Setting the charge period

[Almo1954]

How do you set the charging time ....we have tried unsuccessfully using the ohme home charger station and also via app

 

[Jomarkh]

What tariff are you on?

 

[Almo1954]

What tariff are you on?

Its a night time tarrif

 

[Susanna]

You can set the charging period on the car infotainment screen. Sorry I can’t explain exactly how, as I have always just used the app. If the app has been unsuccessful, it could be that the car already has something set up on it.

 

[Almo1954]

You can set the charging period on the car infotainment screen. Sorry I can’t explain exactly how, as I have always just used the app. If the app has been unsuccessful, it could be that the car already has something set up on it.

Many thanks for your reply. I can't find anything on the screen that relates to charging. We want to set our Ohme charging port in the driveway to start at say 01:00hrs and end at 06:00hrs but it doesn't appear to be that simple or straightforward...I don't think the functionality exists in the charger/app to take opportunity of off peak tariff.

 

[Susanna]

@Almo1954
It definitely exists in the app. Click on the battery tile on the first page of the app, and then on the ‘nut’ at the top of the page that opens, then on battery charging which gives you the option to put in whatever time you get your off peak leccy.

 

[Almo1954]

Many thanks for your reply. I can't find anything on the screen that relates to charging. We want to set our Ohme charging port in the driveway to start at say 01:00hrs and end at 06:00hrs but it doesn't appear to be that simple or straightforward...I don't think the functionality exists in the charger/app to take opportunity of off peak tariff.

Thank you. Just to clarify....are you talking about the app for the car as we only have an app for the charger...

 

[Susanna]

@Almo1954 - apologies, I thought you meant the iSMART app!
I presume that you have the pre-facelift car, which isn’t compatible with the app?

Is there anything on YouTube that may help you with charger settings?

 

[Almo1954]

@Almo1954 - apologies, I thought you meant the iSMART app!
I presume that you have the pre-facelift car, which isn’t compatible with the app?

Is there anything on YouTube that may help you with charger settings?

We have the ZS EV 2020. Think we were told by garage that there is no app for our model of car...thanks anyway for taking the time to help. We'll keep investigating. Waiting on the ohme pro charger installation person to come and help /advise us what is possible.....

 

[profdraper]

We have the ZS EV 2020. Think we were told by garage that there is no app for our model of car...thanks anyway for taking the time to help. We'll keep investigating. Waiting on the ohme pro charger installation person to come and help /advise us what is possible.....

Correct, this only came with the gen 2 face lift - that's both: no iSmart app support and no on-board scheduled charging. I've owned the gen 1 (& now the gen 2).

The only way to scheule charging on the gen 1 is via the software that might be provided with your particular home charger brand. We bought a Wallbox Pulsar Plus at the time & it came with it own in-built scheduler which worked simply (as well as some nice features for entering our off-peak taffif rates, calculating cost on the charge etc).

In this case, yes, your only option to have the Ohme installer take a look and explain. It would appear that the Ohme phone app is meant to do all this. See

 

[Almo1954]

Correct, this only came with the gen 2 face lift - that's both: no iSmart app support and no on-board scheduled charging. I've owned the gen 1 (& now the gen 2).

The only way to scheule charging on the gen 1 is via the software that might be provided with your particular home charger brand. We bought a Wallbox Pulsar Plus at the time & it came with it own in-built scheduler which worked simply (as well as some nice features for entering our off-peak taffif rates, calculating cost on the charge etc).

In this case, yes, your only option to have the Ohme installer take a look and explain. It would appear that the Ohme phone app is meant to do all this. See

Many thanks for this.

Hi there. I guess I know the answer to this one and it's no...but ....would it be recommended to use a 24hr timer plug into a house socket as a way to program night charging using the granny lead that comes with the Gen 1 ZS EV

This is the 24hr timer.

 

[Gadget Geek]

Best not. Electrical spikes from the switch could damage the EVSE, and/or the onboard charger. Best to use the car's charger schedule which uses the pilot signal to soft start and stop the charge.

 

[Almo1954]

Many thanks.

 

[Jomarkh]

This is the 24hr timer.

That would be OK for a light but not an EVSE granny pulling 2.2kW for hours on end.

 

[Almo1954]

Of course you're quite right. Thank you for your reply.

 

[GreenZebra]

So there is no work around for the pre-facelift with granny charging?

I worked it out it would be about 23p for 10 hours or 20p for 10 hours (based on my tariff). Better than petrol anyhow!

 

[Almo1954]

So there is no work around for the pre-facelift with granny charging?

I worked it out it would be about 23p for 10 hours or 20p for 10 hours (based on my tariff). Better than petrol anyhow!

We are waiting on our home "charger" installation guy to advise if we can set it to charge off peak ...ie. 1am to 6am think

 

[Coulomb]

So there is no work around for the pre-facelift with granny charging?

If you're electrically inclined, you could wire the timer to a relay with a 230 V AC coil, and use the normally open contacts to interrupt the control pilot signal. That means modifying inside the granny "charger" (be safe!) or inside the granny's plug, which is not ideal.

One way would be to add say a 3.5 mm phone jack to the granny, arranged so that if you unplug from the jack, the control pilot goes through (normal operation). When the plug is inserted, it would control whether the control pilot goes through. That would be minimal impact to the granny, but it would be hard to make it waterproof.

The best way is to get yourself a smart EVSE ("AC charger") that can do scheduling, preferably from a phone app.

Edit: Even then, you have the same problem as with any solution; you may need a firmware update to allow the car to listen for power when it's "sleeping". With my Mark 1 MG ZS EV, merely applying power to the "charger" won't initiate charging. I have to press the fob button to close doors to wake it up. With the firmware update, the car somehow knows to listen for AC being present, hopefully without having too many computers running that it drains the auxiliary battery.

 

[Almo1954]

Thank you for your reply.

 

[Gadget Geek]

If you're electrically inclined, you could wire the timer to a relay with a 230 V AC coil, and use the normally open contacts to interrupt the control pilot signal. That means modifying inside the granny "charger" (be safe!) or inside the granny's plug, which is not ideal.

This is what I did so that I could wire in a light sensitive switch to charge off the solar panels when the sun shines.