Ohme Charger with Octopus Go - Question about schedules and disabling charging point
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I also have no answer to Q #1. But as to Q #2 - this need to prevent some random EV owner from parking on your drive for hours to steal 50p of electricity has been discussed for years. To date, nobody has ever reported it actually happening. So my advice is to put it out of your mind and avoid debating a problem perceived rather than real.
Well Ohme clearly thinks it is an issue since it appears in their FAQs (FAQs (ohme-ev.com)) but the answer is very unclear.
Ohme probably only responded because they are constantly being asked the question. Being asked by people who have not thought it through. But they feel that if enough people are seriously worried by such a remote possibility that random EV drivers would plug in to steal power then they should respond to their paranoia.
There is a risk over time that some scroat might spot a car plugged into a socket and try to nick the cable to sell on eBay. That has always been a risk and as more EVs are around it could become an issue. But OEMs have guarded against cable thefts by locking them in when charging. Stealing power is a different level of risk though.
To consider that someone would park on a random drive and plug in to potentially steal a negligible value product at risk of discovery and prosecution is frankly ridiculous. Even if a house is unoccupied for a week or so the risk is negligible and even if some toerag does try it the most they would gain is a few quid. And solved by flicking the trip off before leaving for Alicante.
A non event and certainly not worth investing large sums on security to prevent the loss of product costing a fraction of the security price.
I have an Ohme.
Q1. Not sure because I have a schedule defined. I have not tried without, but in theory your logic should be correct that it should not charge outside of the Go cheap period because of the 'Never charge above...' setting.
Q2. Agree with Hitstirrer. If someone wants to spend their night time hours sat on my drive for 4 hours to steal £1.40 of electricity, then I can't get worked up about the prospect. It ain't gonna happen. But a schedule for any end % that is less than what your car has in it would work, given that, regardless of what car is actually plugged in, it will think its plugged in to yours. I'd be tempted to set it to 2% above the state of charge of my vehicle so that the schedule allows the sum total of 7p to be stolen. Make it worth their night! But if you just switch on notifications, you'll get told if someone has done it because it will report when the charge is done.
Q1. Not sure because I have a schedule defined. I have not tried without, but in theory your logic should be correct that it should not charge outside of the Go cheap period because of the 'Never charge above...' setting.
Q2. Agree with Hitstirrer. If someone wants to spend their night time hours sat on my drive for 4 hours to steal £1.40 of electricity, then I can't get worked up about the prospect. It ain't gonna happen. But a schedule for any end % that is less than what your car has in it would work, given that, regardless of what car is actually plugged in, it will think its plugged in to yours. I'd be tempted to set it to 2% above the state of charge of my vehicle so that the schedule allows the sum total of 7p to be stolen. Make it worth their night! But if you just switch on notifications, you'll get told if someone has done it because it will report when the charge is done.
Ohme didn't "respond". Ohme have chosen to include in the FAQs they wrote.
And this isn't a question about "investing large sums on security" but simply knowing how to use an (overpriced) product which seems to have the facility built in but the documentation is poor.
So how do you set a schedule that doesn't charge outside the Octopus Go cheap period? The Ohme schedules only have a 'finish' time not a 'start' time, so although I can see that setting a schedule will stop it at 04:30 how do I make sure it doesn't start before 00:30? Or do you have to set a second '0%' charge schedule to finish at 00:30?
It could have probably done with some wording rather than just a screen shot, but it seems clear enough to me that a zero value schedule will lock the charger.
Presumably that needs to be a schedule that covers the 00:30 to 04:30 period, but could say end at 09:00, but with the price cap switch on it will only charge between 00:30 to 04:30 irrespective of when the schedule ends - but if so then why do you need a schedule...
Good grief, the more I look into this the worse Ohme's software seems to be.
If you set a finish time and a max percentage required, and you also then have the 'never charge above 5p setting active', then you just plug in but it won't do anything until 00:30 when your cheap rate starts. In theory you can set the end time to anything beyond 4:30 because it won't matter, it will stop at 4.30 when your cheap rate ends. Basically, you just need a schedule active to make it stick to the max rate setting you have applied.
Although what isn't clear from that is how you set a 0% schedule to prevent abuse when you are not there during the day but allow the charger to work when you are there plugged in overnight.
What seems to be missing from the schedule is a 'start' time to go with the 'finish' time.
Yes, as above, any schedule that covers the time period you want.
It's actually very straightforward. Just define one schedule and forget about it. I find it works seamlessly.
The only slight annoyance for me is that if you actually WANT a 100% charge to balance the cells once a month, then the charge schedule doesn't work well then, because it doesn't take into account that the rate will slow down as it approaches 100 and some time is needed at the end to finish the balancing. It sets up a schedule to hit your target at the end point (i.e. 4.30). So if for example, you are at 70% already and would hit 100%, if starting at 00:30, by say 3am, what it will do instead is to delay starting until 2am to hit the target by exactly 4.30am. But because of the reduced charge rate as it nears full, you wake up next morning and find it only actually managed to get to 97%. Even more annoying, it spends half the night sending alerts that the charge rate has dropped and "is the battery nearly full?". Yes, Ohme, you can see it is, you have access to the SOC!!!. Stop messaging me!
So when I need to charge to 100% to balance the cells, I find myself manually switching to max charge at 00:30 or as close to that time as poss before I go to bed, so it overrides the schedule and charges at full whack until it is full. It could do with a 'prioritise early finish' setting or something.
But that is a first world problem. Other than that, it works well.
If I understand correctly, all the Ohme charger is doing with the 'cheap rate' switch is creating a hidden 00:30 to 04:30 schedule, but it then needs a visible and pointless schedule which it will ignore to make the hidden schedule work? OK...
Thus I assume if I create a visible 100% finish at 04:30 and a visible 0% finish at 00:30, which is turned on when I am not away then the charger will operate in the cheap hours. But do I need to create a second 0% finish at 04:30 which I turn on and turn the 100% finish at 04:30 off.
And actually experimenting, I see that I can have two conflicting active schedules, one for 100% charging to 04:30 and one for 0% charging to 04:30! Which will Ohme pick to use? Did they get anyone to test their software.
Just have 2 schedules defined and set which one you need to be active and set the other to inactive. When you go away, it is literally a 10 second job to switch them round.
But really, this idea of people nicking your electricity is for the birds.
As described above, you don't need a start time defined.
I won't care about that. It is a leased car and provided there is sufficient charge in the batteries to do 60 miles or so for the time I have it then it will be fine.
But I would prefer that the expensive Ohme timer did it automatically rather than have to do it manually every time.
It will. The active charge schedule is active until you deactivate it. Just plug your car in every day and forget it.
You are over thinking it. It's easy. This is all you need.
You only need one active schedule. When you go away, if you want to avoid your loss of £1.40 per night, slide the activate slider to off on one of them and on for other. 10 seconds. Done.
Although incredibly the Ohme software does not perform any conflict checking of the schedules and will allow this!!!
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I've often wondered if anyone in their software team has ever seen an EV let alone owned one ! Some of their 'smart' offerings are simply bizarre.
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