With fuel prices and energy prices on the rise, there has never been a better time to look at green energy solutions such as solar PV panels. UK Green Energy Installations can work with you to ensure you invest in the best panels for your business or household. Consider battery storage and electric car charger installation at the same time, so you can absorb it, store it, and use it!
Future-Proofing your Electric Car Charger
If you’re thinking of installing a car charger soon or in the future, it is worth considering future-proofing it. This means ensuring that the charger can be integrated with both solar panels and battery storage.
Why?
Charge your car directly from the energy generated from your solar panels i.e. with the Zappi car charger.
If you don’t have solar panels, you could charge your battery storage solution during off-peak and charge your car anytime of day or night i.e. during peak rate and only pay off-peak rate.
With energy prices on the rise, it is worth taking extra steps to save money and decrease your carbon footprint even further.
Firmware Updates – Why You should Install Them
When we install any new car charger with smart technology built-in, one of the first things we do following powering-up and safety testing, is to check the firmware to see if it is up-to-date.
Why does the firmware require updates?
Technology changes constantly and with new products being released such as new mobile phone software, it is important the chargers continue to stay compatible and can be integrated seamlessly and safely.
Like any hardware operated by software, glitches can occur with the charger’s software and these can be ironed out in newer releases of the firmware.
Example
Following a recent install of a Myenergi Zappi, we found the existing Eddi (controlling the water heating from PV Solar) would not communicate to the new Zappi car charger. This was all down to the firmware never being updated. Once we found the issue, this was easy to rectify.
Electric Car Chargers Could be Switched off Remotely at Peak Times
Following the recent article in The Times (link below) electrical vehicle chargers could be centrally switched off during peak times, UK Green Energy Installations looks into what this could mean, how it will happen and what impact this will have on car charging.
How much time do you need to charge your vehicle?
The average EV Vehicle has a battery of approximately 60 KWh, with the standard home charger being 7 KW. This would then take 8.5 hours of charge to go from 0% to 100%. However, it is normally recommended to charge to only 80-90% by your vehicle manufacturer and it is unlikely that your vehicle would be at 0% charge to begin with.
With a vehicle that’s set to charge after 10pm, and then charged for approximately 8.5 hours overnight, would mean the battery is fully charged before 06:30am, ready for the average commute to work or school.
As energy suppliers are offering good off-peak rates, it would be beneficial to take advantage of this and use cheaper rates at night to charge / top-up your vehicle.
How it is likely to occur
To be applicable for the government grant, your electric vehicle charger must be on a list of approved EVHS units - see the link below:
These approved EVHS (Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme) units include smart technology that can connect to the internet via SIM or Wi-Fi. Using this part of the charger’s technology may allow the government to have control of your charger, switching it off temporarily if peak demand on energy starts to exceed the capacity of local supplier’s equipment.
Will everyone be affected?
If you opt not to purchase a ‘Smart Charger’ and prefer to use a key operated charger without connectivity, you are unlikely to be affected. These chargers have no communication built-in and can simply be operated by a key. There are no internal elements to monitor its usage and the charger is the sole responsibility of the user plugging in their vehicle.
We install Smart Chargers and key operated chargers without connectivity for the home or the office: carcharge.uk/productsoverview
This Smart Charger from Myenergi not only benefits from connectivity but it can also be configured to be utilised with solar panels.
The Securicharge solution from Rolec has no smart connectivity and simply utilises a key to switch the unit on and off.
We Are Delighted to Share Our New Video
We are delighted to share our new video designed to provide an overview of the different installations we offer including: EV charging for both domestic and commercial environments, Solar PV installation, and battery storage.