Scheduled charging with EV.energy app

[Harv3y]

We have a tethered Rolec to charge our new M3P. The Rolec got set up with the ev.energy app which at first sounded great, but we’ve looked this morning to see that our car isn’t fully charged? I know the Tesla goes in to a deep sleep and then refuses to start charging again when the charger gives it a current again (as the Rolec turns charge on and off during the night for the cheapest/greenest rates). The app seems to not take in to account the cheap charging rate between 00:30 and 4:30. How can I set it up to charge during this cheap rate time and to actually start charging if it temporarily halts during the night?

Hopefully that made sense! Thanks.

 

[asherwood]

From what I have read previously, Tesla's don't support a certain protocol which means it doesn't wake up to start the charge when the charger gives out the signal.

Bit of a pain point at the minute I think.

 

[94jdh]

We have a tethered Rolec to charge our new M3P. The Rolec got set up with the ev.energy app which at first sounded great, but we’ve looked this morning to see that our car isn’t fully charged? I know the Tesla goes in to a deep sleep and then refuses to start charging again when the charger gives it a current again (as the Rolec turns charge on and off during the night for the cheapest/greenest rates). The app seems to not take in to account the cheap charging rate between 00:30 and 4:30. How can I set it up to charge during this cheap rate time and to actually start charging if it temporarily halts during the night?

Hopefully that made sense! Thanks.

I use a tethered Wallbox pulsar plus - decided that due to my anticipated high mileage economy 7 was a better option for my needs.
I currently use the Tesla in car scheduling as this simplifies things considering I've only a cheap rate over a predetermined time of roughly 12 - 7am.
I'm not familiar with that app, I assume you tarrif is Octopus looking at the times, can you just set the scheduling in the car itself?
I still get all charging info and costs via the app.

 

[Harv3y]

Yes I think I’ll have to try sort out in car scheduling!
I saw somewhere that keeping sentry mode on stops the car going in to a deep sleep and it allows for smart charging outside of the car? Do we know if there is any truth in this?

 

[asherwood]

I saw somewhere that keeping sentry mode on stops the car going in to a deep sleep and it allows for smart charging outside of the car? Do we know if there is any truth in this?

If you give this a try, please do let me know if it works.

 

[Jeeves]

I don’t have a Rolec charger, but I do use the ev.energy app in conjunction with an EO Mini Pro. I understand that the app can exploit the intelligent features of the Rolec, but you might have more luck using it directly with the Tesla instead.

The charger is rendered dumb and the ev.energy app instructs the car when to charge based on the smart charging and tariff settings you make in the app. I find it reliable. It splits my charging into multiple sessions to minimise cost based on Agile Octopus rates and the target time to have the car ready. It is much smarter than the scheduled departure feature built into the car software that assumes your cheap power stops at 6 am.

The support people at ev.energy are very helpful.

 

[Harv3y]

I don’t have a Rolec charger, but I do use the ev.energy app in conjunction with an EO Mini Pro. I understand that the app can exploit the intelligent features of the Rolec, but you might have more luck using it directly with the Tesla instead.

The charger is rendered dumb and the ev.energy app instructs the car when to charge based on the smart charging and tariff settings you make in the app. I find it reliable. It splits my charging into multiple sessions to minimise cost based on Agile Octopus rates and the target time to have the car ready. It is much smarter than the scheduled departure feature built into the car software that assumes your cheap power stops at 6 am.

The support people at ev.energy are very helpful.

Perfect thanks! Using multiple sessions, how do you keep the car awake? Because surely it wouldn’t respond after the first session finishes?

 

[Jeeves]

Perfect thanks! Using multiple sessions, how do you keep the car awake? Because surely it wouldn’t respond after the first session finishes?

It just works. I haven’t done anything special. The car shows ‘charging stopped’ until the app wants it to charge. The car does go to sleep, so I suppose the app is using the Tesla API to wake it to start a charge session.

 

[Noel83]

I've just woken up to my M3P only being at 73% after being plugged in all night.
I realised I had ev.energy set to only charge at off peak when below 12p/kwh so it only charged for the 4 hour window of my Octopus go faster tariff (2030-0030).

I've now disabled that setting so it's now charging to take me up to 90% using daytime rates and I assume that moving forwards it will optimise and therefore start charging at 2030 each night and then continue charging after 0030 to get to 90% is that correct?

 

[Jeeves]

I think that’s right. I don’t have your tariff, nor did I set the rate that high, so the ‘Only charge off-peak’ setting avoids the 16:00–19:00 peak window for Agile. What it seems to do for me is to delay until night time when energy is cheapest and put a burst in just before the ‘I need my car charged by’ time I set.

Here is a graph from my charger that shows what it does, although this was only for 26 kWh. The extended peaks correspond with the cheapest windows for Agile on that day taking into account that it needed 26 kWh to reach the target charge I set.

If it doesn’t work as desired on your next night, you will find the ev.energy team very helpful.

