Introducing Charge Anytime - next generation EV charging

Hello again, last night my dad came home around 10pm with his car at 41%, plugged in his charger and we setup the schedule on the Charge Anytime app for the car to be ready and charged at 7am, everything seemed fine, no warnings or anything, it even told us it would start charging after 1am.

Wake up in the morning and guess what? Still 41% charge… it didn’t even charge a single percent, then we try to start an urgent charge, it just gets stuck there and doesn’t do anything at all. Now he had to go to a public charger and spend more money to charge it.

Can anyone tell me what is going on here? Thank you.

 Not sure but I would try the following:

1. check to see that the vehicle does not have a timed charging schedule (say between midnight and 4am for example). If it does, delete it to avoid conflicts.
2. assuming your Dads car is one of those supported by OVO contact the Charge Anytime support team and de register the vehicle. Delete the app then ask for assistance in registering the vehicle once again and re-install the app.
3. if the problem persists get OVO to install a charger. I keep whacking on about my Indra charger which does the business for me. I had inconsistent results from using Charge Anytime at first  set up by reference to the vehicle itself. I experienced  repeated charging failures. 
4. As your Dad is a power user and the cost of using public chargers is extortionate it is probably worth the investment to eliminate all the problems once and for all. Your dad probably pays 79p per KWh or thereabouts at  charging station whereas with Charge Anytime working as it should at home the cost should be 7p per kWh.

There may be other contributors to the forum with suggestions as to how to iron out your Dads charging issues. I hope you resolve them as it’s a good product.

Hey ​@win20

I can see our community member has provided some helpful advice here. 

I just wanted to add that the topic hub might be helpful to you:
 

• Charge Anytime - Topic Hub & How to get in touch F.A.Q.

I have just bought a 2021 Nissan Leaf with a 40Kw battery. Im currently charging it using the three pin plug but I am considering a charging unit (Ohme)from OVO,  it appears from reading these forums that the car is not compatible with the charge anytime rate! Is that right or am I completely wrong?

Howdy ​@Bugerlugs ,

If you’re going down the Charger route, you can use ANY EV you want with it - just hook up the Charger to Charge Anytime and it’ll work just fine, even with EVs that don’t work with CA. :)

Hi ​@Bugerlugs 

Thanks for your post, and a warm welcome to the OVO Forum.

​@Blastoise186 is absolutely right here - for Charge Anytime you can have either a compatible vehicle or a compatible charger. You can check our range of chargers here.

If you do purchase a charger and apply for Charge Anytime, you’ll be reached out to by our EV Experts who will guide you through the process every step of the way. They’re a great bunch of people and are super helpful. If you want to reach out to the team directly before making any decisions you can do so by emailing chargeanytime@ovo.com.

I hope this helps, we’d absolutely love to have you as a Charge Anytime customer 😁

Thank you for the explanation, I now understand about the charger and charge anytime. I will apply for a survey shortly. 

​@Bugerlugs that’s great news! We look forward to hearing about your Charge Anytime journey! 😁⚡🚘

Does anyone have experience of charging a 2021 Discovery Sport p300e on Charge Anytime?  About to confirm the order but when I look at the OVO app it says vehicle not compatible?!? Would it work if I get one of the chargers on the OVO Charge Anytime page?

Howdy ​@Murrind ,

For Land Rover, you’ll definitely have a better experience if you go via the Charger. If you want a good one, we’ve seen VERY good things with Hypervolt - this means you can hook up any EV you want and it’ll just work.

Hope this helps!

Hi ​@Murrind , it’s best to keep your questions in one place. I’ve replied to your post here. 

As mentioned, you need either a compatible charger or a compatible EV to use charge anytime 

We own a Mustang Mach-E and have a SyncBG charger. Is this compatible for us to join OVO…?

I don’t think so. 

Hi ​@Sev ,

Sorry, but neither of these are compatible at this time.

Is the Mustang compatible as a vehicle..?

No. It is worth investing in a recognised charger such as an Ohm or an Indra. I had to ditch my 2019 Pod Point which is not compatible.

