Issues charging at home with universal cable from Skoda - red buttons (plug, house and car)

[Lorttrol]

if everyones cars start charging at 11:30 pm

If they all stop charging at the same time

if they all go on charge at the same time

Well, yes, yes and yes. But I really can't see these three conditions being met.
If we take the half-million EVs you mention, what are the probabilities governing the start times and durations of their charging periods? I genuinely don't know. There may indeed be a general long-term pattern but I'd suspect it's not precise and specific. Adding a random time factor on top of this could just as well serve to produce coincidences of starting that were not there to begin with.

You mention IT. This delay is not like CSMA/CD. In that case we do have an identical starting time for two events. Holding off for two randomly generated delays ensures that the coincidence doesn't repeat.

Out of interest, does your domestic charger randomly delay charging? Mine doesn't, and it's only a year old. Is this delay issue only emerging now and is it being enforced by legislation? I've not come across it before, so I'm genuinely interested in understanding what the future holds.

I think that is a rare case of the government being proactive for a change rather than reactive. This might be pressure from EV manufactuerers to make sure the grid/peoples homes can cope when we all switch to electric but I dont know. I agree its unlikly that all the half a million cars will start at the same time anyway but I think they are just trying to stop it causing problems on the off chance it happens. If Octopus have say 50,000 customers and they all go onto IO then when they try to start charging at 11:30 thats a big hit for the grid to take. Okay the fact the cars are distributed across the country helps make less of an impact than pulling it all from one place, and its just a random example. But when we're all electric, where there are millions of EVs on the roads the impact will be massive.

I have a Zappi v2.1, it was purchased and installed in October 2022 and it does have a random time delay. I can however manually over ride it. I cant remember if the other option I had was a Zappi v1.0 or v2.0 but the v2.1 was cheaper. I dont know if the smart regulations came in on the 2.0 or the 2.1 There is a lot more details here on how it all works here.

https://www.myenergi.com/guides/smart-c ... explained/

[Walter Eagle]

Charge points must also:
...
allow for a randomised delay function

Ah, - allow for - now I think I'm getting somewhere.

I did a bit more searching in the phone app for my charger and I find I can choose three options, with sub-options:
(i) instant charging,
(ii) pre-set charging (start at a specified time, run for a specified duration, or a specified charge amount, or specified cost)
(iii) delayed charging (either a fixed default delay, or a custom time delay I choose, or a random delay.)

I've never found that last sub-option before because I'd never looked deep enough.
So yes, it does allow for a randomised delay function, but it has to be actively set in place by me.

Apologies all - especially ComicGeek and Lorttrol. I didn't understand how what was being said fitted with my experience.

Thinking about it more now, I wonder if a random delay car-by-car can only work effectively on a very local basis - maybe as a little as one street, or one housing estate.
To spread a whole country's worth of EVs out randomly enough to have a benefit on the entire national grid would possibly need randomising right across 24 hours.
If all we're looking at is around a 30 minute random spread I can't see that working on a greater scale than a small sub-station or distribution unit.
So long as we protect these locally, the national supply companies can do active area and regional management where it's no longer random decisions about when to start.

Oh well, no-one said it would be easy.
Hang on, that's exactly what the Skoda salesman did say!