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Octopus Go - Specific Charging Time
- Thread starter Sphinxhunter
- Start date
I don’t leave mine plugged unless it needs a charge. Mine’s garaged so I don’t need sentry on. If it were outside, I probably would have sentry and leave it plugged in to top up what sentry uses.
From March onwards, they’ll be more solar power about so I will plug in to pick up any spare if needed.
In lockdown my phone charger could fill the amount I’m using
Just leave it plugged in. If your Anderson charger is doing the timing, then the car will not be drawing any power outside the scheduled charging period, and if you need a top up just tell the Anderson to start a charge.
If you get into the habit of plugging it in every time you get home, you are less likely to get up one morning to realise you had forgotten to plug the car in and cannot get to work.
The battery is perfectly happy being daily topped up to 80% or so. Just do not charge all the way up to 100% on a regular basis.
Glan gluaisne
Active Member
In general, if the charge point is in complete control of charge times, and is not using the Tesla API at all, then ground power will only be available when the charge point is advertising that power is available. The car will not be able to tell the charger(s) to request power from the charge point if it's not actively set to charge, as they will sense that the charge point is not advertising, and will be effectively disabled.
If any charge point is connected and advertising, then the car will preferentially use some ground power for pre-conditioning, as the charger(s) will command the charge point to turn on, via the control pilot, as if the car was requesting charge power.
If the charge point is not physically controlling charge timing, but is using the Tesla API (essentially any charge point software that requires your Tesla account log in details to work), then the charger(s) should be able to command the charge point to close its contactor at any time, so will behave in much the same way as an always-on, plugged in charge point.
I suspected that may be the case ... which is why I've never bothered to use the Zappi timer. I like to be able to initiate precondition and extra top up charges via the Tesla app at non-fixed times. I'll stick with the car start timer and hope that eventually we get a finish time too at some point.
Glan gluaisne
Active Member
At the moment, my charge point just has a physical switch, that can either set it to charge immediately, or only charge during the off-peak time period. This works fine, but does mean that preconditioning won't use ground power most of the time. I do like the simplicity of having the charge point controlling charging, though, as it's pretty much completely foolproof.
I have been thinking about adding remote switching to it, just a simple remote that can switch the charge point between always on, always off or off-peak timed. That would allow preconditioning to use ground power, without me having to go out and flick the switch on the charge point. Not sure it's worth the hassle though. Almost all of my driving is short trips, where losing a few percent of battery charge by pre-conditioning has no effect. On the longer trips, like going on holiday, I'll usually be loading the car ten minutes or so before we head off, so can easily just flick the switch on the charge point so that preconditioning uses ground power.
I'm in the process of building another charge point to go where my wife normally parks, and replace the second one that's in the garage, which I never use. I think I'll stick with the same fixed off-peak time switch and manual switch to set peak or off-peak for that. I might try and see how compact I can make it, using off-the-shelf parts, too, as the plan is to mount it to a post, for ease of access.
In our situation the car and charge point are a considerable distance from the house so remote control is crucial. It all works nicely using the car timer ... and not having an "off" setting is hardly a great challenge to work around but it is baffling as to why it doesn't do this. Everyone who ever posts about charger settings seems to be similarly surprised when they find out!
phil4
Member
This is one reason I like the way mine works. I use (shock) the Tesla Wall Charger... which is as dumb as they come... but works fine for me.
I use the ev.energy app to schedule the charging. What's nice about this is that if the Tesla decides it needs power, it can get it. EV.Energy will cut in after a while (usually somewhere in the few to 20 minutes mark), and turn it off... but means it can get a bit of juice if it needs/wants it. Oh and I get an Amazon reward after a few charges.
I use the ev.energy app to schedule the charging. What's nice about this is that if the Tesla decides it needs power, it can get it. EV.Energy will cut in after a while (usually somewhere in the few to 20 minutes mark), and turn it off... but means it can get a bit of juice if it needs/wants it. Oh and I get an Amazon reward after a few charges.
Glan gluaisne
Active Member
My concern over third party apps using the unofficial Tesla API to control things is that you are effectively giving control of the car and your Tesla account to the app, by giving it your log in details.
As long as the app provider is trustworthyt and their systems are secure that's fine, but there's always the potential risk that your log in credentials might be misused, either deliberately or via a malicious attack. I guess it's not a massive risk, but it does mean that someone could effectively gain access to your car, even if they couldn't easily drive it away.
Also worth remembering that Tesla doesn't endorse anyone using the unofficial Tesla API like this, every non-Tesla app that uses it does so without Tesla's consent, using a reverse engineered set of documentation, that probably isn't complete. Tesla can (and has in the past) restrict access from certain servers (notably last year, when they blocked anything coming from AWS, for example).
