The Zappi in an Irish House With Solar

The zappi's selling point is that it charges your car from surplus solar instead of from the grid. It does, and it does it well. But myenergi's own documentation sets a floor: the EV charging standard will not go below 6 A, about 1.4 kW on a single-phase supply, so in Eco+ the zappi waits until you have that much surplus before it starts. Whether that floor is reached often enough to justify the unit, and whether the surplus is even worth putting in the car rather than selling, depends on your roof, your tariff and the month. Those are answerable questions, and almost nobody answers them before buying.

Fast, Eco, Eco+: What Actually Separates Them

The zappi has four modes and the differences are more consequential than the marketing suggests. myenergi's support documentation sets them out plainly.

The detail that catches people is in Eco. It sounds like the cautious option and it is the expensive one. Because Eco never pauses, a car plugged in at 4pm on a grey Tuesday charges at 1.4 kW off the grid, at whatever your daytime rate happens to be, until it is full or unplugged. Eco+ is the mode that actually refuses to buy electricity.

The Minimum Green Level, and What Turning It Down Really Costs

myenergi anticipated the complaint that Eco+ never starts on a cloudy day, so there is a slider: the Minimum Green Level. It sets how much of the charge has to come from your own generation before the zappi will keep going.

So the slider does not create surplus. It buys the shortfall on your behalf, quietly, at the most expensive rate on your plan. Fair enough if you need the car charged and would rather it was half green than not at all. It is not the free charging the mode's name implies, and it is the single most common reason an Irish zappi owner posts a screenshot asking why the app shows imported power in a "green" session.

An Irish Winter Against a 1.4 kW Floor

Put the floor beside the generation figures and the seasonal picture is stark. Our month-by-month winter output page has the PVGIS numbers for a 4 kWp Dublin array: 137 kWh in December, an average of 4.4 kWh a day, against 495 kWh in May.

Take the December figure and be generous with it. Dublin gets 7 hours 34 minutes between sunrise and sunset on 21 December. Even if the whole day's 4.4 kWh arrived in the four brightest hours, that is an average of 1.1 kW, and it is gross generation before the fridge, the router and the immersion have taken their share. That is our arithmetic, not a myenergi figure, but the conclusion is hard to escape: on a typical December day a 4 kWp roof does not produce 1.4 kW of surplus for long enough to matter, and Eco+ will sit there waiting.

May is a different machine. 16.0 kWh a day across a long bright day clears the floor comfortably through the middle hours, and that is where the zappi earns its reputation. The honest summary is that surplus charging in Ireland is a five-month feature on a twelve-month purchase, and a bigger array moves that boundary outwards more than any setting does.

The Question Nobody Asks: Is Surplus Worth More in the Car or on the Grid?

Every kWh you divert into the car is a kWh you do not export, so the real comparison is not solar against grid. It is the grid rate you avoid against the export rate you give up. Electric Ireland publishes both on the same page: its Home Electric+ Night Boost bands, and 19.5c per kWh for exported microgeneration.

Read the bottom row twice. If you are on a night-boost plan and you can reliably charge between 2am and 4am, exporting your surplus and buying the car's electricity at 10.88c leaves you better off than putting the sunshine in the car. Over 1,000 kWh a year, which is a realistic amount of surplus for a 4 kWp house to route into an EV, the difference is about €86. That is our arithmetic on Electric Ireland's own published rates, and it inverts the entire pitch for solar charging.

The catch, and it is a real one, is the width of the window. Two hours at 7.4 kW is 14.8 kWh, which Electric Ireland's own example puts at roughly 82 km of range for just under €2. If you drive further than that on an average day, the overflow lands in the 18.54c night band, where solar and grid are within a cent of each other and the decision stops mattering. And if you cannot shift charging to the small hours at all, the day-rate row applies and surplus charging is worth 18.10c a unit.

