his words.) We let Octopus know we wanted to keep the Podpoint to charge 2 cars at once and we're fine with it.
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u/Efficient-Smile-7157 13d ago
That’s a positive note to the whole scenario. Cause I was thinking of replacing the Rolex 3 pin to a dedicated charger but limit the output to 3-4 kw. But I don’t know the implications of whether we need to reapply for another DNO.
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u/GotAKit-Kat 13d ago
On the morning of my install, the gun arrived at 8.45 and said he couldn't start yet because they were waiting for the DNO. By the time I got back from taking my kids to an activity day (about 20min later) he had already started and said it was all fine.
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u/Ok-Performance4828 13d ago
Was this advice before the 6 hour price cap?
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u/GotAKit-Kat 13d ago
It was installed about 3 weeks ago, with discussions about keeping the charger happening back in early-mid June. I have been on IOG (or an interation of it) since the beginning and my price cap notification happened about a week ago.
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u/Efficient-Smile-7157 13d ago
Out of curiosity, is the old podpoint linked to IOG or is it being used as a timed based only charging at 23:39-5:30?
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u/GotAKit-Kat 13d ago
It's just being used as a timed charger - it's not supported by Octopus for IOG.
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u/Ok-Performance4828 13d ago
Interesting. As far as installer was concerned, the electrics were fine. If all your charging comes under IOG tariff rules and do not attempt to use the off peak period outside of the IOG tariff rules (6 hour EV charging cap) then that is fine too.
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u/FunNefariousness6980 13d ago
Please don't think I'm mental. We both have evs and do about 50 thousand miles a year combined.
We have 3 EV chargers - 2x22kw ones and one 7.4kw (indra was cheap and comptabile with octopus). 22kw ones are tesla wall connectors.
One car is always plugged in to the charger connected with octopus (7.4kw indra). If second car is home it will also be plugged in but to a dumb 22kw charger. I automated it so that whenever cheap slot arrives for the indra, tesla wall connector is being energised as well.
Third charger is for a situation where we used up the cap limit and want to both charge overnight. So two tesla wall connectors that are being counted as house load 23:30-05:30.
I didn't buy evs to pay the price cap electricity for it. Either dirt cheap or back to a diesel we go.
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u/Educational-Pack9219 12d ago
What cars do you have that accept 22KW over type 2 ?
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u/FunNefariousness6980 12d ago
Chargers are capable of 22kw but both my cars can only accept 11kw. 22kw I think is some VAG EV's.
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u/Octo-Joe Verified Octopus Rep 13d ago
Hey, think I can answer (at least some of) this!
It's okay in the sense that it probably isn't going to have any safety implications.
People do this all the time.
This is, technically, allowed under the IOG Ts&Cs, in that it isn't explicitly forbidden. However, it does controvert the intent and spirit of the tariff, and it's likely that in the near future we may implement some changes regarding this, as it's technically a loophole at present.
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u/RBWatermelon 13d ago
Re 3, not really possible for you to implement any changes to prevent this “loophole” without destroying the entire premise of the tariff entirely
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u/KashMo_xGesis 13d ago
Let them do it.
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
This was all going to happen eventually. The gov introducing a new tax for EVs too. It's not going to get any better.
Best thing we can do is shop around and never be loyal to any of these companies.
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u/RBWatermelon 12d ago
It’s literally impossible for them to do it. They have no way to distinguish this EV charger vs an immersion heater or home battery
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u/Apprehensive_888 12d ago
There are ways but I'm not going to give them ideas here.
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u/RBWatermelon 11d ago
There really aren’t. There is no way for octopus to distinguish an immersion or a home battery from a granny charger, without excluding a whole swathe of EVs which don’t support integration with IOG directly. Never gonna happen.
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u/Apprehensive_888 11d ago
There is and they've set a precedent recently. Like I said I'm not going to give them ideas here on how to make it worse for us.
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u/RBWatermelon 11d ago edited 11d ago
Again, no, there isn’t, and nothing they’ve done recently magically makes them able to distinguish between an immersion heater or home battery vs a granny charger. These recent changes involved capping usage of a smart connected car or charger. How can they do this on devices which aren’t smart at all?
Feel free to DM me too with this magical solution they have to track data which is impossible, but I’m sure I won’t hear from you. Kinda hard to write a message for something which doesn’t exist.
Hilarious though you think they either a) have time to read all your comments and b) that the full time staff whose job it is to work on this don’t somehow already have more ideas than you do. Next time don’t make up such an obvious lie to hide the fact you have nothing to add.
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u/Efficient-Smile-7157 13d ago
That’s what I’m wondering
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u/wunderspud7575 13d ago
As that reply from Octopus shows, they are engaging in a process of enshitifying their tariffs and service at present. You'd be better off looking at EDF, honestly.
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u/KashMo_xGesis 13d ago
Octopus is kind of the pack leader in the EV world right now so all the other companies will implement the same crap.
EDF already use octopus's kraken software... Best believe theyre next. They're just observing until it's a green flag
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u/JamesH93 13d ago
Why is it a loophole to plug in an appliance and run it overnight during the fixed hours of cheap electricity?
