Do you have Solar Panels & Charge Anytime? We’d love to hear your thoughts

​@Gwallace thank you for letting us know Ohme’s response to you and, once again, apologies for the lack of Solar compatibility. Hopefully at some point that compatibility may be introduced but, as I say, Charge Anytime have confirmed there are currently no plans for this at the moment.

Cheers ​@Ben_OVO I think in the meantime I’ll switch back to my old energy supplier so I can at least get a cheaper overnight tariff. Will revisit Ovo in a year or so to see how things are. Thanks again :)

​@Gwallace it’s a shame to lose you as a customer, I hope that in future we have some EV setups that will suit you. Keep an eye open on our website and, of course, on this Forum - we still welcome you as a Forum member and these pages will be updated whenever there are changes to our Products and offerings. 

This is a generic problem. Every EV model has a different method of control (even models within a manufacturer’s range), every charge point has a different method of control, most of them with their own servers or now obsolete, every solar system, every battery system and every energy supplier's system is different. You could say that everyone has a unique system with a unique set of issues to be resolved.

Attempts have been made to standardise some of these like an open EV charging protocol but it has never caught on as such. You can make some of it work together most of the time but it's essentially the definition of a nightmare if you want to integrate EV charging into an existing system.

Simpler is better

Peter

I've got storage heaters, electric car, solar panels but no battery. The car is not compatible, I use a granny charger because it does all I need and, because my garage is a long distance from the house, it would be expensive to upgrade the electric cabling to support a charger. 

I suppose the problem is that you're buying my surplus electricity at 15p and don't want to sell it back to me at 7p. Really, you're paying too much for the export.

If I used my neighbours charger, and paid them, that's more or less what would be happening. I'm too embarrassed to ask!

I bought the solar panels from you but I would be better off financially if I'd bought a compatible charger. 

Suppose, though, that you only paid 7p for the export, and charged 7p for charging the car. How would that work out? If it had to be made more attractive, could there be bonuses for adjusting the use to certain times. 

If you buy the panels from OVO, you can actually get a higher SEG rate.

• Basic OVO SEG is available to everyone - 7p/kWh.
• SEG Beyond Exclusive is available if you’re supplied by OVO and have OVO Beyond active - 12p/kWh
• SEG Install Exclusive is available if you also have OVO supply and install the panels - 20p/kWh

You must then use a Solar-Compatible Charger - specifically an Anderson, Indra or Hypervolt unit listed from this page in order to get Charge Anytime working as well.

I'm on an E7 tariff with Ovo. They installed the panels and I have activated two options on Behond.

I get 15p but would get 20p if I had a battery. 

Had no idea that solar panels were an issue for smart tariffs until my smart meter arrived and I found this …

So yes be keen to take part in anything as the only reason I switched to OVO was to get a smart meter and use a cheap overnight charging tariff sadly. 

Snap. 

And I would also like to take part. 

edit to add charger (HV 3.0 Home Pro) and car (thought my understanding is that’s not relevant) which is two cars but let’s deal with the Volvo XC90 PHEV first.
 

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I’m a bit confused by this now to be honest. 
I wasn’t aware of a compatibility issue until I read this pinned post. 
And I’d checked the compatibility page which says nothing about solar not being allowed (double negative is deliberate). 
 

So I just went in to the OVO app as apparently you don’t need the charge anytime app if you’re doing this via a charger (rather than the car). And it says I am compatible. 
But now it wants me to download the Charge Anytime app. The very thing the process listed on the website site says isn’t needed. Really odd and disconnected messaging from a customer point of view. 
 

https://forum.ovoenergy.com/electric%2Dvehicles%2D166/how%2Dto%2Dset%2Dup%2Dyour%2Dsmart%2Dcharger%2Dto%2Duse%2Dit%2Dwith%2Dcharge%2Danytime%2D16772?tid=16772&fid=166

​@scoob198 it would be useful if you could tell us what Charger/EV you’re trying to connect...

​@Blastoise186 Ta. Post edited to include that. 

Then the solution is easy - use your Hypervolt charger via the Charge Anytime app. This charger is already Solar Compatible with the Charge Anytime integration, so you don’t need to be added to this trial. Do not connect the EV in this setup - it won’t be accepted.

Any problems, call the team on 0330 175 9678.

Thanks. That’s odd. I can of course re-download the Charge Anytime app. 
 

I’m trying to follow the process OVO provides - copied here (which is important to me because the Charge Anytime app locked out my charger for 16 hours when I tried this the first time (screenshot attached of what it looked like for 16 hours until I deleted charge anytime so that I could charge my car))

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If you have a compatible charger (such as an Indra or Ohme) then you need to link the charger to your OVO online account. You don’t need the additional Charge Anytime app. Ohme have made step by step instructions on how to set up Charge Anytime.