As long as the app provider is trustworthyt and their systems are secure that's fine, but there's always the potential risk that your log in credentials might be misused, either deliberately or via a malicious attack. I guess it's not a massive risk, but it does mean that someone could effectively gain access to your car, even if they couldn't easily drive it away.
Also worth remembering that Tesla doesn't endorse anyone using the unofficial Tesla API like this, every non-Tesla app that uses it does so without Tesla's consent, using a reverse engineered set of documentation, that probably isn't complete. Tesla can (and has in the past) restrict access from certain servers (notably last year, when they blocked anything coming from AWS, for example).
phil4
Member
I totally agree, which is why I don't spread that login around everywhere... the tesla app, and Ev.energy are the only two I use... the rest I do myself inhouse (Teslamate, or writing my own). And I'll be honest, I could easily do the EV.Energy job myself... I just wouldn't get a £5 amazon voucher
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I set my 3LR up as above 2 nights ago (I have the Ohme charger and app):
- Car had a starting charge level of 35%
- Set car to start charging 00:30 with 82% as target SOC
- Connected Ohme app to Tesla account
- Chose Octopus Go Faster 00:30 - 04:30 tarrif in Ohme app
- Set to 'never charge above 5p p/kWh' in Ohme app
- Created a daily charge schedule with 82% SOC (to match car's SOC) with a finish time of 04:30
Initially the car started charging immediately that I configured the above (at about 8pm), so I went out and unplugged and re-plugged the charge cable and it correctly stopped charging (I only spotted it was doing this after about 40 minutes!). The car then correctly commenced charging at 00:30 and stopped at 04:30, having managed to get to 78% (so 4% under target SOC).
I left the car plugged in and I expected the car to start charging at 00:30 last night to add the additional 4% and then stop, but it looks like the car never woke up at all overnight and Teslamate is showing no record of any charge.
I never opened the Ohme app after initially configuring it - is this the issue (in that it needs to be running in the background to work), or am I missing something else?
I have an Andersen and the Konnect+ app works fine with Octopus Go. Set the schedule up in the Konnect+ app and then just plug the car in. The car then sits there until the Andersen starts to supply power. The next morning I usually have a notification or two from the Tesla app telling me that charging wa iinterrupted at some point prior to charging starting. I guess that comes from the car knowing that's it's plugged in, it asked for power and gets none.
Looking at the stats in the Konnect+app I can see that no power was supplied before or after the scheduled times. If I want preconditioning then I just tell Konnect+ to manually open the taps.
Looking at the stats in the Konnect+app I can see that no power was supplied before or after the scheduled times. If I want preconditioning then I just tell Konnect+ to manually open the taps.
Billbrown1982
TM3 LR 2021 | Red | FSD
When I got my EO Home Mini installed, it came with a little leaflet saying, if you have a model 3 and want to use scheduled charging then make sure you have sentry mode enabled, otherwise the car may go into deep sleep and not recognise that charge is available at the scheduled time.
Not got the car back yet to be able to play with it...I'm in two minds, I suppose another set of cameras on the driveway never hurts but I had every intention of leaving it switched off at home just to save power.
Not got the car back yet to be able to play with it...I'm in two minds, I suppose another set of cameras on the driveway never hurts but I had every intention of leaving it switched off at home just to save power.
That advice from EO is out of date. That was because the Model 3 used to have a bug in the charging software that meant it would not waken up when offered a charge by charge points. That bug was squashed in July 2020. The car should now respond to external charge points offering to charge.
That doesn't happen for me doing exactly the same as you... Might be worth emailing Ohme support, they're really helpful
I think it might have not picked up the daily cycle until the following day, as I went into the app last night and it was showing charge complete (theopretically as a one-off), and so I clicked start charge again and it then went into the correct holding patterns and topped up the remaining SOC and is still saying charging is taking place now (but is effectively paused until 00:30). Will see how it behaves over the next few days....
That's great, hopefully it solves the issue for you.
In case you are not aware, Octopus offer other 'Go' tarrif options as well. I have asked to go on the 5 hour one, starting at 20:30 for 5.5p per kW/h instead of 5p kW/h. I reckon using our washing machine, dryer and dishwasher during that time period will offset the extra 0.5p for the car charge. If you are interested you can email them and request an invitation to the 'beta' tarrifs.
I had my SMETS2 smart meter installed 2 weeks ago, so just waiting for it to sync up with their systems before I can move over to one of the Go tariffs
