Charge Anytime - Charge control polling frequency

You may have other more informed replies but the constant polling of the car is usually a workaround to stop the car going to sleep when the charging is broken into several parts. If the car falls asleep then it's not possible to wake it up the do the next part of the charging.

Some of this is guesswork but it seems OVO can provide cheaper charging by being part of the Capacity Market. This means that they get paid for adjusting the load on the network to meet national and local conditions for loading. If for instance the load on the network is higher than predicted, instead of asking for more power at a very high cost a supplier can be paid a smaller amount to reduce demand. Part of this payment goes to the customer who agreed to take part in load shedding (intermittent charging). So the charging occurs when there is the greatest financial reward to do so which means the charging gets switched on and off at unpredictable times but the total charge to the car is always achieved. The problem comes if the off time is longer than the time the car will stay awake for if not charging. To prevent the car falling asleep ‘wake up’ commands are sent which keep the car awake but drains the 12V battery.

So the answer is there are no settings available to you to change this behaviour. Given that cars fall asleep to save the 12V battery ‘keep awake’ commands are quite normal practice, however, not all cars behave well with this mode of operation. I don't think car manufacturers take this type of charging into account when designing their software.

Someone else may come on here to say there is a workaround for this and let us know.

Peter

Thanks for the responses ​@Peter E and ​@Chris_OVO 

A point to note for the ‘a jump start would do the trick’ - yes in a sensible world it would, if VW Group weren’t too lazy to ensure the access to the 12v system was possible with a flat battery. Unfortunately, in the event of a flat battery, only the driver side door is possible to open but access to the 12v terminals is via the bonnet release lever that needs the passenger side door to be open (or for you to take your chances snapping it off trying to bend it past the closed door, which is particularly bulbous on the Formentor). It’s a not uncommon result seen in owners groups that should this happen, Cupra Assist will turn up and take the car away to resolve it elsewhere, because they also can’t solve it without potentially breaking the bonnet release. So given that, turning the 12v protection off is definitely not high up my list of potential solutions!

(Also to note, I have previously asked Cupra technical customer support questions on this topic and they’re utterly clueless, they were asking me to check/alter settings that didn’t exist in the software version my car was running)

Having experimented a few times since making the original post, it still seems to be holding true that as long as I set my charge target to something roughly pre-11pm (regardless of when I plug in, even if it’s 5 or 6am) I get no issues. If I set the ready target for the next morning, more often than not it has caused the 12v protection to intervene, even if it was plugged in late.

Still doesn’t really make that much sense to me why it doesn’t seem to need to hassle the car with wake commands so much if it’s waiting/charging all day vs causing issues if it has to wait a few hours overnight but as Peter says, it would seem there is very little I can do beyond encouraging the charging to occur when it suits me and the car rather than giving OVO much flexibility to identify cheaper availability.