New M3P owner - scheduled charging & Intelligent Octopus

[infaddict]

Hi guys, loving my M3P so far. Finally got my EV charger (Hypervolt) installed and working so tried IO last night for the first time. The Tesla app and Hypervolt app have zero scheduled and I rely 100% on the IO app. It decided to start charging at 8.30pm and I thought, great! It charged for a few hours and was still charging when we went to bed.

Sadly upon waking, it stopped charging at around 1am with an error "unable to control charge" or similar. This left me with only 45% charge, which would be a disaster if I was going on a long trip today. Googling IO, I see lots of other similar issues and seems to be generally a bit flaky.

I have now disabled the intelligent feature and using the Tesla app to control charge times. Sadly, it appears Tesla only allow a specified start time OR a specified end time, but not both. This seems crazy as my off peak tariff is 23:30 to 05:30 and I don't want to charge any time outside this. Why a £60k car cannot have both start and end times is beyond me. I realise there are workarounds (e.g. guessing end charge %) but its a bit rubbish.

The last resort is perhaps using my Hypervolt to control start and end times.

This is supposed to be the future right ;-)

Any help appreciated, thanks!

 

[DaveNN]

There's plenty on this already however...
Why not simply work out how much charge you want and when..and adjust the amps accordingly?

 

[btc1k]

You identified the solution.... use the charger to control start and stop times. Easy.

 

[WllXM]

You should post in Wiki - Everything you wanted to know about Intelligent Octopus But Were Afraid To Ask instead.

A word of caution about disabling Smart Charging and controlling manually between 23.30 - 5.30 : That's not the point of the tariff.
I understand you had a bad experience last night, it might be a one off. However, disabling Smart Charging for a long period of time goes against IO T&Cs and they could boot you off the tariff if you were to do this continuously...

As you said you have a new Hypervolt, I assume you were previously using the UMC to charge. Therefore if you haven't disconnected and reconnected your car in the Octopus app settings, IO might still work under the assumption that you are charging on 3-pin, 3kW power, and your 7kW Hypervolt messed everything up by getting the SoC % much higher than IO was expecting in the first few hours, leading to this stop.
I would try to correct this first and see if you observe more consistent results.

 

[Skie]

In the app set the car to charge using off peak with an end time of 05:30. The car will calculate when it needs to start charging to be at your target by 5:30 am but IO can still stop/start the charging to use IO slots. At least this way if IO fails to start a charge the car will do its best to charge.

And the logic being if IO is failing to start a charge because of issues, it will also fail to stop a car-initiated charge. You also get the added bonus of not having to stop a charge when you first plug in.

 

[infaddict]

You should post in Wiki - Everything you wanted to know about Intelligent Octopus But Were Afraid To Ask instead.

A word of caution about disabling Smart Charging and controlling manually between 23.30 - 5.30 : That's not the point of the tariff.
I understand you had a bad experience last night, it might be a one off. However, disabling Smart Charging for a long period of time goes against IO T&Cs and they could boot you off the tariff if you were to do this continuously...

As you said you have a new Hypervolt, I assume you were previously using the UMC to charge. Therefore if you haven't disconnected and reconnected your car in the Octopus app settings, IO might still work under the assumption that you are charging on 3-pin, 3kW power, and your 7kW Hypervolt messed everything up by getting the SoC % much higher than IO was expecting in the first few hours, leading to this stop.
I would try to correct this first and see if you observe more consistent results.

Thanks, I will try as you suggest and re-enable the intelligent part. To be sure, I will remove the wifi network and charger from Hypervolt app and re-add. I will remove and re-add the vehicle as well. I will triple check that neither the Tesla nor the Hypervolt have any charging instructions or schedule set.

Then I'll plug it back in early evening and see what happens.

 

[infaddict]

I think the Hypervolt needed a firmware update as it would not connect properly until I logged in and out and it did a quick update. Unsure if this is related. Anyway, device re-connected to Octopus app. Plugged it in, auto created charging schedule which has started now. 6.5 hours to completion, so hopefully this time it won't stop in the middle of the night. I'll report back in the morning.

 

[infaddict]

Ok bad news, it happened again.

I plugged in the car shortly before 7pm and IO created a charge schedule from 7.01pm to 6am. It started charging immediately and I checked the Tesla app every 15 mins until 9.30pm and it was still charging (56% full). So I thought all was good.

