Are smart charge points worth having?

[Glan gluaisne]

Given the number of reports here, and elsewhere, with issues directly related to smart charge points, are they really worth the hassle?

Issues that seem to crop up fairly regularly are:

1. Scheduled charging with smart charge points seems to be buggy, either because the apps/servers they rely on being flaky, or because the Tesla M3 has a major flaw in accepting charge times scheduled by a charge point.

2. It seems that installers failing to properly test that a newly installed smart charge point is correctly installed and set up, such that charge times and rates are fully operational post-install is a reasonably common occurrence.

3. The issues surrounding the reliability and functionality of smart charge points is such that some seem to have opted to turn off all the smart functionality, so effectively negating the government investment (via the OLEV grant) in having the things installed.

How many people here leave the smart functionality of their charge point disabled, and just use it as a dumb charge point?

To start the ball rolling, I'm in the "keep charge points dumb" camp. mainly because my charge points are all home built, and because I want to have complete control over when my car chargers and when it doesn't, without relying on an internet connection to make this happen.

 

[KennethS]

I am of the tin foil hat brigade and the notion of the external monitoring and potential control of my charge point was not appealing. I opted for the Tesla wall charger and willingly gave up on the OLEV grant to do so.

 

[Jellus]

I got the Andersen A2 smart charger purely for aesthetic reasons, and at the moment it's operating in Dumb mode because I couldn't be bothered setting it up and linking it to the phone app. Maybe I'll get round to it one day, but at the moment I'm happy enough with it just being a dumb charger.

 

[Tonybvi]

My Rolec charger is in dumb mode.

 

[Adopado]

I am of the tin foil hat brigade and the notion of the external monitoring and potential control of my charge point was not appealing. I opted for the Tesla wall charger and willingly gave up on the OLEV grant to do so.

Though you can have the grant and then use the smart features if they are of value, or switch off the smart features if not. I don't use the smart features on my Zappi 2 but that is because my longer term plan is to coordinate charging with solar generation, which I don't have yet. (correction: I suppose I do use a degree of smart function by using the app to look at a graph of my charge period which shows the rate and time of charging.)

 

[tess19]

I am on podpoint but the internet connection is flaky and just use the schedule charging in the car.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

Interesting, and thanks for the responses so far. It's early days, but reinforces a suspicion I have that smart charge points may not be worth the investment that OLEV are putting in. Most people could probably get a "dumb" charge point installed for a similar amount of money that they are paying for a smart one plus OLEV grant, as it seems the premium for a smart charge point is roughly the value of the OLEV grant in many cases.

Makes me wonder whether it's worth feeding this back to OLEV, although I suspect they will be wholly deaf to any criticism. My experience of reporting waste, or just really poor advice, within government has been negative.

On one occasion I questioned an energy-saving memo that came around requesting that all desktop printers were turned off when not in use, claiming that each one consumed ~8kWh/day when on standby. I looked at the labels on mine, and it was something like 4 W on standby, so pointed out in my question that, as a scientist, their claim didn't stand up to scrutiny, and that the true energy being wasted was around 0.032 kWh per day, 0.4% of their claimed figure. I also pointed out that if a desktop printer consumed 8 kWh/day, it would be akin to having an electric fire on my desk, and would probably have burned a hole through the desk by now. The snotty reply I got back was along the lines of "Your questioning of departmental energy saving policy illustrates perfectly why we do not allow scientists to create such policies" . You really couldn't make it up, unless you happen to be Antony Jay or Jonathan Lynn.

 

[spon88]

I deliberately rushed to get the dumb Rolec installed before the regs changed. I don't do a lot of miles so variable charge rates won't help me much, plus the thought of external intervention in the future didn't appeal. It's installed out of the way so aesthetics also not an issue for me.

I debated a smart charger and FSD but pretty pleased I held off on both of those given the current malarkey

 

[MrBadger]

Smart chargers are critical to large scale take up of EV's. But smart charging is clearly not there yet (I guess that is why the OLEV grant is so generous) and the marketing behind smart charging and smart metering needs to be more open. There are however many ways to skin the proverbial cat and for those that can be responsible with their energy usage, being free of the smart shackles is no bad thing. But for those that don't want to concern themselves with doing what's best for the infrastructure, smart charging will over time become best solution, but it needs to get to the point that it can be totally relied on.

 

[rotor2k]

My Rolec is in dumb mode.

If smart mode was self-contained (i.e. it required an internet connection for the initial setup and configuration but was self-sufficient with no internet connectivity from then on), I wouldn't mind it, although --as we know-- the charger can't wake up the Model 3 (hopefully just until Tesla fixes a bug). If Tesla ever get around to fixing that bug, I would at least revisit the smart component of the Rolec to see if there's any benefit to using it.

 

[rotor2k]

On the topic of the OLEV grant, in my humble opinion it just makes all prices go up by exactly the amount of the grant, and we're all no better off, while the installers absolutely cream it. Not very fair.

 

[Artiste]

There’s certainly nothing smart about my 32A commando socket but it does the job perfectly.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

On the topic of the OLEV grant, in my humble opinion it just makes all prices go up by exactly the amount of the grant, and we're all no better off, while the installers absolutely cream it. Not very fair.

Exactly my view.

Years ago, I looked around at getting cavity wall insulation blown into our old house. At the time there was no government grant available. By the time we got around to getting the insulation installed there was a grant available, but the price we paid was exactly the same as that we'd been quoted without the grant...

 

[pdk42]

I'm a dumb charger fan too. I can see little benefit from the smart charging capabilities on my Elvi, but an annoyance in that, when enabled, I need to tap a fob against the unit to authorise charging every time I plug in.

