Ohme's new smart charging app

[DenkiJidousha]

Some of you will have been using Ohme's smart charging cable which is able to use a dynamic tariff like Agile Octopus to charge you car when electricity is cheapest (or greenest).

They've now released a smart app which for a Tesla (and hopefully other cars with an API to follow) can apparently do this with a traditional dumb charger and dumb cable:

Ohme App for Intelligent Charging

I'm intrigued - currently we're on Octopus Go and using the cars' built in timers to use the fixed overnight window, but this might let me switch to Agile Octopus without buying the Ohme cable or upgrading our charger.

Has anyone tried it?

 

[Tattersky]

I have used it for the Ohme Charging lead and without; the integration is pretty good. I had some issues in the beta, but they look to be resolved now.
I use it with Octopus Agile. Not tried other tarrifs.

 

[chr15toffer]

I haven't tried it, but ev.energy does the same thing and works well. You definitely don't need a smart charger to take advantage of Agile with a Tesla.

 

[Pagemakers]

Does the Ohme app require that you have their cable?

 

[Derek_J]

Does the Ohme app require that you have their cable?

No. It works by using the Tesla API to start and stop charging. You could use a dumb charge point.
Seems like a no brainer to me. The EV Energy app looks very similar.

Personally I achieve the same thing using NodeRed running on a Raspberry Pi.

 

[Pagemakers]

Thanks. You get points with the EV Energy app though and points make prizes!

 

[chr15toffer]

Thanks. You get points with the EV Energy app though and points make prizes!

Yes, good point. £5 in Amazon vouchers for every 20 charges over 10kWh, makes a significant addition to the savings you can make on Agile.

 

[DenkiJidousha]

Thanks for the EV.energy pointer - if they can pull off solar and PowerWall integration too that will be compelling Smart home - ev.energy

Hopefully someone will do a side by side comparison of EV.energy and the updated Ohme app - either way, it looks like I was right not to buy the Ohme cable for our Tesla. Yay for their API.

 

[NewbieT]

Personally I achieve the same thing using NodeRed running on a Raspberry Pi.

Ditto. High five!

 

[subsy]

No. It works by using the Tesla API to start and stop charging. You could use a dumb charge point.
Seems like a no brainer to me. The EV Energy app looks very similar.

Personally I achieve the same thing using NodeRed running on a Raspberry Pi.

Ditto. High five!

would either of you mind sharing details on this? any step by step tutorials around? I have a couple of spare Pis looking for new jobs

 

[NewbieT]

NodeRed has a fairly straight forward user guide for installing. Then you setup ‘flows’ to access the Tesla API.

Getting Started : Node-RED
Introduction
https://www.teslaapi.io

You still need to be able to write a bit of JavaScript for this route so only advisable if you have some programming experience- no doubt if you have Pis you do.

Once you have a working authentication flow the other commands are straight forward. Many only work if the car is ‘online’.

 

[Derek_J]

Additional 'nodes' can be added to NodeRed to simplify tasks. The node node-red-contrib-tesla will do all the communication with the Tesla API for you.
You would also need to parse the Octopus API to work out when to start and stop the charge. There is another node borpin/node-red-contrib-octopus to interrogate the Octopus Agile pricing.
I do not know how well this node works since I do not have Agile.

I use NodeRed to charge my Tesla with excess solar power in the same way as a Zappi.

EDIT: You may find this useful too JonathanPerkins/octopus-agile-price

 

[subsy]

Thanks both!!

when I get some time outside of work and home schooling I’ll take a look at all that.

 

[s88ats]

Some of you will have been using Ohme's smart charging cable which is able to use a dynamic tariff like Agile Octopus to charge you car when electricity is cheapest (or greenest).

They've now released a smart app which for a Tesla (and hopefully other cars with an API to follow) can apparently do this with a traditional dumb charger and dumb cable:

Ohme App for Intelligent Charging

I'm intrigued - currently we're on Octopus Go and using the cars' built in timers to use the fixed overnight window, but this might let me switch to Agile Octopus without buying the Ohme cable or upgrading our charger.

Has anyone tried it?

I've been using this since I got the ohme charger cable in Sept - not a new app?

I went back and forth between EV and this to charge but settled with ohmes app as it was easier to see the number of hours it would charge and gets Agiles rates directly from Octopus.

Very easy to use and as long as the cars plugged in, the rate set not to exceed 'x', and the apps open, it will stop and charge flawlessly.

 

[StuC]

Looks like the Ohme app still doesn't let you have a timed schedule but have it override and charge to 100% when there is a price plunge

 

[DenkiJidousha]

I've been using this since I got the ohme charger cable in Sept - not a new app?

Being able to do this directly with the API and no special cable may not be new, but Ohme are openly advertising this capability of their app now.

 

[Neilda]

As a new owner, I am really not an expert in these things! But thanks for the pointer on the app - I am not an Ohme customer (SSE), but have downloaded the app and it is working fine with the (dumb) Tesla UMC charger. Because of the 'charging restrictions' setting which lets you limit the charging over a certain cost, it is, I think, giving you the ability to set a start time as well as an end time.

 

[s88ats]

Being able to do this directly with the API and no special cable may not be new, but Ohme are openly advertising this capability of their app now.

Sorry, I'm not entirely sure I understand. Please correct me if I have made a mistake but when I purchased the ohme cable I installed their Ohme app back in Sept. Their app used my tesla log-in details to communicate with my car and the ohme charge cable to start /stop charging based on the settings. Great for seeing the timings it would charge whilst on Agile. When tesla changed to 2FA Ohme lost communication briefly with the car but a fix was released shortly. I am also able to charge other EV cars via ohme's app but this is just as a start/stop as opposed to smart charging.

 

[DenkiJidousha]

Right, with their app AND smart cable Ohme have supported various brands of EV. They still offer this.

What's new is that with the app alone and a normal cable, Ohme can offer smart charging for a Tesla (just using the Tesla API).

 

[DenkiJidousha]

Looks like EV.energy now offer to charge off solar based on your local weather forecast and a dumb charger using the Tesla API (far simpler than integrating with something like SolarEdge monitoring data, or hardware like Zappi): Solar-powered EV charging is here! Announcing Solar Smart Charging - ev.energy

I've yet to try this or the Ohme app, but have a few times manually done a mid-day solar top-up by using the car's touch screen to start a charge and adjusting the maximum current to match the current solar output. That works but there are better uses of my time