OHME home pro & octopus energy

[prospectivebuyer]

have ohme updated their app so that no one can set price cap on intelligent octopus tariff ?

For a year I have been using the spend cap feature absolutely with no problems but it now looks as if I can’t do that any more. Anyone else have that issue?

The reason I do this is because it’s more simple for me to set the car to 80% and then set the app to 100% every day and enable spend cap. That way I will never spend more than the 7p/kwh.

Now it looks like I’m going to have to use the “intelligent” charging which means I will have to work out how much charge I want to use each night other wise it will do some portions during the peak hours.

Frustrating!

Any ideas?

 

[mg4mc]

I have never used the price cap because that's not how IOG works and they always told you to disable it.

If you let IOG do the scheduling you will never pay the day rate anyway. All they ask is you enter a realistic estimate of the amount of charge required.

It sounds like you would be better off switching to the regular Go tariff if you want to operate they way you are.

 

[prospectivebuyer]

The problem is entering a realistic amount of charge required. All I want is full charging up to 80% (charge limit set on the car) every time I plug in & only be charged 7p/kWh.
Sometimes the top up will be only 50 miles other times it may be 150 miles required. I don’t want to have to faff around with the miles to make sure it won’t charge me extra, as an example usually if say my battery is on 10% charge and I’ve set it to 80% over night it will only put in as much as it can during those hours and that’s fine. Now the car will do the full 70% which I don’t want and it will charge me for the extra outside of the cheap hours which means I basically have to do math every time I plug in and work out how much I require and make sure it’s not going to go over the cheap rate hours

 

[Griffian]

The point of dynamic charging is Ohme will give you a schedule to add the amount of charge you want at the lower price even outside the "core" hours. I charged our Trophy ER from 9% to 100% a couple of weeks aqo. 70 odd kW all at the cheap rate. It finished about 10.30 on a Sunday morning, well after 5.30.

If you are at 30% and want to get to 80%, just set the dial to add 50% and the time you want it done by. Ohme does the rest and it will all be charged at the lower rate. You might want to join here and read the featured post;-

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[djenson]

Now the car will do the full 70% which I don’t want and it will charge me for the extra outside of the cheap hours which means I basically have to do math every time I plug in and work out how much I require and make sure it’s not going to go over the cheap rate hours

What???? There is no such thing as "cheap hours" on IOG - EVERY scheduled charging hour is a cheap hour. The 12:30-5:30 period is a bonus for other household things e.g. Home battery, overnight dishwasher/washing machine - Read what Octopus says - "PLUS":

Its only if you manually override the scheduling system and force charge the car that you will be penalized at the max rate.

 

[mg4mc]

You could also buy a car which Octopus supports reading the API from. Then you can just plug in and everything is sorted for you apart from when you want it to finish. The problem is the MG API is closed.

 

[prospectivebuyer]

What???? There is no such thing as "cheap hours" on IOG - EVERY scheduled charging hour is a cheap hour. The 12:30-5:30 period is a bonus for other household things e.g. Home battery, overnight dishwasher/washing machine - Read what Octopus says - "PLUS":
View attachment 30214

Its only if you manually override the scheduling system and force charge the car that you will be penalized at the max rate.

This is wrong. Previously I had scheduled 100% by 05:30 every day of the week. All I had to do was plug in and never touch the app. (my car is always set to 80% battery max charge capacity). I set price cap so the charging would only ever happen during the night. So as an example say I had 5% battery and I plug in at 6pm it would start charging on the cheap tariff at 23:30 and I’d end up with somewhere in the region of 60% charge in the morning. (Which is fine as if I know I have a long journey coming up all I have to do is hit max charging for that one off session)

Now since this update on the app if I’m on 5% battery and plug in at 6pm whilst schedule is set to 100%, it will vigorously begin charging instantly thinking I require 100% battery by the morning.

These initial hours are charged at standard rate unless you’re lucky and the wind is blowing in the right direction when you may get the cheap tariff outside of night time rate.

Basically means that now I have to think every day how much I want to add onto the car whereas before I just plugged in knowing it was charging all night.

 

[Jomarkh]

If you want the car to be at 80% by 0530 when you leave in the morning then using IOG correctly will give you this. As you were restricting it with the price cap then how can it get you to 80% if you plug in at 5%.
Now you can just set what you need added by the time you leave and it will all be at 7p plus the house use.
If you just want a cheap set 5 hours then switch to Go or ? ?