I think it must have stopped charging shortly after that because this morning it has only 60% and the same IO message (message time is 1am, same as yesterday) saying "Unable to control charge".

I also noted that my Tesla must have gone to sleep (or something like that) because the app would not find the car unless I unlocked/locked the doors using the app. I wonder if going to sleep is interrupting the charge or something.

I will contact Octopus today as I have a feeling this problem will happen every night. I will ask them to help me fix it otherwise suggest to them that I disable the intelligent part and manually time, and see what they say.

As always, any suggestions most welcome. Thanks.

 

[guru1]

There was definitely a Tesla outage last night...

Can’t connect to car via App - anyone else?

Hey all, Having issues connecting to the car via app since yesterday. Phone and car reboot hasn’t resolved. I can wake it by being in Bluetooth range and unlocking / locking via the app - but it then won’t wake up again via app once it’s gone to sleep. Anyone else?

teslamotorsclub.com

I have hypervolt and IO, Octopus had an error overnight 'failed to control the device' or similar

 

[infaddict]

There was definitely a Tesla outage last night...

Can’t connect to car via App - anyone else?

Hey all, Having issues connecting to the car via app since yesterday. Phone and car reboot hasn’t resolved. I can wake it by being in Bluetooth range and unlocking / locking via the app - but it then won’t wake up again via app once it’s gone to sleep. Anyone else?

teslamotorsclub.com

I have hypervolt and IO, Octopus had an error overnight 'failed to control the device' or similar

Very interesting, thanks, so you got exact same error as me last night. Which suggests something wider than my setup perhaps.

I will try again tonight!!

 

[12Pack]

A trivial point but not stated in your posts - you have set the charge limit and other Tesla settings to allow you to get to your desired level, right? The car settings will override the IO ones.

 

[infaddict]

A trivial point but not stated in your posts - you have set the charge limit and other Tesla settings to allow you to get to your desired level, right? The car settings will override the IO ones.

Yes got it set to 90% in the car (mirrored on Tesla app) and also Octopus app.

 

[infaddict]

So I plugged it in earlier last night, about 5.40pm. It started charging and didnt stop after a few minutes, so I stopped it manually in the Tesla app (didn't want to spend peak rate).

About 15-20 minutes later, IO created the charge schedule and started charging immediately. This continued until about 9.30pm when it reached my desired charge level. So success!

I am still dubious about the 1am interuption happening twice, so when low enough on power I will do an overnight charge and see how it goes. Thanks to everybody for the advice.

 

[MrBadger]

About 15-20 minutes later, IO created the charge schedule and started charging immediately. This continued until about 9.30pm when it reached my desired charge level. So success!

I had a spurious approx 1 hour charge that started approx 10 minutes after manually stopping the initial charge after plugging in.

Not sure what started this. but though it was too early for IO as it was not showing any charge schedule until a few hours later. I'm hoping that it was off peak but won't know until I get next bill.

You seem to be convinced that it was IO which, tbh, is my only explanation, but don't have enough experience of IO to know if it was intentional or something else - that was the day that Tesla seemed to have connectivity issues.

 

[infaddict]

I had a spurious approx 1 hour charge that started approx 10 minutes after manually stopping the initial charge after plugging in.

Not sure what started this. but though it was too early for IO as it was not showing any charge schedule until a few hours later. I'm hoping that it was off peak but won't know until I get next bill.

Yes, a lot of faith and trust is put on Octopus to bill people at the correct rate at the correct time. I have no idea how I check this or where I can see what they have billed at what tariff. Nothing online seems to show this, except I can see my usage is much higher on the evenings I charge (obviously). I guess I wait for the next bill.

 

[MrBadger]

Yes, a lot of faith and trust is put on Octopus to bill people at the correct rate at the correct time. I have no idea how I check this or where I can see what they have billed at what tariff. Nothing online seems to show this, except I can see my usage is much higher on the evenings I charge (obviously). I guess I wait for the next bill.

Yes. Its all nice and clear in the bill, but I won't get to see Mondays billed charge for another month, or more.

It would be nice though to see it in the app too. Hopefully they will get around to doing something with that. Would be good to see a split bar peak/off peak for daily/weekly/monthly bars etc, and different (coloured?) bars on day view for half hourly peak/off peak rates.

 

[Alan J]

I suggested exactly that to them several months ago, still waiting.