Intelligent Octopus and Ohme Home Pro

[Dad]

Thanks Ken. I discovered one charging location which was Hilton Services North on the M6. Under this location I could see charge times that said 22:00 to 06:00 but these were not activated. I’ve deleted the charging location anyway now to see if that does anything. I now have nothing set up on the car under the locations option. Let’s see…

[livingforever]

Ok update from first attempt last night. The charge basically didn’t start on the car side of the equation. At midnight the Ohme app appeared to be triggered and had a message saying Smart Charging - session specific rule. The “miles” counter started to increase on the Ohme app but the Skoda app was saying Start Charge. So the issue appeared to be that the car wasn’t starting the charge for whatever reason.

At around 1am I pressed the Start Charge on the Skoda app and everything worked fine. It estimated about four hours to charge to 80% (at 6 KWh) and that was successful. However I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t need to press the Start Charging on the Skoda app?

This morning Ohme shows around 27 KW added last night for £2. A bit of an anomaly on the Skoda app is showing the range as 513 miles! whereas the dashboard in the car correctly shows 216 miles range (at 80%).

To recap my set up:-
IO set up and confirmed in Octopus app and Ohme Pro app.
Octopus connected to Ohme (not directly to the car).
Ohme charger status is online.
One charging schedule in the Ohme app with price cap enabled, 50% target charge by 5am. Car set to 80% max charge.

Anything else I can check? I read references to ensure your charging schedules in the car are disabled but I’m not sure what this means as I can’t see any schedules in the car.

To be clear here.. I’m absolutely delighted with the IO tariff and starting the charge at 11:30pm is not a hardship at all so I’m not overly bothered but just curious/determined to set this up.

Did you set the Ohme app to add 50% of charge, or to charge until the battery was at 50%?

Feels like that might make a difference?

I’m also interested to know whether you managed to log into your Skoda account on the Ohme app because it is not working for me whatever I do!

[Dad]

I set the sole charging schedule on the Ohme app to add 50% charge by 05:00 am. The Skoda is set to accept charge up to 80% capacity. My understanding is that regardless of what the Ohme app tries to charge up to, it cannot exceed the max battery charge setting in the car (80% in my case). So in my example the Ohme schedule will attempt to add 50% of charge but if the battery capacity reaches 80% first then the charging will stop before Ohme delivers the 50% of charge.

[Dad]

I think I may have worked out what I did wrong in my set up yesterday (I think the issue was the sequence I did things). Will try again tonight and report back tomorrow..

[MikeJL]

Schedules are set under the location option. They then work whenever you are at that location. You can also set preference charging times at that location.
However once accepted by octopus if you use this it ignores the schedule set by Octopus and just charges at that time if set to charge at preferred time at home location.
May cause issues as you get message that octopus can’t control the car.

I have a home schedule set in the car, but not enabled. I get the ”can’t control car” message immediately followed by Octopus’s schedule for the evening. As far as I know it charges to the Octopus schedule.

[ComicGeek]

Ok update from first attempt last night. The charge basically didn’t start on the car side of the equation. At midnight the Ohme app appeared to be triggered and had a message saying Smart Charging - session specific rule. The “miles” counter started to increase on the Ohme app but the Skoda app was saying Start Charge. So the issue appeared to be that the car wasn’t starting the charge for whatever reason.

At around 1am I pressed the Start Charge on the Skoda app and everything worked fine. It estimated about four hours to charge to 80% (at 6 KWh) and that was successful. However I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t need to press the Start Charging on the Skoda app?

This morning Ohme shows around 27 KW added last night for £2. A bit of an anomaly on the Skoda app is showing the range as 513 miles! whereas the dashboard in the car correctly shows 216 miles range (at 80%).

To recap my set up:-
IO set up and confirmed in Octopus app and Ohme Pro app.
Octopus connected to Ohme (not directly to the car).
Ohme charger status is online.
One charging schedule in the Ohme app with price cap enabled, 50% target charge by 5am. Car set to 80% max charge.

Anything else I can check? I read references to ensure your charging schedules in the car are disabled but I’m not sure what this means as I can’t see any schedules in the car.

