MG4 Trophy + Ohme Home Pro + Intelligent Octopus

[ukslim]

(Not sure whether the fact it's an MG4 is relevant, but it asks you to plug the car in while it tests, so maybe...)

I bought an Ohme Home Pro charger from Octopus themselves, specifically so I could have Intelligent Octopus.

Then I got a standard Octopus account and am currently on the Flexible tariff. As I understand it you do that, then switch tariff in the app.

I went through the setup in the app, authorised Octopus to use my Ohme account. All seems to have worked, and the Ohme app says I'm with Intelligent Octopus and stuff is greyed out because of it -- to Octopus has obviously successfully used an Ohme API to tell it.

Next step is the charge test. Plug the cable into the car. Car isn't fully charged. Tap "continue". App says it's testing and it should take under a minute. I left it for about half an hour, and it never succeeded.

Now the Octopus app says I'm still on the Flexible tariff, but in "devices" knows I have an Ohme (but has no setup options or way to repeat the test)
And the Ohme app says my tariff is Intelligent Octopus, and has "avoid peak charging" disabled because of it.

I see others are using Intelligent. Did it work smoothly for you? Are there any things you have to do to nudge it?

Octopus haven't answered an email since I got the account, either , except an automated one (a week ago) saying "don't worry, we're busy, but we got your question and we'll get to you".

 

[Shez879]

My Ohme has just been fitted today, and Octopus have confirmed I have switched to Intelligent, so time to play.

My initial thoughts, seem to go against the advice, which was have a single charge plan in the Ohme set to Add 80% before 7am, and the car set to stop at 80% as it's an LR.
That way it would charge over night, and stop at 80%

But thinking about it some more, the Intelligent side of things won't be working to their best of ability - as it is thinking that it needs to schedule 80% of charge in that time, when in reality it could be much lower, and therefore planned better.

So think I will set up 10 Schedules on the Ohme, adding 10%, 20%, 30% though to 100%... selecting whatever one will take me over 80%, and leave the car to cut off when it gets there.

I'll see how it goes, and may end up setting the car to be 100% so it doesn't get in the way of anything, but will see what happens when trying to go from 23% -> 80% tonight.

I like the multiple schedules idea. I only have one which I adjust every time. Just remember to do the amend the schedule before plugging the charger to your car.

 

[liput]

I'm waiting on getting my Ohme in a few weeks. But from what I've read, I don't understand why you'd add a profile to add a set % in the Ohme. Just plug it in and let it charge when it's cheap?

Then set a max % on the car side too

Am I missing something here

 

[Shez879]

I'm waiting on getting my Ohme in a few weeks. But from what I've read, I don't understand why you'd add a profile to add a set % in the Ohme. Just plug it in and let it charge when it's cheap?

Then set a max % on the car side too

Am I missing something here

You can do this too but then you'll miss out on the 'intelligent' part. With this setup you can plug it anytime and the app / charger will even charge outside of the of peak hours when there's surplus energy on the grid and you'll get billed off peak rates. Handy for when you are not going to, say achieve a full charge in the off peak slot only. It's also used to balance the grid load.

 

[liput]

You can do this too but then you'll miss out on the 'intelligent' part. With this setup you can plug it anytime and the app / charger will even charge outside of the of peak hours when there's surplus energy on the grid and you'll get billed off peak rates. Handy for when you are not going to, say achieve a full charge in the off peak slot only. It's also used to balance the grid load.

I'm not sure I understand, and it's different to what octopus say. They say you just have one schedule and let them work out when to charge

I guess I'll see for sure once it's installed soon

 

[mg4mc]

So think I will set up 10 Schedules on the Ohme, adding 10%, 20%, 30% though to 100%... selecting whatever one will take me over 80%, and leave the car to cut off when it gets there.

I'll see how it goes, and may end up setting the car to be 100% so it doesn't get in the way of anything, but will see what happens when trying to go from 23% -> 80% tonight.

I have done that, but in practice I just leave the "add 20%" profile active and adjust it each time. I find that simpler than changing the active profile.

 

[mg4mc]

I'm not sure I understand, and it's different to what octopus say. They say you just have one schedule and let them work out when to charge

I guess I'll see for sure once it's installed soon

You don't set a schedule, Octopus controls that. You just set how much charge you need and when you need it by. That allows Octopus to work out the schedule to best balance the grid, which may mean charging outside the core hours. I have several charges that had slots outside the core off peak hours.

It's not just time slots they allocate, they may reduce the charge rate down from 7kW for some periods within the charge.

 

[Shez879]

I'm not sure I understand, and it's different to what octopus say. They say you just have one schedule and let them work out when to charge

I guess I'll see for sure once it's installed soon

Yes, you have one schedule which has a percentage charge to add. E.g. you have 40% battery left and you want to charge to 100 so you adjust the schedule to add 60% by the time you need the car ready, say 8am. You then plug your car at any time and octopus and ohme will give you a time when they'll charge the car. Which can even be outside the off peak hours. But you'll still get charged off peak rates no matter what time it charges the car.
The thing is you just have to amend the % charge needed each time unless you always charge at 40%.
Hope it makes more sense. There's a Facebook group where it's all explained. Link in previous posts.

 

[Koomi]

To add- You have to adjust the % being added by Ohme to match roughly what you need, otherwise, the smart charging will try and schedule 80% charge during the course of the day into a battery that only needs 10% that can easily be done over a longer overnight period.