 

[NastyNick83]

I need to try ev.energy app again - I've not found it the most reliable and have now disabled it for the time being.

Q - what impact does 'I need my car charged by: ' setting in the smart charging section? i.e. will it override 'only charge off-peak' setting?

I wanted to use the app to maximise low charging rates of Agile - and at the moment I am not desperate to charge back to 'full' so happy to have the odd 30mins here and there.

Nick

 

[Jeeves]

I need to try ev.energy app again - I've not found it the most reliable and have now disabled it for the time being.

Q - what impact does 'I need my car charged by: ' setting in the smart charging section? i.e. will it override 'only charge off-peak' setting?

I wanted to use the app to maximise low charging rates of Agile - and at the moment I am not desperate to charge back to 'full' so happy to have the odd 30mins here and there.

Nick

I don’t think it overrides it. It is more the other way round i.e. ‘Only charge off-peak’ will stop charging if the rates aren’t below the threshold you set irrespective of the ‘I need my car charged by’ setting. It may be that the ‘Only charge off-peak’ setting isn’t very useful for Agile customers. I switched it on and chose a limit of 10p/kWh thinking that this would help avoid the expensive Agile window in the evenings. Since it has always worked for me since, I haven’t tinkered with it any further.

 

[moj66]

whats worked best for me is to disable the smart charging function on the ev app and use the cars scheduled charging function instead -set to start charging at 00:30 then limit the battery charge limit to a level that will be reached by 04:30 (typically around 75%) rather than setting a departure time

 

[Ant M3]

We have a tethered Rolec to charge our new M3P. The Rolec got set up with the ev.energy app which at first sounded great, but we’ve looked this morning to see that our car isn’t fully charged? I know the Tesla goes in to a deep sleep and then refuses to start charging again when the charger gives it a current again (as the Rolec turns charge on and off during the night for the cheapest/greenest rates). The app seems to not take in to account the cheap charging rate between 00:30 and 4:30. How can I set it up to charge during this cheap rate time and to actually start charging if it temporarily halts during the night?

Hopefully that made sense! Thanks.

I have the same setup as you and find the app not too bad. In the settings you can stipulate smart charging only (cheapest rate) and set the max limit for the cheapest rate. You can also specify the start and end times for double protection

downside is, if you car is very low on charge and you set the car to say 80% it is unlikely to get to the 80% within the smart charging window of 4hrs (I’m on the Go tariff) with all the parameters locked down as described above - so you’ll need two bites at the cherry over two nights.

on the app, there is a great help contact us button and they are VERY good at answering any query you might have

 

[NastyNick83]

What do you guys do to stop the car trying to charge when you first plug it in?

 

[Jeeves]

What do you guys do to stop the car trying to charge when you first plug it in?

Thought it curious at first, then noticed that it stopped a few minutes later after consuming almost no power and decided to just ignore it.

 

[Medved_77]

What do you guys do to stop the car trying to charge when you first plug it in?

Open the charge port with the app, plugin then press stop charging from the app.

Or just wait a few minutes.

 

[NastyNick83]

Thought it curious at first, then noticed that it stopped a few minutes later after consuming almost no power and decided to just ignore it.

Thanks. I’ll test it (outside of peak hours).

Another anomaly is it stopped charging at 7am this morning.
- Smart charging set to less than 6p, which agile rates in my area was like that until 7:30
- SoC was 83% with max set at 90%

‘I need my car by’ is set to 07:00. Wonder if that has a bearing on it. I don’t need my car by 7:00 (or any time at the moment) so it’s a shame I can’t disable that.

 

[Medved_77]

Thanks. I’ll test it (outside of peak hours).

Another anomaly is it stopped charging at 7am this morning.
- Smart charging set to less than 6p, which agile rates in my area was like that until 7:30
- SoC was 83% with max set at 90%

‘I need my car by’ is set to 07:00. Wonder if that has a bearing on it. I don’t need my car by 7:00 (or any time at the moment) so it’s a shame I can’t disable that.

It'll stop charging by your departure time regardless of the SOC.

I set mine to 4pm if I'm not going anywhere that day as that's when the Agile rates go sky high.

 

[Gatsojon]

keeping he car awake with sentry mode does work for me with my Zappi2 charger, though it does consume a little extra power that way. I need to do that with the Zappi in Eco++ mode, where it only charges with excess solar PV power. That can disappear during the day for more than the 15 minutes or so it stays awake for.

When I get to switch to Octopus Go (no smart meter yet) and when I need to drive the car more, I was planning to schedule the start from the car and manage the finish by target charge using a rough correlation of 10% charge per hour. So I'll set it 40% higher than where I am now. I know there are many factors that will influence that assumption (battery charge, temperature, phase of the moon) but on my tests, it's not been far off. I may lose a few pennies here and there.

Really interesting to see how we are all working around a really annoying failure of Tesla to simply play by the EV rules!