Rates differ by supplier, and the export side moves more than people expect. Our Clean Export Guarantee comparison tracks what each supplier currently pays, and the best electricity plan for solar owners covers the import side. Run your own two numbers before you decide which mode to leave the zappi in.

What It Costs in Ireland

Prices direct from myenergi Ireland, hardware only, checked on 30 September 2026.

Take €300 off whichever unit you choose, assuming the model is on SEAI's Smart Charger Register and a Safe Electric registered contractor does the work. Installation is on top of the hardware price, and a long cable run adds to it. Fitted packages from energy suppliers quote differently again, with the grant already deducted, which we compare on the home EV charger comparison page.

The gap between a zappi and a zappi GLO is €281 at the entry price. myenergi says the GLO does surplus solar charging, tariff syncing and dynamic load management too, so for a single-phase Irish house the premium mostly buys the physical screen, three-phase capability you almost certainly cannot use, and the older unit's place in the myenergi hub ecosystem. If you want local control without reaching for a phone, that screen is worth something. If you do not, say so to the installer and ask them to price both.

The Installation Detail That Decides Whether Eco Works At All

Solar modes depend on the zappi knowing, second by second, what is crossing your meter. That comes from a current transformer clamp, and myenergi's installation manual is specific about it.

• A grid CT is required for the Eco modes. One clip-on sensor ships with a single-phase unit, three with a three-phase unit.
• It must see everything. The clamp goes on the incoming supply before any junction box or Henley block, so that all imported and exported power passes through it. Fitted after a Henley block it will read a fraction of the house and Eco+ will behave erratically.
• Only one grid CT per phase in the whole installation. If you already have an eddi diverter with a grid clamp, the zappi shares that reading rather than adding a second one.
• A harvi solves an awkward run. The €82 wireless sensor removes the need to get a CT cable from the meter position back to the charger, which in a retrofit is often the hardest part of the job.

Two more specifics worth having in front of you when quotes come in: the zappi needs a 40 A Type B breaker, and it has PEN fault detection built in, which myenergi presents as removing the need for an additional earth rod. It also carries its own 30 mA Type A RCD with 6 mA DC protection to EN 62955, so a separate RCD for the charge point is not normally needed. Ask your electrician to confirm all three against the board you actually have.

If You Already Have a Diverter

Plenty of Irish solar houses fitted an immersion diverter first, because it was the cheapest way to stop giving the surplus away. Add an EV and the two devices are now competing for the same surplus, and myenergi lets you set which one gets it first.

The ordering is worth thinking about rather than accepting the default. Hot water is a small, finite sink: once the cylinder is up to temperature, the diverter stops taking anything. A car is effectively bottomless by comparison. Giving the diverter priority costs you a couple of kWh on a good day and guarantees the immersion never runs on grid electricity in the evening. Giving the car priority makes sense when the tank is already heated by other means, or in a house with a heat pump. There is no universally right answer, which is exactly why it is a setting.

Is a Zappi Worth It If You Have No Panels?

Honestly, on its own merits, no more than several cheaper chargers. With no generation there is no surplus, so Eco and Eco+ have nothing to track and the zappi becomes a scheduled charger with a screen. That job is done by any grant-eligible unit with a decent tariff timer, several of which cost less.

The argument for buying one anyway is sequencing. If solar is a year or two away, a charger already wired with a grid CT is ready on day one and you avoid paying an electrician twice. That is a real saving, though a smaller one than the price gap suggests. If solar is not in the plan, buy on cable length, connectivity and price instead, and read our comparison of the grant-eligible chargers.