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If it fails to connect after an hour…

First port of call: OVO Charge Anytime team: 0330 175 9678 or chargeanytime@ovo.com .

Second port of call: Hypervolt Support: https://www.hypervolt.co.uk/

I will ask the Forum Moderators to get the site updated with the new info. It seems it may have been missed. ​@Abby_OVO can you grab that one?

Thank you both for your responses ​@Mick & ​@scoob198. I’ll private message each of you 😊

Is this issue now resolved ​@scoob198? Does the above help?

​@Blastoise186 that's a good list of contact ‘order’ - so thanks. 
 

• I emailed charge anytime. No response. (Bearing in mind the SLA is 2-5 days for a response so that’s fine). As my problem was immediate I just worked it out myself to get my car charging. 
• No need to call Hypervolt as my testing showed the charger worked fine as soon as I disconnected OVO (by deleting the charger from the OVO Charge Anytime app, restarting, closing and then deleting the app)

Then I could charge fine again without OVO locking the charger. 
 

This is what the problem is:

• When a smart meter is commissioned, and successfully sending and receiving data (to and from OVO), that’s not enough to allow Charge Anytime (CA) to work. In fact it’s even worse than that because the CA app then locks the charger completely. 
  -
• Meter has to have some processing happen so that it becomes ‘live’ to the end user properly before CA can be used. Once that is done (Kirsty … if you’re on this forum - thank you 👍🤩) then instead of the rather unhelpful message in the CA dashboard about connecting, it simply connects in 2 seconds. 
• CA app needs a small fix to recognise the issue being smart meter not fully commissioned (in end customer terms) and to simply display a message saying can’t use CA until that happens 

So yes - thank you for responding. OVO customer services were able to kick the processing bit on and it worked instantly got after that. 

No worries. While I do provide all known options, phoning the CA team is generally about 9,000% faster because they’re very quick to pick up. :)

​@Blastoise186 has given some helpful advice here. Please keep us posted with how you get on.

Hey ​@Emmanuelle_OVO - all sorted once Kirsty found a way to make the system ‘recognise’ my smart meter. 
 

While I’m writing. Does anyone out there know if OVO have an EV focussed tariff that handles the existence of solar panels? I can’t see one so thought I’d ask.

All seems a little odd that people who have invested in solar (often those people will choose an EV when they can) can’t ironically use the EV tariff (the one I can see). 
I (my mistake obvs) chose OVO to be able to charge overnight at 7p/kwh, but turns out I can’t do that. 
 

Unless there’s a tariff I’ve missed? 
 

Oddly the Charge Anytime app allows you to tick that you have solar and still set up the account too, so I tried it, but for some reason I can’t quite fathom (presumably this is why CA doesn’t work if you have solar) the car is currently charging ‘from solar’ despite it being night time 🤣🤣

The only EV tariff OVO offers is via Charge Anytime, but that runs as an Add-On which you can bolt onto any tariff - OVO doesn’t have a “dedicated” EV Tariff per-se anymore. Charge Anytime is able to be Solar Compatible, you just have to have the right setup which requires either an Indra, Hypervolt or Andersen charger and in all cases, requires two CT Clamps to be hooked up to the charger.

If the charger thinks the current source is solar, that’s what it will report to CA.

Well I have the right charger. No idea what a CT clamp is -  no worries there, I’ll google that. 
Interesting that the charger thinks I’m using solar energy 🤣🤣 …. as far a I’m aware it’s not even connected to the solar array in any way but then I don’t know how these things all hang together. 
 

thanks for sharing. I think I should get someone round (if I can) who can somehow explain how this stuff works. Or just find one of the EV tariffs where the supplier directly controls the charger at given times (assuming they do t assume solar is there too …. if only these chargers would ‘look outside’ eh 🤣🤣 🌙 

Actually, that’s what Charge Anytime does - it directly controls the charger on a schedule that you set. You won’t find anything different elsewhere in that regard.

Unlike others, you can charge 24/7 at the cheap rate - all other dedicated EV Tariffs don’t offer that feature. I think you just need to let it settle in and learn how it works - if you abandon it too fast, you’ll lose out.

In that case I have a duff installation from

Hypervolt then. Ho hum

Been trying to get a working smart meter and ‘EV tariff’ since November. Nearly four months for the meter and then I find out the charger isn’t set up properly. 
what a laugh. lol. Thanks for the replies. No doh t this will now cost hundreds to resolve. 
 

EV’s and eco-charging. Most expensive comedy I’ve experienced in terms of implementation a usable ‘service’ for a customer. 
 

but I’ll persevere with the j kedge gained here. 
 

Imagine if there was a way of buying this service where all the things worked together (tongue in cheek)

thanks again appreciated.