Zappi EV charger review, from an installer

What the Zappi is actually trying to solve

A plain EV charger does one thing: it pulls power from wherever it can get it and puts it in your car. If that happens at two in the afternoon while your solar is producing, great. If it happens because you plugged in at six, it is coming off the grid at the worst possible time of day.

The Zappi's whole reason for existing is to make that decision for you. It watches what your solar is actually exporting and charges the car with the surplus rather than selling it back at a feed in tariff worth a fraction of what you pay to buy it back.

myenergi make it in a 7 kW single phase model and a 22 kW three phase model, and the three phase figure depends on what your car will actually accept, which is a point worth holding onto: no charger can push a car faster than the car's own onboard charger allows.

ECO, ECO+ and FAST, in plain English

Three modes, and the names are not self explanatory, so here is what they do.

FAST is the dumb mode, and I do not mean that as an insult. It charges at full available power from wherever the power comes from, solar or grid or both. It is what you use when you need the car ready and you do not care what it costs.

ECO charges continuously, but it varies the rate according to your surplus solar. If the surplus drops, it tops up from the grid rather than stopping. The car keeps charging, you just use as much of your own generation as is going.

ECO+ is the purist setting. It charges only from surplus solar and will pause when there is not enough. Cloud comes over, it stops. Sun comes back, it resumes. You will use almost no grid power and you give up all control over when the car is actually ready.

My honest advice after fitting these: most people set ECO+ in the first fortnight because it feels like the point of the thing, then move to ECO and stay there. ECO+ is genuinely excellent if you work from home and the car sits on the drive all day. If you commute, you will get up one morning to a car that spent the day waiting for a sunny patch that never came.

The CT clamp is the thing that decides your install

This is the practical detail that matters more than anything on the spec sheet, and it is the one that catches people out.

For the Zappi to know what your solar is exporting, it needs a current transformer clamp fitted around the right cable at your switchboard or meter position. The single phase model comes with one CT clamp on a 5 metre lead. The three phase model comes with three clamps, also on 5 metre leads.

Five metres is not very far. If your switchboard is in the front of the house and the charger is going on the back of the garage, that lead does not reach, and the install becomes a different job: either running an extension of that signalling cable properly, or using the unit's wireless accessories, or moving where the charger goes.

So the first question we ask on a Zappi quote is not about the car. It is: where is your board, where is your meter, and where do you want the charger. If those three things are close together, this is a tidy install. If they are not, that is the conversation to have before you buy the unit rather than after.

What is built in that you would otherwise pay for

Two things worth knowing about, because they are genuine value rather than marketing.

The Zappi has built in surge protection and PEN fault protection. PEN fault protection matters on a home charger: it is the protection against a specific supply fault that can make metalwork live, and on some other chargers you address it with a separate device at the board, which costs money and takes space you may not have.

It also has built in WiFi and an Ethernet port, with the settings and timers in the myenergi app. The Ethernet port is the quietly useful one. Garages are where WiFi goes to die, and a charger that can take a hardwired connection is a charger that will still be talking to the app in two years.

None of this is exciting, and all of it is the difference between a charger that works and a charger you fight with.

Tethered or untethered

The Zappi comes both ways: tethered, with a Type 2 cable permanently attached, or untethered, with a socket you plug your own cable into.

Tethered is more convenient day to day. You walk up, you plug in, there is no cable to find and no wet cable to coil into the boot. For a home charger used by the same car every night, tethered is what most people want.

Untethered is tidier on the wall, the cable lives in the car so it can go with you, and a damaged cable is replaced rather than being a charger repair. It also copes better with a household where different cars with different cables use the same charger.

There is no right answer here, but decide before you order, because it is not a thing you change later without buying a different unit.

Where it suits, and where it does not

It suits you if you have solar, you care about actually using your own generation rather than exporting it, and you want the charger to make that decision without you thinking about it. The mode system is genuinely good and the protection built into the unit is worth having.

It suits you less if you do not have solar. Without generation to be clever about, you are paying for a capability you cannot use, and a simpler charger on a timer will do the same job. It also suits you less if your switchboard is a long way from where the charger needs to go, unless you have priced that properly.

Be realistic about three phase. If you are looking at the 22 kW model, check what your car will actually accept first. A lot of cars cap their onboard charging well below that, and the fastest charger in the world cannot push past the car's own limit.

For a solar home on the Sunshine Coast with the board and the garage in sensible places, it is an easy charger to recommend. Our EV charger brands page lists what we need to know to quote one, and what an EV charger costs to install covers the general market ranges for the work around it.

Common questions