ev.energy Outage Yesterday

[Cwmwd]

Anyone else got bitten by the server issues at ev.energy yesterday? Car failed to charge overnight and I could not start a manual one in the morning with the "Boost" button on the app or turn the smart charge off either. Luckily I did not have far to go but was still anxious about using the "smart charger" last night. Here's part of the email I got:

I'm sorry to hear you didn't charge last night. We had a network server outage between 01.00 and 09.42 which resulted in a backlog of commands, placing strain on the server, with the result being that a small number of 'start charge' signals were not sent. It was also interfering with our ability to communicate with the app, which will be why you were receiving those error messages We are currently looking into the causes of this isolated incident and will follow up with a more detailed report once we have all the details

Has anyone given up and turned their smart charger into a dumb one?

 

[ACarneiro]

Add yet another reason to stay dumb...
Seems that in life, as in chargers, ignorance is bliss

 

[tsh2]

First rule of building smart connected devices, removal of connectivity should fall-back to a working state. Denial of service by blocking traffic is a fairly trivial attack.

 

[Christiez]

I've had intermittent issues all week and yesterday morning was caught short! Woke up to 36% and I use roughly 18% to get to work...ended up going to a supercharger on the way into work (20 min detour).

Trouble is, I've now lost confidence so might end up turning it onto a dumb one. Only thing with that is a won't get my free Starbucks

 

[Jason71]

First rule of building smart connected devices, removal of connectivity should fall-back to a working state. Denial of service by blocking traffic is a fairly trivial attack.

Agreed. Even a £10 smart home plug has the decency to hold local data so is not affected by internet outages.
Who thought having overnight car charging dependant on cloud infrastructure, the internet and presumably a mobile network ( that's how my rolec connects. is that how they all do it?) is a suitably reliable way to schedule anything important!

 

[Jason71]

I am working on an alerting system so that I can set overnight checkpoints e.g 60% by 1am 70% by 3am etc and if the charge level of the car misses any of them then I get an alert to my phone to wake me up.
Unfortunately the way I am doing it is not something I can make available to others since it is not standalone and needs a server to run on (sorry) but it occurs to me that for an app designer (which I am not), given the available Tesla API's building a smart phone app to do this would be very simple. There are many ways charging can fail overnight so this is going to be an issue forever for an increasing number of people.

 

[Tonybvi]

Because of poor mobile phone reception I asked for my Rolec to be left in dumb mode and have never had any problems with it. I am slightly puzzled as to the benefits of a “smart” home charger if used with a Tesla as you can set your own charging schedules on the car. What are the real benefits of a smart charger?

 

[rotor2k]

I'm curious how all you "smart charging" people are actually doing it? As far as I understand, if the Model 3 isn't scheduled to charge at 00:30 it will go to sleep, and when the charger comes online at 00:30 the car will just ignore the signal and won't charge. So if you're using the Model 3 scheduled start of 00:30, then you definitely shouldn't also be using the "smart charging" feature of the Rolec! Am I missing something?

Ideally the car should wake up and take the charge it is being offered (and I think the standard dictates that it's supposed to, so a bug fix is meant to be coming), but I don't want to be dependent on Rolec's shoddy infrastructure to wake up the charger at the right time, that seems very backwards. The companies that make industrial devices are notorious for running just terrible infrastructure (they are traditionally very old school). Even my Honeywell Evohome thermostat system has fairly rubbish infrastructure, and Honeywell is a giant company! Fortunately the Evohome doesn't rely on the cloud infrastructure in any way to do its job, so when their servers go down, all I lose is the ability to make changes from the app (I can still make changes from the control panel in my house).

In a way it's good to know that the Rolec has not been properly designed, now I know I shouldn't rely on it for timing a charge, assuming Tesla ever even fixes the bug.

 

[Cwmwd]

with a Tesla as you can set your own charging schedules on the car

The benefit I got from the smart charger was the scheduling of both start and stop times based on my tariff (uses the Teslas API and the Octopus API). On the car you can schedule one or the other but not both. The smart charger can also warm the battery up in the morning and modulate charging during the night to further reduce CO2 emissions (although a moot point with all-renewable suppliers like Octopus).

