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murphys_lawyerWe've had a Skoda Enyaq for about a week now. We didn't want to replace our beloved 18-year old Octavia Diesel just yet, but someone roaring out of a side road without looking put paid to that idea.
We didn't actually sign for the car until our power supplier, Octopus, confirmed they could install an EV charger on the front of the house. I was a little concerned because our solar / battery system also includes an Emergency Power Supply unit, which will keep the house running off the batteries in the event of a power cut, but they assured us it was no problem. And indeed the installation was not: it took less than half a day, and at the end of it the installer checked it worked and talked to the car.
After that, it was easy to charge. Right?
Insert Padme Amidala meme here...
Because there are four factors at work.
1. Octopus Energy, who supply our electricity and would really like us to use their app for intelligent charging as they can control that when electricity's really cheap.
2. Hypervolt, who made the charging box we bought which will cleverly use any surplus solar generated once our batteries are full to trickle-charge the car, provided you set that in its app
3. Fox ESS, whose solar and battery kit we've been running for over a year now (see articles passim) and whose app lets me control when to top up from the grid or force discharge to sell power when it's expensive.
4. The car, which, you guessed it, has an app.
First step: actually get the car to charge. It recognised the charger, and vice versa, but no actual power was getting through. It turned out that I had to note its location as somewhere it was okay to charge. That wasn't obvious from the manual and I've pointed that out to the dealers, but that was sorted out in a day or so. Checked that neither the car nor the charger were scheduled to charge, and set uo the Octopus app to do its thing.
Zilch. Two days of it telling me that it was going to start charging Real Soon Now but no, it didn't. Ticket raised. We'll see.
In the meantime, the charger had managed to keep the battery at roughly the same level when the house batteries were charged, so power could go through to the car. As Octopus wasn't working, I scheduled from the battery. Success...
Until I noticed the charger did not differentiate between the grid and the house battery, which it was draining at 5kw an hour. At that rate, it would be down to its 10% reserves well before the car had a decent charge, and leave nothing to run the house during the day when power is more expensive. So I stopped that, and arranged a cheap rate boost for the battery.
A look online the next day showed that this was a rare, but not unheard of phenomenon. Solutions on the various forums ranged from screaming at the charger installer to come back and fix it, to DIY solutions involving a little simple rewiring and dear god in heaven we're looking at 240 volts and large numbers of amps and absolutely not.
Then I had an idea. Why not charge the house battery at the same time as the car? It should make the charger think the battery is not for draining.
And so it was. It turns out you only have to tell the battery to charge a small amount, in this case 500 watts to cover the house's night-time power needs (we do not so much have a fridge as a monolith) and a bit left over and the charger pulls a full 7.5kw from the grid.
So there we are. Not optimal but it works. To recap: settings.
1. Octopus app: recognises the car, but its smart charging is set to off. Stops it confusing the
2. Hypervolt: Set to "plug and charge" on the Super Eco mode which uses the solar, but is switched to scheduled charging in Boost Mode in the small hours if needed.
3. Fox ESS: Mode Scheduler set to Force Charge batteries from the grid at 500 watts per hour at the same schedule as the Hypervolt.
4. The car: charging location set to home, method set to "charge immediately" with no schedules set in it.
In conclusion, some of this smart stuff isn't nearly as smart as its providers think it is, and it needs a bit of looking after. But once you've found a solution and you're happy with it, not much left to do bit feel slightly accomplished. Oh, and link this report to the various Skoda forums who could probably do with a good news story for a change.
We didn't actually sign for the car until our power supplier, Octopus, confirmed they could install an EV charger on the front of the house. I was a little concerned because our solar / battery system also includes an Emergency Power Supply unit, which will keep the house running off the batteries in the event of a power cut, but they assured us it was no problem. And indeed the installation was not: it took less than half a day, and at the end of it the installer checked it worked and talked to the car.
After that, it was easy to charge. Right?
Insert Padme Amidala meme here...
Because there are four factors at work.
1. Octopus Energy, who supply our electricity and would really like us to use their app for intelligent charging as they can control that when electricity's really cheap.
2. Hypervolt, who made the charging box we bought which will cleverly use any surplus solar generated once our batteries are full to trickle-charge the car, provided you set that in its app
3. Fox ESS, whose solar and battery kit we've been running for over a year now (see articles passim) and whose app lets me control when to top up from the grid or force discharge to sell power when it's expensive.
4. The car, which, you guessed it, has an app.
First step: actually get the car to charge. It recognised the charger, and vice versa, but no actual power was getting through. It turned out that I had to note its location as somewhere it was okay to charge. That wasn't obvious from the manual and I've pointed that out to the dealers, but that was sorted out in a day or so. Checked that neither the car nor the charger were scheduled to charge, and set uo the Octopus app to do its thing.
Zilch. Two days of it telling me that it was going to start charging Real Soon Now but no, it didn't. Ticket raised. We'll see.
In the meantime, the charger had managed to keep the battery at roughly the same level when the house batteries were charged, so power could go through to the car. As Octopus wasn't working, I scheduled from the battery. Success...
Until I noticed the charger did not differentiate between the grid and the house battery, which it was draining at 5kw an hour. At that rate, it would be down to its 10% reserves well before the car had a decent charge, and leave nothing to run the house during the day when power is more expensive. So I stopped that, and arranged a cheap rate boost for the battery.
A look online the next day showed that this was a rare, but not unheard of phenomenon. Solutions on the various forums ranged from screaming at the charger installer to come back and fix it, to DIY solutions involving a little simple rewiring and dear god in heaven we're looking at 240 volts and large numbers of amps and absolutely not.
Then I had an idea. Why not charge the house battery at the same time as the car? It should make the charger think the battery is not for draining.
And so it was. It turns out you only have to tell the battery to charge a small amount, in this case 500 watts to cover the house's night-time power needs (we do not so much have a fridge as a monolith) and a bit left over and the charger pulls a full 7.5kw from the grid.
So there we are. Not optimal but it works. To recap: settings.
1. Octopus app: recognises the car, but its smart charging is set to off. Stops it confusing the
2. Hypervolt: Set to "plug and charge" on the Super Eco mode which uses the solar, but is switched to scheduled charging in Boost Mode in the small hours if needed.
3. Fox ESS: Mode Scheduler set to Force Charge batteries from the grid at 500 watts per hour at the same schedule as the Hypervolt.
4. The car: charging location set to home, method set to "charge immediately" with no schedules set in it.
In conclusion, some of this smart stuff isn't nearly as smart as its providers think it is, and it needs a bit of looking after. But once you've found a solution and you're happy with it, not much left to do bit feel slightly accomplished. Oh, and link this report to the various Skoda forums who could probably do with a good news story for a change.
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Date: 2026-07-24 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-07-28 02:13 pm (UTC)