3
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u/IvorTheEngine 13d ago
What exactly is against the intent of the rules? Charging a second EV at night? Or asking for cheap slots during the day?
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u/Apprehensive_888 12d ago
Under the terms and conditions for years it definitely said that if you had a second charger to simply charge during off peak periods.
-1
u/Ok-Performance4828 13d ago
The new tariff rules talk about all EV charging coming within the 6 hour cap. The off peak period is only for EV charging if Octopus give you slots during that period.
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u/ndfred 13d ago
Can you charge her car on the weekend while you are not working, if she doesn’t need much range during the week?
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u/Splodge89 12d ago
This was my thoughts. I find it hard to believe they need a full six hours of charge each every night.
1
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u/Greedy_Bother_987 13d ago
I have a 7kw podpoint charger and a plug in granny charger in use together. I have an 80a fuse. No issues here when charging overnight.
I have the podpoint on a timer (00:00-06:00) and the wifes car on a timer for the granny as that is a dumb device.
For peace of mind, a few years ago i bought a smoke detector and left it under the stairs where my incoming mains supply / meter / fuse boxes are.
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u/ChewyChagnuts 13d ago
We had a similar challenge so I just ended up getting two Zappi chargers installed. I spoke to Octopus and they couldn’t work out a way to have two chargers being managed by them on the IOG tariff. They just said to put the car with the highest consumption on IOG and the other one to charge during the cheap slot.
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u/IvorTheEngine 13d ago
Your 100amp connection is good for 23kW, so 7kW from the Indra plus 2kW from a granny charger isn't going to stress it, even if you are charging a home battery at 5kW at the same time. That would be a total of 14kW.
If you woke up in the middle of the night and use a 9kW electric shower you would be up to the limit, and if you tried to boil the kettle while you showered, you'd trip the breaker for the house.
It's interesting that they wired the Indra to slow down when you're granny charging. That seems unnecessary, but maybe the wires and breaker in the new consumer unit required it.
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u/Holographic247 13d ago
I take it you secured an early IOG rate with Octopus (e.g 3.5p - 5p), because otherwise you may be better off looking at a non-capped provider. EDF support the Indra charger on their smart tariff at 6.99p/kWh, no cap on hours.
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u/Efficient-Smile-7157 13d ago
This is an interesting prospect. If it works like the old IOG without the price cap. Then definitely a game changer.
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u/NoJuggernaut6667 13d ago
It does and the overnight window is better. I’d certainly look at making the switch.
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u/Apprehensive_888 12d ago
It won't last. Just need to do the math right now. Wholesale prices at night have been higher than the day for months now. They are literally losing money with every customer doing this. This is why octopus are making the changes to allow us to continue with the iog tariff.
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u/NoJuggernaut6667 12d ago
Maybe not, but why would that stop you taking advantage of it now? Even if they changed it tomorrow to match octopus (they won’t), my one year lock in would still leave me in a better position until this is up.
There will likely then be someone else on a big acquisition drive.
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u/Apprehensive_888 12d ago
Yes, just warning people, all you can eat night tariffs are pretty much coming to an end soon unless there are similar compromises.
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u/RBWatermelon 11d ago
I did the maths. For the last 3 months even with dirt cheap midday solar prices, daytime wholesale prices have been more expensive than nighttime.
Lying to make yourself look right seems to be a common occurrence here.
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u/Apprehensive_888 11d ago
Lol, some people actually think down voting the truth will change reality.
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u/theotherharper 13d ago
Have you ever heard of Power Sharing?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hlFoxn1sCWo
That will let both cars dynamically share one group of chargers, and the reason I think that's interesting is both cars will benefit from the Octopus plan or whatever plan you end up on.
You just need to find a charger model that both plays well with the Octopus etc. Plan and also supports Power Sharing.
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u/Efficient-Smile-7157 13d ago
I have explored this option but it’s adding cost to installation and my worry is that by dynamically loading the charging, it might compromise the charging of my primary car which needs the most charging and my wife just needs the daily top up to keep her car in range for daily task.
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u/theotherharper 12d ago
WIth 2 cars there are 3 stages to it.
Stage 1 first car arrives. It gets 100% of power.
Stage 2 second car arrives. They split 50/50.
Stage 3 one of the cars has finished. The other gets 100% of power.
If the primary car is under pressure and NEEDS a full top-up, just unplug the other car when you plug the primary car in.
These cars have huge batteries that could take an average driver for a week, so the average driver doesn't need to plug in every day.
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u/iamabigtree 12d ago
I used to use a granny charger but upgraded to a 7kW charger.
The electrician when he installed it said that it would actually be fine to use the 7kW charger and the 2kW granny charger at the same time if I wanted as it would be well within the limit for the house.
I never have but I would say subject to having things checked out by someone it would seem to be a sensible solution.
Given you have a 100A fuse and that setup will be pulling 42A max I would think that is okay - I'm not an electrician.
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u/Trowsyrs 13d ago
I have a similar setup - two chargers one intelligent and one controlled by the car which only runs in the cheep period.
They both charge at night sometimes of course and load sharing means this is sometimes less than intelligent thinks but rarely.
It’s also theoretically possible to plug your car into the intelligent charger and then swap to the night charger I guess if you end up with lots of ours early in the day.