To be clear here.. I’m absolutely delighted with the IO tariff and starting the charge at 11:30pm is not a hardship at all so I’m not overly bothered but just curious/determined to set this up.

Did you set the Ohme app to add 50% of charge, or to charge until the battery was at 50%?

Feels like that might make a difference?

I’m also interested to know whether you managed to log into your Skoda account on the Ohme app because it is not working for me whatever I do!

In some ways it doesn't matter if you can't log into your Skoda account, that's just extra info that you can access via the Skoda app anyway. My wife's MachE doesn't show up battery level in the app or have an account login, but the Ohme charger still works correctly once the car is plugged in. It just shows charging from 0 miles rather than the actual battery level, so always tells me it can't add more than 39% charge with the price cap on.

[ComicGeek]

I think I may have worked out what I did wrong in my set up yesterday (I think the issue was the sequence I did things). Will try again tonight and report back tomorrow..

Make sure the schedule is set in the Ohme app first. Then plug the car in and straightaway check the LCD screen of the charger - it should say delayed charging starting at 11.30pm, and then you know the charger is set up correctly.

I still have the old v2 in the car, but can only think it's a schedule in the car overriding it. Are there different driver profiles on the latest versions, in case there's a schedule hidden in on of those? My wife's Mache wouldn't also register a change in the app in the car itself, and could have different time schedules between profiles - took me a while to get it all synced up.

[Ken3966]

Schedules are set under the location option. They then work whenever you are at that location. You can also set preference charging times at that location.
However once accepted by octopus if you use this it ignores the schedule set by Octopus and just charges at that time if set to charge at preferred time at home location.
May cause issues as you get message that octopus can’t control the car.

I have a home schedule set in the car, but not enabled. I get the ”can’t control car” message immediately followed by Octopus’s schedule for the evening. As far as I know it charges to the Octopus schedule.

I bet if you check when the car actually charged it will be from the schedule start time until the required level, not to the schedule. Mine does this every day.
Today I have turned off preferred charging time and am trying using the stop charge control a few seconds after plugging in. The car is displaying a resume button now, and hopefully will charge to a schedule tonight.
I understand the car has to be controlled by Octopus one day a month to stay on the tariff.
It has set a schedule but as a lot of charge needed today is at the same time it would have been anyway on preferred time!
Use the Octo-aid app and you can see exactly when it charged

[Dad]

Make sure the schedule is set in the Ohme app first. Then plug the car in and straightaway check the LCD screen of the charger - it should say delayed charging starting at 11.30pm, and then you know the charger is set up correctly.

Yes this is where I think I went wrong! Yesterday I plugged the car in, then removed the old charging schedules from Ohme app and replaced with one new schedule. What I think I should have done is plugged the car in after I had configured the app properly, not before. The penny dropped when I read something today that mentioned IO and Ohme does the planning for the charge when you plug the car in. It’s not dynamic in that respect.

It’s looking more positive now so fingers crossed for tonight:

[ComicGeek]

Make sure the schedule is set in the Ohme app first. Then plug the car in and straightaway check the LCD screen of the charger - it should say delayed charging starting at 11.30pm, and then you know the charger is set up correctly.

Yes this is where I think I went wrong! Yesterday I plugged the car in, then removed the old charging schedules from Ohme app and replaced with one new schedule. What I think I should have done is plugged the car in after I had configured the app properly, not before. The penny dropped when I read something today that mentioned IO and Ohme does the planning for the charge when you plug the car in. It’s not dynamic in that respect.

It’s looking more positive now so fingers crossed for tonight:

That's right - I tried to make changes a couple of times after the car was plugged in and it didn't work. I had to unplug, set the app and then plug in again.

I find the LCD screen on the charger incredibly useful. I don't ever change the Ohme app settings now I've set them up, just plug in and then check the LCD screen that it shows delayed charging and a 11.30pm start. If I want the car to charge right away outside of off-peak hours (I have PV and home battery) then I just press the max charge button on the charger unit (far left) and it starts charging straight away. I hardly ever open the Ohme app.