 

[Koomi]

Well the 23% -> 80% charge worked fine last night

Car plugged in at 5pm
Ohme set to add 60% before 7am
Car set to stop at 80%

It started charging around 11:30 (which is before Intelligent kicks in) and stopped just before 5am
With a small dip before midnight.

Car is showing 80% charged
So all in all worked as well as we had hoped

 

[mg4mc]

Last night I forgot to add my usual 5% buffer, and did a top-up from 80% to 100%, Ohme set to add 20%.

This morning the car was at 97% rather than 100%, good enough, but it does show you need to add on a few percent for the losses.

 

[tsedge]

What happens about balancing? The car may need a long time after reaching 100% to balance the pack. Does Intelligent Octopus allow for this?

 

[mg4mc]

What happens about balancing? The car may need a long time after reaching 100% to balance the pack. Does Intelligent Octopus allow for this?

It always has for me, tbh I haven't seen a balance run for more than 20 mins. I guess if the charge finished in the last 15 mins of the last available slot it may get terminated.

I speculate if you don't balance very often, they may take longer. The car seems to balance at 80% or above, so I get a balance every time I charge back up to 80%. Even if it did get terminated, some balancing will be done each time.

 

[Tig170]

I bought an Ohme Home Pro charger from Octopus themselves, specifically so I could have Intelligent Octopus.

Same system et al., not found anything intelligent above a basic timer, in that I tell it to charge from 1am to 6am, BST on my tarrif (EDF, not above 4.6p / Kwh- dont bother with how much i need, just 100% for 5 hrs - in our case is 63%), works well for our needs & just works overnight, when plugged in. We have small solar, & small batteries et al., but just leave car charging for cheap overnight power, which is about £100-£200 / year to run the car?

 

[mg4mc]

Sure you can use the Ohme as a dumb charger, the intelligent bit of coming from Octopus. Do EON offer an "intelligent" tariff?

Using the Ohme as a dumb charger with IO is missing the point. It's a two way benefit. Compared to the dumb charger rate (Go) the user gets a cheaper rate, extended cheap rate hours, cheap rate outside those hours when required. In return you let Octopus control when the charge happens, and they get to balance their usage, lowering their costs. Once this sort of technology becomes widespread it benefits everyone with lowered costs. To me, bypassing the intelligent bit if you are on IO is a sort of "I'm alright Jack, stuff everyone else" attitude.

If you have solar then other chargers offer a different sort of intelligence by maximising solar use and minimising the grid. It would be nice if Ohme offered both.

 

[Tig170]

Sure you can use the Ohme as a dumb charger, the intelligent bit of coming from Octopus. Do EON offer an "intelligent" tariff?

Using the Ohme as a dumb charger with IO is missing the point. It's a two way benefit. The user gets extended cheap rate hours when they are required. Octopus get to balance their usage lowering the costs. Once this sort of technology becomes widespread it benefits everyone with lowered costs. To me, bypassing the intelligent bit if you are on IO is a sort of "I'm alright Jack, stuff everyone else" attitude.

If you have solar then other chargers offer a different sort of intelligence by maximising solar use and minimising the grid. It would be nice if Ohme offered both.

sure... but 99.9% of the time at present, means overnight charging! - its not worth plugg-in in during day just incase you get an extra boost.

 

[Koomi]

If you want to do a balance charge, then set the LR battery at 100%, tell IO/Ohme you need 100%, and then even if at 60% when you start, the car will tell the charger to shut off after the balance is complete?
Still taking advantage of the IO extended hours if needed?

 

[NoSkill]

sure... but 99.9% of the time at present, means overnight charging! - its not worth plugg-in in during day just incase you get an extra boost.

I pretty much always gets slots outside the normal overnight hours...

 

[mg4mc]

If you want to do a balance charge, then set the LR battery at 100%, tell IO/Ohme you need 100%, and then even if at 60% when you start, the car will tell the charger to shut off after the balance is complete?
Still taking advantage of the IO extended hours if needed?

I have found that just adding 5% to the required amount gives it sufficient time to do a balance and gives a fairly realistic figure to Octopus to schedule. If you are doing a monthly 100% balance then add 10%.

 

[MartinSEsr]

I'm not sure I understand, and it's different to what octopus say. They say you just have one schedule and let them work out when to charge

I guess I'll see for sure once it's installed soon

you need one ACTIVE schedule. But you need to amend it (before plugging the car in) to state when you need the car the next day, whether that is 6am or 9am or when exactly. You also need to tell it exactly what % of charge to add - so if it's a LR and at 25% and you want it to be at 80%, you tell it to ADD 55%. If it's a SR at 40% and you want it to charge to 100%, you tell it to ADD 60%.

Not doing that is unhelpful as it doesn't know whether you're adding 90% or 20% to the battery. You need to help it.

 

[ukslim]

Just to report back on this...

Ohme support were really good, and escalated it to their more technical team. They have access to lots of logs and diagnostics. They decided that the problem was that because the schedule had split the charge into two blocks so far apart, the car had gone into "deep sleep" mode during the gap. They told me they'd made an adjustment to my charger which would keep the car awake in future.

Hasn't reoccurred since, although I'm not quite at the level of trust where I don't check yet.