{"id":32526,"date":"2019-08-05T14:28:08","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T03:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=32526"},"modified":"2025-10-22T17:21:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T07:51:12","slug":"zappi-ev-charger-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/zappi-ev-charger-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar Diversion In Practice: A Reader’s Experience With The Zappi EV Charger"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Chris from Queensland has owned a Zappi EV charger for over 3 months now. Find out what he thinks of it.<\/p><\/div>\n

Readers will recall our previous discussions of solar diversion here<\/a> and here<\/a>, and my complaint that it\u2019s too hard to do off-the-shelf.<\/p>\n

One of the handful of fully off-the-shelf products we were alerted to is the Zappi charger, and last week I had the chance to discuss the product with a user in Queensland, Chris.<\/p>\n

Having recently moved into a house and installed a hefty 10 kilowatts<\/a> of solar power (connected to a single phase 8.2 kW Fronius inverter<\/a>, export limited to 5 kW), charging for his BMW i3 was always going to be on the agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we bought this house, the first thing we did was to put on the solar panels,\u201d he told Solar Quotes. \u201cThere\u2019s 10 kW on an 8.2kW inverter, with half facing north and half facing east\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That let Chris watch the forums for a suitable EV charger with solar diversion<\/a>, and that\u2019s how the $1,100\u00a0Zappi <\/a>electric car charger came to his attention.<\/p>\n

At first, he told SolarQuotes, there wasn\u2019t a local distributor, so he was looking at importing the charger from the UK, but during that process, Evolution Australia took on Australian distribution, and he had the Zappi installed by UV Power<\/a> in Queensland.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the hefty amount of power available (plus Queensland\u2019s enviable weather),<\/p>\n

\u201csometimes I\u2019ve used less than 1% from the grid to charge the car and drive 1500km\u201d, Chris told us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Zappi

That’s driving on 99% sunshine.<\/p><\/div>\n

His Zappi is running off a single phase, limiting the charge current to 32A (7kW), but he said if you\u2019ve got a three-phase system the charge power can be up to 22kW.<\/p>\n

Not that Chris is suffering at the lower charge:<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the time the car will be charging in the morning, so in summer it can be charged by 6 am Even now, it can be up to full charge by 10 am.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He said the installer from UV Power knew electric car charging was on the cards before the Zappi was launched in Australia, so when the system was installed he had the charging circuit installed in the garage, which helped keep costs down when he found the Zappi.<\/p>\n

The few hundred dollars for the installation also covered the CT sensing clamps, and Cat 5 cables for control communications (Chris decided to avoid using wireless to access the remote monitoring system).<\/p>\n

So How Is The Zappi Performing In Practice?<\/h2>\n

Chris told us he\u2019s surprisingly impressed at how closely and quickly the charger responds to conditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was shocked at how quickly it follows production – is there cloud? Does it need to slow down or stop? How does it respond to the pool pump, or the clothes dryer that fluctuates between 300W and 4kW? The Zappi follows those things without any issues\u201d, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been rock solid.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If PV output or the programmed surplus is lost, the Zappi will wait for a programmed time and see if the surplus has returned.<\/p>\n

Charging the car from PV means taking advantage of Queensland\u2019s export rules:<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t export more than 5kW, so it has a control. I can maintain an export margin before charging, so for example there\u2019s always 900W going out to the grid, and I minimise the wastage in my production\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The only time Chris noticed it misbehaving, he said, was when he was trying to change the settings, and they wouldn\u2019t update – but the \u201cIT Crowd solution\u201d (\u201cHave you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?\u201d) fixed it.<\/p>\n

The other feature he singled out for praise is the Zappi\u2019s tariff response:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can take advantage of cheap tariffs, and set up a smart boost\u201d (which works backwards from the car\u2019s charge state, to estimate timing to start charging at the \u201clast second\u201d).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You also program the Zappi to use only a certain percentage of the available power, he told us:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could start charging when you reach 50 percent availability, not pushing anything to the grid until it\u2019s charged, and that\u2019s customisable anywhere from 1 percent to 100 percent.\u201d).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He\u2019s also experimenting with the vendor’s latest offering, the Zappi Hub, which provides its connection to the Internet so he can monitor and control it remotely with an app.<\/p>\n

\"Zappi

The Zappi Hub connects the Zappi charger to the cloud.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"zappi

The Zappi Hub’s app.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Zappi Hub is \u201crelatively new\u201d, and Chris said he had to get it shipped from the UK.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s buggy at this stage, but it definitely has potential\u201d, he told us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Added:<\/strong> You can compare specifications and estimated pricing of the Zappi with a bunch of other devices on SQ’s EV charger comparison<\/a> page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Readers will recall our previous discussions of solar diversion here and here, and my complaint that it\u2019s too hard to do off-the-shelf. One of the handful of fully off-the-shelf products we were alerted to is the Zappi charger, and last week I had the chance to discuss the product with a user in Queensland, Chris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":32532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[788],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ev-chargers","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nZappi EV Charger Review: This Queenslander's Stoked!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Chris has owned a Zappi EV charger for 3+ months now. 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