Granted, I can also do all of this with TeslaFi (for example) but are the TelsaFi servers any more bullet-proof?

 

[booyaka76]

Add yet another reason to stay dumb...
Seems that in life, as in chargers, ignorance is bliss

100% agree - Used my rolec as a dumb charger since day 1. I don't have cheap electric through the night so just charge it when I need and go.

 

[rotor2k]

The benefit I got from the smart charger was the scheduling of both start and stop times based on my tariff (uses the Teslas API and the Octopus API). On the car you can schedule one or the other but not both. The smart charger can also warm the battery up in the morning and modulate charging during the night to further reduce CO2 emissions (although a moot point with all-renewable suppliers like Octopus).

Granted, I can also do all of this with TeslaFi (for example) but are the TelsaFi servers any more bullet-proof?

So are the Rolec servers talking to the Tesla API and doing stuff in conjunction with the charger itself?!

 

[Durzel]

First rule of building smart connected devices, removal of connectivity should fall-back to a working state. Denial of service by blocking traffic is a fairly trivial attack.

Indeed. There’s no excuse for it not to default to being a dumb electrical charger in the absence of smart functionality / connectivity.

 

[Jason71]

So are the Rolec servers talking to the Tesla API and doing stuff in conjunction with the charger itself?!

The ~Rolec app does try to persuade you to give it your Tesla credentials which presumably opens up more functionality by directly connecting to the car. Not sure what though since I did not take them up on their offer

 

[Cwmwd]

So are the Rolec servers talking to the Tesla API

Yes, the app knows the car's current SOC and target SOC. And, as far I can see, it uses the Octopus API as well as it knows the Go off-peak times. I guess that if you were on Agile then the charger would know what the tariff is and there's a slider in the app to set a p/kWh below which to start charging. Likewise, for the CO2 emissions, I'm guessing they use an API for the National Grid for that too. From their FAQ:

Smart charging works by adapting the time your EV charges based on your energy tariff and the current carbon intensity of the grid. We'll automatically optimise charging at times when the price is lowest and energy is greenest. This maximises the amount of renewable energy you use overnight and minimises the cost to you - all while ensuring your vehicle is ready to go when you need it.

The ev.energy app gives you full control over your EV charging and allows you to set a ready by time. Simply plug in your EV at home and use our app to set when you need your car charged by.

Enabling Smart Charging allows our platform to communicate directly with your EV and/or Rolec charge point. In doing this, we can dictate when your EV will receive charge. Using the National Grids carbon intensity forecasts we will align the the times at which we charge your EV with periods where there is an excess energy supply from renewable sources such as wind and solar.

We are currently testing our integration with home solar and Powerwall installations

Interestingly, they also say this about the data connection:

If connection is lost for any reason, the charge point should revert to standard charging until it is able to reconnect to a network.

Well, that didn't work yesterday!

 

[Ukmgranger]

100% agree - Used my rolec as a dumb charger since day 1. I don't have cheap electric through the night so just charge it when I need and go.

I should be having a rolec installed soon and was wondering how you make it dumb? Is this just something that I can do through the app?

 

[Jason71]

I should be having a rolec installed soon and was wondering how you make it dumb? Is this just something that I can do through the app?

yes. but whether in future they will take away that ability for grid management needs. who knows....

 

[Tonybvi]

I just asked the installer to leave it dumb. I don’t even have the app!!

 

[Ukmgranger]

I just asked the installer to leave it dumb. I don’t even have the app!!

Was told that you had to have it smart to get the OLEV grant though.

 

[Jason71]

Was told that you had to have it smart to get the OLEV grant though.

it has to be a smart charger no rule about how you have to use it. If there is a way for the installer to make it dumb then that may be against the rules but I guess what they don't know...

 

[Tonybvi]

Was told that you had to have it smart to get the OLEV grant though.

Correct - you need a smart charger from the OLEV approved charger list but at the moment there is no requirement to use it in smart mode. In my case this would be difficult as we have no mobile reception at home. I can’t even get a Smart electricity meter installed, even if I wanted one, so no cheap rate electricity for me unless I go down the economy 7 route.