 

[Griffian]

In the six months we've had our MG4, we have touched nothing in the car and have allowed Ohme to schedule all our charges and not once have we paid more than the cheap rate. Tell your Ohme what you need to add and by what time and it does it, all at cheap rate even if it starts before 23.30 and finishes after 05.30.

From what I've seen, having anything set in the car makes a mess of the idea of OIG and how it works. Same with the option to set a price cap in Ohme, happily now removed.

 

[mg4mc]

These initial hours are charged at standard rate unless you’re lucky and the wind is blowing in the right direction when you may get the cheap tariff outside of night time rate.

How do you know? The only time you can be sure what you have been charged is when you get your bill and it shows you the half-hour billing rates.

It still sounds to me what you want is regular Go if the intelligent bit you find too difficult/onerous to do.

All my changes have been at the cheap rate, even 10 to 100% balancing charges.

 

[mg4mc]

Another question, why do you request 100% from Octopus when you have limited the car to 80% anyway?

We been over this before on other threads, the terms and conditions of IOG require you set the amount required. By leaving it 100% and using the intelligent bit (as you are now forced to), or never using the intelligence (they like you to do at least two intelligent charges a month - t&C's again) you risk being kicked off the tariff.

 

[fshuk1]

If you have home batteries be careful. If your EV charger and batteries are not setup correctly when the car charges it drains your batteries. In the past it didn't matter as your batteries charged at the same time as your car ( with the price cap set). Now it may charge your car at any time during the day, and if so it might drain your home batteries. If you need a solution we can open a new thread and discuss.

 

[prospectivebuyer]

If you want the car to be at 80% by 0530 when you leave in the morning then using IOG correctly will give you this. As you were restricting it with the price cap then how can it get you to 80% if you plug in at 5%.
Now you can just set what you need added by the time you leave and it will all be at 7p plus the house use.
If you just want a cheap set 5 hours then switch to Go or ? ?

I want to be able to plug in, never touch the app , wake up everyday with juice in the battery and only be charged 7p.
Can IOG give me this without needing to fiddle around with the app every day?

 

[Griffian]

I want to be able to plug in, never touch the app , wake up everyday with juice in the battery and only be charged 7p.
Can IOG give me this without needing to fiddle around with the app every day?

If you want to add the same amount of charge by the same time every day, yep. Plug it in, approve the charge and off you go.

It's hardly taxing to change the percentage and/or finish time though. It takes seconds.

 

[Rolfe]

If you have home batteries be careful. If your EV charger and batteries are not setup correctly when the car charges it drains your batteries. In the past it didn't matter as your batteries charged at the same time as your car ( with the price cap set). Now it may charge your car at any time during the day, and if so it might drain your home batteries. If you need a solution we can open a new thread and discuss.

If this is IOG, in my experience it seldom schedules charges outwith the normal off-peak period. If it does, it tells you about this when you plug in. It's pretty simple just to schedule the home battery to charge during that time.

 

[djenson]

These initial hours are charged at standard rate

Says who?

 

[djenson]

I want to be able to plug in, never touch the app , wake up everyday with juice in the battery and only be charged 7p.
Can IOG give me this without needing to fiddle around with the app every day?

Whole idea of iOG is that it finds the actual cheep slots of the half hourly wholesale electricity prices, instead of just charging on a fixed schedule. If you require more charge, it will find more cheep slots to charge the battery in the time given. ALL of these slots are at the 7p price, it doesn't matter if it's 2PM in the day - if that's what octopus have scheduled, it will be at the cheep rate

In order to know how many of these slots octopus needs to give you, Octopus needs to know how many kWh you require. On compatible cars, octopus can ask the car for its SoC and automatically make a schedule, however MG's do not have a compatible system for octopus to get this data, so you need to tell octopus how much charge the car requires (and by what time)

If you want to just setup once and plug in, Consider a non smart EV tariff (same slots/time period every day) or when the time comes to get your next vehicle, make sure it has capability to send the SoC to octopus

 

[danowen]

One question I have as a new MG4 owner: do I need to set the car to 100% charge if I want that, or will the Ohme charge to 100% regardless of what the car specifies?

I don’t schedule charging with the car, but the iSMART app has a Charging Setting area that seems to always default to 80% even if I set it to 100% because I need that extra for a long trip. Not sure if the app is just bad. Hoping the Ohme will override whatever that setting says.

 

[mg4mc]

The car will stop charging at whatever it is set to. The Ohme cannot override that.

 

[Griffian]

I use an Ohme Home Pro and OIG and I have never touched anything in the car, nor do I use the iSmart App. I have never once had a charging issue by telling the Ohme the amount of charge I want and by when.