 

[Andywil]

Interesting, and thanks for the responses so far. It's early days, but reinforces a suspicion I have that smart charge points may not be worth the investment that OLEV are putting in. Most people could probably get a "dumb" charge point installed for a similar amount of money that they are paying for a smart one plus OLEV grant, as it seems the premium for a smart charge point is roughly the value of the OLEV grant in many cases.

Makes me wonder whether it's worth feeding this back to OLEV, although I suspect they will be wholly deaf to any criticism. My experience of reporting waste, or just really poor advice, within government has been negative.

On one occasion I questioned an energy-saving memo that came around requesting that all desktop printers were turned off when not in use, claiming that each one consumed ~8kWh/day when on standby. I looked at the labels on mine, and it was something like 4 W on standby, so pointed out in my question that, as a scientist, their claim didn't stand up to scrutiny, and that the true energy being wasted was around 0.032 kWh per day, 0.4% of their claimed figure. I also pointed out that if a desktop printer consumed 8 kWh/day, it would be akin to having an electric fire on my desk, and would probably have burned a hole through the desk by now. The snotty reply I got back was along the lines of "Your questioning of departmental energy saving policy illustrates perfectly why we do not allow scientists to create such policies" . You really couldn't make it up, unless you happen to be Antony Jay or Jonathan Lynn.

After 43 years in the NHS if have had many similar responses to my questioning of national NHS policies.

 

[spon88]

If there was transparency about what the smart functionality will actually be used for, then I'd feel more amenable to trying it. Until that happens, I'll stick with the dumb unit and try to stay under the radar. Maybe a bit selfish but that's where I'm at currently. Now we're clearly in "post truth" Britain, my trust in anything governmental is minimal! I am an old cynic mind

 

[Cwmwd]

I have a Rolec and I use the ev.energy app with it. It's only been about a month and my opinion might change after more use but I've no problems with it other than:

1. The "trained" Rolec installer had never done a smart install before and needed some help to complete the commissioning so that charger would dispense some charge. Had to show him how register the charger on the ev.energy servers.

2. On two occasions the car refused to charge at the advertised 32A, only 16A. I happened to catch it the seconds time and was able to use the Tesla app to stop and restart the charge. This is not a problem with the smart part of the charger but the car.

3. On one occasion the ev.energy servers went down and the car failed to charge and I was unable to charge it manually either. Whilst not a disaster, as I had plenty of charge for the day anyway, it does highlight a problem with the system: if only Rolec had thought to put a physical "Boost" button on the charger or a Bluetooth module so I could talk to it directly from the app even when the server is down.

I probably could do some of the clever things the charger does myself with the Octopus & Tesla & National Grid API or spend my nights babysitting the system manually but life is too short: like with my smart thermostat, I set a schedule and let it do it's thing. It's not perfect but also fairly new so I'm willing to let Rolec and ev.energy know about the problems and give them some time to improve...

That said, if Tesla fixed their in-car charge scheduling so I could set both start and stop time (regardless of not reaching the target SOC) and fixed their bugs to reliably charge at the advertised current I'd probably turn the smart charge features off. Different target SOC by day-of-week and a separate preconditioning schedule would be cool too, I'd trade in Fart Mode and HoHoHo for that.

 

[elecTED]

3 pin plug (via TMC/UMC) is working fine for me at the mo - using it like a tethered wall charger. Helps that we have an easily accessible socket in the garage and the cable can go under the garage door even when closed.

It’s easy to over-spend by hundreds on the higher-end ‘smart’ chargers that seem to provide marginal extra benefit over more basic ones. Yes they may look prettier but if they don’t work seamlessly is it worth the hassle?

I’m also not convinced of any decent savings from wall chargers that can make use of solar PV. Sometimes the simplest dumb solutions are the best. Less complexity to go wrong.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

That said, if Tesla fixed their in-car charge scheduling so I could set both start and stop time (regardless of not reaching the target SOC) and fixed their bugs to reliably charge at the advertised current I'd probably turn the smart charge features off. Different target SOC by day-of-week and a separate preconditioning schedule would be cool too, I'd trade in Fart Mode and HoHoHo for that.

Me too!

It seems clear that Tesla just haven't done any even rudimentary testing on the controlled charge side of things, as it doesn't even behave as it states it should in the owners manual, let alone do anything else.

As charging is a pretty fundamental aspect of EV ownership, it would be nice to see them fix this pretty damned quickly.

It’s easy to over-spend by hundreds on the higher-end ‘smart’ chargers that seem to provide marginal extra benefit over more basic ones. Yes they may look prettier but if they don’t work seamlessly is it worth the hassle?

No, probably not worth the hassle (yet) and I doubt that the additional money that's being forked out for smart chargers will ever be recouped in charge cost savings through life, primarily because it seems that some, perhaps most, of the smart functionality fails in some respect when used with a Tesla M3

I’m also not convinced of any decent savings from wall chargers that can make use of solar PV. Sometimes the simplest dumb solutions are the best. Less complexity to go wrong.

I've experimented with this over the past few years. My conclusion is that it's easier, and pretty much as efficient, to just manually wind the charge rate down to a low level on a sunny day. The advantage in tracking the generation level and adjusting the charge level accordingly is tiny, might make a 5% improvement. I had a tracking system running for around 2 years, then switched to just turning the charge point down to about 8 A last year, and ended up getting pretty much the same amount of "free" charge.

 

[Adopado]

There’s certainly nothing smart about my 32A commando socket but it does the job perfectly.

Yes, I briefly installed a commando for the few days between getting the car and the charger being installed and it was perfectly fine. The only drawback would have been either stowing the Tesla UMC in the car each time or buying an extra one to leave in situ ... functionally no problem at all. (The illegal commando has now been uninstalled and all traces removed!)