This issue should be fixed now, the charge functionality was completely removed. So there's no such thing as having a "low battery" anymore, the "Scan Area" interaction should always be available now and never greyed out.
I had the exact same issue and I figured out what it was so I'll post here in case this helps someone.
I had my Sim's aspiration set as 'solve the Strangerville mystery'. In the first part of the aspiration there are three tasks to complete which loosely correlate with solving the mystery, however there is one extra task to complete which involves you buying a curio. This has got nothing to do with progressing the SV mystery, so I didn't do it. The problem was, I continued to progress through solving the mystery (collecting evidence, dossier etc), and then WENT BACK to buy a curio because I thought 'huh, I should probably do that'. I then got stuck because the next part of the aspiration involved collecting evidence, and putting together a dossier, which I had already done, but the game was now registering as incomplete. I had the scanner at this point, and was getting the same error you described - it needed charging and was unusable no matter what I tried. I realised that the game essentially thought I was still in the evidence-collecting stage (as that's where I was on the aspiration), and the made the object unusable. What worked for me was using UI cheats extension, and marking the aspirations tasks as done up to the task I had actually completed in game (just literally right click on them). I was then able to continue on as normal.
TL;DR - if you have Strangerville Mystery aspiration on, make sure you complete the tasks in order even if they don't relate the mystery, otherwise the game will not register you as having progressed (even when you have) and you won't be able to use objects or use certain interactions.
