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DonJohn24
Rank 1
March 29, 2024
Solved

Anyone else getting lower than expected amounts from Charge Anytime ?

  • March 29, 2024
  • 22 replies
  • 1362 views

I have a Kia Niro EV and a Pod Point charger.  After some initial incomplete transactions, I now seem to have the system working OK, but the savings are lower than expected.

To avoid peak rates, I started the last two chargings at around 1:00 to 1:30 am each time, with the car itself set to charge to a maximum of 80% - both times from existing levels of around 40%.   As expected, the details shown by my PodPoint App show charge amounts of 30kWh each time over around 4 hrs each time - so finishing well before 7 a.m.

For 30 kWh the Charge Anytime rate of 7.07p/kWh compared with my OVO rate of 27. 07p/kWh gives a saving rate of 20p/kWh, so I expected to see saving of around £6.00 for each charge.   However, in my Charge Anytime App, savings are shown as around £4.00 each time.

When I sent copies of my data to Charge Anytime at OVO, I received a reply containing the following:

Comparison with vehicle manufacturer and charger apps have in some cases shown discrepancies, that suggest customers are missing out on savings accrued from Charge Anytime. It’s worth noting that in each of these situations there are no absolute truths as the vehicle and charger manufacturers will all estimate figures in a different way, with varying accuracy.

 
Environmental factors also come into play as the vehicle might end up using power provided by the charger to precondition the battery to a optimal charge state, which we can’t account for using the telemetry we receive from the vehicle.
 
Rest assured that energy accuracy will continue to be an ongoing focus for us, as there will always be more ways to develop and improve how we work with the data that is being sent from your vehicle.
 
Having seen the programmes about Sub-Post Office managers being told that they were the only ones affected by computer problems, I thought that I would ask here whether other users are experiencing similar problems.
Best answer by Peter E

Updated on 04/03/26 by Abby_OVO

There are a couple of points:

 

Is the Kai App also showing the energy used in any environmental pre/post-conditioning which could happen outside of the charge times? My Zoë does that. It can draw anything between 750-2,000W for a period of time to bring the battery temperature up to what it wants but this is always outside of the set charge times.

 

The charging process from a 7kW charge point will be about 90-92% efficient (due to the car’s inverter inefficiencies and system power consumption) and may or may not be a factor in this. For instance putting 30kW hours into the battery will need about 4 hours + 10% or 4hrs 24 mins.

 

What you actually need to know is the power drawn through your domestic meter from Ovo’s HH data during the charge times set up by Charge Anytime for that session. As far as I have read the T&Cs anything used outside of that time slot will not be deemed as charging the car and will not qualify for the discount. What could be difficult there is how to interpret HH data where the charging start / stop is not exactly on a HH boundary unless Charge Anytime only uses HH boundaries. That I don’t know.

 

I hope that helps but also hope you get some feedback from someone who does use Charge Anytime.

 

Peter

 

You may also wish to contact the Charge Anytime team:

​​

 

Want to know more about how Charge Anytime works? Check out this really helpful YouTube video from the team, or check out our FAQ’s page for Charge Anytime can be found here. 

 

22 replies

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Rank 4
Smurfarama
Rank 4
April 13, 2025

Hi

Did you ever get a good answer to this?

I’m charging an i4 through an Ohme pod and my car/charger figures agree, but OVO always less on the Charge Anytime credits.

Ben_OVO
Community Manager
Ben_OVO
Community Manager
April 14, 2025

​@Smurfarama might be worth you getting in touch with Charge Anytime about this - they can be contacted via ovocharge@ovo.com.

 

Cheers!

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