Getting the €300 Without Losing It

The grant rules are where good installations go wrong on paperwork. SEAI's own conditions, as published:

• Up to €300 towards purchase and installation, for smart chargers on SEAI's Smart Charger Register only.
• The work must be done by a Safe Electric registered electrical contractor.
• No work before the start date on your Letter of Offer. Spend incurred earlier is deemed ineligible and cannot be rescued afterwards.
• Six months from the Letter of Offer to complete the installation and return the Payment Request Form. If it will not be done in time, cancel and reapply rather than letting it expire.
• One per property. A home that has already had a charger grant, or took the free ESB Ecars charger before 2018, cannot claim again on that MPRN.
• You will need Certificate Number 3, the Test Record Sheet, invoices and photos of the installed charger. SEAI says payment follows roughly four to six weeks after it has everything.

Full detail, including the third-party application route, is on our EV charger grant page. For the mechanics of running a car off your own roof rather than the product decision, see charging an electric car with solar panels.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a zappi cost in Ireland?

Direct from myenergi Ireland, a zappi is €930 to €1,030 including VAT and a zappi GLO is €649 to €719, both hardware only with installation on top. The SEAI home charger grant takes up to €300 off, provided the model is on SEAI's Smart Charger Register and the work is done by a Safe Electric registered contractor. Fitted packages sold by energy suppliers quote a single price with the grant already deducted.

How much surplus solar does a zappi need before it will charge?

About 1.4 kW on a single-phase unit, because the EV charging standard sets a minimum charging current of 6 A. A three-phase zappi needs about 4.2 kW, since the standard requires 6 A per phase. In Eco+ the zappi waits for that much surplus before starting and displays "Waiting for Surplus" until it arrives. In Eco it starts anyway and imports the difference from the grid.

Will a zappi charge my car from solar in an Irish winter?

Rarely, at the strictest setting. A 4 kWp Dublin array generates about 137 kWh in December, an average of 4.4 kWh a day. Even if all of that arrived in the four brightest hours it would average 1.1 kW before the house takes its share, which is below the 1.4 kW that Eco+ needs to start. Surplus charging in Ireland is realistically an April to August feature, and lowering the Minimum Green Level to force a winter charge simply buys the shortfall at your day rate.

Is charging from solar better than charging on a night rate?

Not always, and on a night-boost plan usually not. Electric Ireland pays 19.5c per kWh for exported microgeneration while its Night Boost band costs 10.88c between 02:00 and 04:00, so exporting the surplus and buying the car's electricity at 2am leaves you about 8.62c per kWh better off. Against its 37.60c day rate, solar charging wins by 18.10c. Against the 18.54c night band the two are within a cent. The right answer depends entirely on your tariff.

What is the Minimum Green Level on a zappi?

A setting that decides how much of the charge must come from your own generation before the zappi stops. At 100% it halts when surplus falls below 1.4 kW. At 50% it keeps charging until surplus falls below 700 W, importing the rest from the grid. At 1% it only stops when generation has effectively ceased. Lowering it does not produce more solar, it authorises the charger to buy the difference.

Does a zappi need a CT clamp?

Yes, for the Eco modes. A clip-on grid current sensor is supplied with the unit, and it must be fitted on the incoming supply before any junction box or Henley block so that all imported and exported power passes through it. Only one grid CT per phase is allowed in the whole installation, so an existing eddi's clamp is shared rather than duplicated. Where the cable run is impractical, myenergi's harvi wireless sensor does the same job for €82.

What is the difference between a zappi and a zappi GLO?

The GLO is the smaller, screen-free unit at €649 to €719, controlled entirely through the myenergi app with optional RFID card access for up to 126 users, and it is single phase at 7 kW only. myenergi says it also does solar surplus charging, tariff syncing and dynamic load management. The full zappi at €930 to €1,030 adds the on-unit screen and a three-phase 22 kW option that a standard Irish domestic supply cannot use anyway.

Can I claim the SEAI grant on a zappi?

myenergi Ireland states that zappi purchases can be claimed under the scheme, and SEAI's rule is that the exact model must be selected from the Smart Charger Register drop-down when you apply. Confirm the specific variant you are buying is on that register before you order, because the choice is made at application and cannot be retrofitted afterwards. The installation must also be carried out by a Safe Electric registered electrical contractor.