Hypervolt EV Charger, Solar, and Charge Anytime- How do charging modes work?

​@Smorl 

I also have a Hypervolt.

In the Hypervolt App on the home screen you should see the charging mode in the left of the three boxes. However, when under CA you won’t be able to adjust these modes manually. Other than forcing an urgent charge through the CA App.

Your experience is the same as mine, but I think this is expected. From my perspective I wouldn’t want grid charging at full rate, only when CA allows it at the 7p rate.

You won’t get grid charging (even if to supplement the solar charging) until CA decides you will as per their algorithm and your schedule in the CA App. In otherwords, the Hypervolt is not going to operate independently even if you are getting some solar charging.

Its either force an urgent charge, wait for your CA schedule to take effect, adjust your CA schedule temporarily or let the Solar charging kick on/off as the sun does its work.

You could set off an urgent charge at the time you are getting the solar, and it will have the effect of supplementing the solar in terms of charging supply, but it will cost you full rate. 

Does this avdice help ​@Smorl?

Ideally I would like the to charge only using the CA EV rate and retain the solar and battery to supply the house, only using any excess generation that would otherwise exported to the grid for charging the car, but I appreciate that would only be possible during the day.

If the Charge Anytime will allow the charger to operate during the scheduled times, that would be great, however what is being presented on the app doesn't suggest this is the case.

At the moment the Hypervolt app, as controlled by OVO, is defaulting to Super Eco mode and showing that it is waiting for solar, this will obviously not occur overnight. 

Am I misunderstanding the methodology, will the CA app override the instruction overnight in order to meet the charging requirement?

​@Smorl 

It should work exactly as you’ve stated, that’s how mine does. Essentially you can ignore the mode status whilst CA EV charging as OVO will control that.

But its unlikely you’ll get a daytime grid charge at the same time excess solar is charging your EV. I have seen is sometimes, but quite rare. I would imagine its unlikely OVO have an excess of green or grid power in those times. Also depends on your CA schedule.

What I tend to find in the daylight, if I’m getting EV solar charging its very sporadic due to clouds etc. It would have to be a very clear sunny sky to be consistent. The stop/start effect of EV charge sometimes confuses the car software. And it wont restart charging unless I click “restart charging” in the car App or unplug/plugin the charge cable. I’ve just put this down to BMW software not being robust. Maybe Ford will behave better.

That all sounds great, thanks ​@oho & ​@Blastoise186 .

It's a pity the apps don't  explain it like that, or at least a note that the OVO app will override the Hypervolt in that way.

I will see how it goes, thanks again 😀

Your wish… Is my command…

Hypervolt have been watching this thread after I originally told them about it. Hypervolt Support likes the idea of having a better in-app explanation and have agreed to raise a feature request.

If you get lucky, this might land in the next app update. Oh, and feel free to let them know if you’ve got more feature ideas too - they VERY much welcome ideas from customers and will consider all reasonable suggestions.

That's excellent, thank you everyone 😊 

This almost makes Ovo Charge Anytime not worth having. 
 

If solar panels and home battery can service the vehicle as a single charge and not the interrupted stop start approach that vehicle/ battery designers are not prepared for, then I am starting to wonder if Ovo CA will actively damage the battery condition. 
 

The 7p per kWh cannot make up for the cost of a replacement vehicle battery 

From what I understand, Charge Anytime is unlikely to cause battery damage - the vehicle itself will have measures built-in which prevent that.

​@JulesT-001 

I’m not quite sure how you have interpreted the comments.

No-one has stated the EV battery gets damaged, just maybe the software (like most packages) isn’t always 100% perfect. I don’t allow my EV to get charged from the home battery, thats not ideal from an economics perspective.

OVO CA works fine and is quite reliable.

I was referring to the periods when CA is not operating. Solar charging can be somewhat sporadic unless there is a consistent 1.4kw+ of spare export. Its only when it exceeds this that the Hypervolt will activate solar charging. In my case thats not common, but other solar installations may well have bundles of excess solar.

Its down to the UK weather. The past 2 months has been pretty good, but on a normal intermittent sunny/cloudy day it can have a stop/start charging effect. Its quite easy to overcome anyway by keeping the EV unplugged until evening.

Don’t get me wrong 

The new Hypervolt Home 3 Pro is great. I hadn’t fully appreciated how Ovo Charge Anytime worked, and that’s my fault.
 

I’m already feeling like I’m not master of my equipment, and that’s the Ovo Charge Anytime app and controls making me feel that way.

But I’ll read my vehicle manual about “stop start charging” and potential impact on vehicle battery as well as do other research. 
 

​@JulesT-001 

No worries, I understand your concerns. When I researched about potential damage to the EV battery, I got very conflicting information. But generally the consensus seemed to suggest the stop/start isn’t a major problem.

We aren’t really talking about stop/start every few seconds, but longer periods. I think if it was happening very frequently, which I guess is possible if the sky was that broken up, I’d be tempted to unplug until the evening. I also don’t know what impact that would have on the Hypervolt.

To be fair, the same concerns must also apply to the home battery, but that generally has much more consistent charge/discharge cycles.

The exception to that is when we use the induction hob. Because of the speed and frequency of the on/off, it has a very “spikey” impact to the home battery supply graph. I see it flipping very frequently between grid and battery supply, because it can’t react that quickly and obviously doesn’t attempt to smooth it out from what I’ve seen.