I think if you plug in a car that is not set up to be controlled by IOG, it will behave like a dumb charge point and start charging immediately (you can easily check by just trying it). If your friend's car has a charging timer, they can set it up to charge between 11:30pm and 5:30am and they'll get the guaranteed cheap electricity.
If there's no timer, you'll have to go out and plug it in at 11:30 for 6 hours of cheap power.

 

If the point of management is the charge point, then yes, there’s no problem. It can be done in a number of ways. I personally just work out the pro rata battery size and adjust the charge% to add correspondingly.

If the PoM is Octopus, via EV integration, then one way I’ve done it is for the visitor to register their MyBMW account with Octopus.

But I’m not sure how much of this is specific to having an Ohme or the iX3.

 

It would be difficult to say as you've only given half the information.
The other half can be quite convoluted with another half to consider.
Out of that half, half the time it's less straightforward than you might hope for so overall twice as much to consider.

Should we assume you have an Ohme chargepoint and your car is compatible and has been integrated within your setup?

Gaz

 

Look in your octopus app, click on devices (bottom centre), if it says the name of your charger - then that’s great IOG will work whatever is plugged in to it. Set the % to add as a proportion of the main user car battery.
if it says your car then the default charging hours of 2330-0530 apply, so set a timer.

The only exception could be if your car and charger are paired and the charger can read the cars actual % state of charge. In which case a timer might again be the answer

 

Thanks everyone will check

Should we assume you have an Ohme chargepoint and your car is compatible and has been integrated within your setup?

But I’m not sure how much of this is specific to having an Ohme or the iX3.

Ours is a Kona, I'm not sure what hers is, she's not reachable at the moment

Yes. It's a Kona BTW.

Look in your octopus app, click on devices (bottom centre), if it says the name of your charger - then that’s great IOG will work whatever is plugged in to it.

Yes, it's there!

Set the % to add as a proportion of the main user car battery.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Could we not just set her car schedule to the IOG slot?

 

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Could we not just set her car schedule to the IOG slot?

For the first part: if your car has a 60kWh and your friends has a 75kWh car, and they want to add 33% (25kWh) then tell IOG to add 50% (because 25 is a third of 75, but is 50% of 50 and Octopus thinks you are charging your 50kWh car).

(I'm assuming the IOG amount to charge by for Ohme+Kona is set on a "%age to add" basis rather than a "target SoC %age" basis.)


For the second part, I think it depends on the EVSE.

With the Zappi I have it set to charge if any car is plugged in between 11.30pm and 5.30am, in addition to any IOG slots.

Not had an Ohme on IOG, though.

 

There are three ways that IOG integrates: either with the charge point, or with the car, or both.

If like me, it’s with the charge point (Ohme Home Pro) but not the car (e208), then a starting point with any visitor is just to do the pro rata kWh battery arithmetic: e.g. If mine is 50kWh and the visitor’s is 80kWh, then I ‘pretend’ the car is still an e208 but ask for 1.6x what the visitor needs to add. So if they need to add 20% then I ask to add 32%. I then set the ‘Ready by’ time (which can be anything, including outside the fixed 23:30-05:30) and plug it in.

With IOG+Ohme you always have this option, even if the car has integration with Octopus. And because some models seem to have flaky integration (not least because manufacturers are prone to changing their software, so it breaks), some owners opt to take this ‘add x%’ approach.

The advantage of integration between Octopus and the EV is that, as you point out, you can just set a target charge% and that’s it. Octopus is able to ask the car or the car’s app what its state of charge (SoC) is, so as the charge session progresses it stops as specified. But this requires regular polling of the EV and in some models, this happens so often that it exhausts the 12v battery. So again, these owners opt to use the ‘add x%’ approach even though in theory, they should be able to use the ‘charge to y%’ approach.

If you do use the integration with your main car and Octopus, then this is great until you need to switch to another EV. In which case you need to tell the system that it’s a different car (I think, but happy to be corrected). And then afterwards have to reset everything back. This is complicated further if the other car isn’t integrated with Octopus, as you have to switch to using the ‘add x%’ method.

As pointed out, the trouble with establishing a reliable charging regime is that there are a lot of different combinations. And the difficulty varies by EV model, charge point model and tariff. And there are often pros and cons to each. In reality, outside of software bugs, it’s not that difficult to arrive at a workable solution. But it can look a lot more complex than it really is.

 

We smart charge our daughters Corsa on our Ohme, we just change the EV in Ohme and don't link the Ohme app to the visitors car and use the add% method, I.e. if the car arrives at 20% and you want it back to 80%, add 60%