As others have hinted, the Mustang would work with CA if your charger was compatible

https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/charge-anytime-cars-and-chargers

Trust me, it's well worth investing in a compatible charger. I have no allegiance with the company but since I installed the Indra it has consistently powered my EV at the cheap rate and overcome all the problems I was previously having when I charged by reference to the vehicle which was listed as compatible but in the ‘beta’ category. 

I purchased through OVO and they delivered as promised. Money well spent and in the 4 months since installation I have had no glitches.

It’s unfortunate, but SyncBG isn’t even supported by the upstream platform that Charge Anytime relies on and Ford… Well… I’m not keen to re-tell the entire story again so I’ll give you the short version. Hope you don’t mind.

Last year, Ford basically banned pretty much every Smart Charging setup under the sun from accessing FordPass due to “security issues/fixes” and has since refused to let anyone back in. Until they do, Charge Anytime can’t function and nor can basically any other Smart Charging setup across Europe.

I did warn them of the reputational damage that this causes, but alas they didn’t listen.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely they’ll budge due to the exclusivity deal they since signed with one provider alone.

Wow thanks for that. Out of interest which provider has Ford signed as an exclusive company..?

I believe it was Octopus. However, I’ve heard that FordPass has been pretty unreliable anyway and I’m pretty sure someone on the OVO Forum said that folks are getting fed up with Octopus Intelligent being a nightmare for also being unreliable. Something like that anyway.

Your mileage may vary, but you’re probably better just going down the Charger route with one of the supported options for OVO Charge Anytime. At least that way, you’ll get a better experience! Up to you what you pick, but we hear quite a few folks on the Forum seem to love Hypervolt at the moment.

Thank you… 

Hi all,

Apologies as this must have been covered before but I can’t find the ‘right’ post with the info I’m looking for!

This is my first post after owning our EV which is a BMW i3s for 2 weeks, really enjoying the car but charging costs seem very high and I’m using the OVO ChargeAnytime app as the ‘controller’ - my BMW app is set to ‘Charge immediately’.

We are using a granny charger so plug the car in about 6pm and the OVO app is set to have the car fully charged for 8am so it seems to charge the car randomly over the evening/next morning.

I’m keeping a daily report on costs from the OVO and BMW apps and the info doesn’t seem to tie up that closely.

As an example this is the info from one day:

Car was @ 51% charge before charging and BMW app states 23kWh charged over 9h24m but the ChargeAnytime app shows 9.3 kWh charged and a saving of £1.60. 

I’m unsure what the cost is per kWh or if the app only uses low cost electricity, my smart meter is set to send usage data every 30mins.

TIA

Barry. If you charge at home you will be paying 24p per KWh. I KWh will take you between 3-5 miles in your EV. If you charge on a public network you will probably pay 79p per KWh which is expensive and comparable to petrol costs for an equivalent non  EV.

When properly set up OVO Charge Anytime costs 7p per hour. To put it into context my Hyundai Kona gives me a range of 255 miles when it’s cold and 280 miles when the weather is warmer. It costs me £4.50 to fully charge my car when the battery is depleted.

In the first few weeks of ownership I charged my car by reference to its onboard technology with mixed results and often waking up in the morning to find that charging had stopped after 50 or 60%.  I ordered an Indra Pro from OVO and they organised the installation for a cost of just over £1,000 and it has worked well giving my car whatever %age charge overnight I chose. The Indra app doesn’t  work Charge Anytime and so on the recommendation of Indra support  I have installed Kaluza, a paired down app which works fine.

OVO recommends a limited list of chargers to work with Charge Anytime. Ohm is another one and the list is published on their website.

i have no affiliation to OVO or Indra but I can say that my set up is satisfactory and works consistently, charging my EV overnight (and not during selected hours although this is possible for the full 24p per kWh tariff)

So my takeaway from this is not to fiddle around with charging by reference to the cars technology, ditch the Charge Anytime app and install one of the recommended chargers. Before you do this make sure that you can get a decent WiFi,cellular or wired network signal from the chargers proposed location.

Most probably others have had a different experience to mine.

Hi BobTom, thanks for your detailed reply. 

I am using the OVO ChargeAnytime app for charging my car which I believe means that OVO will charge the car at the most economic rate (presumably 7p per kWh). Whilst the OVO app shows savings it doesn’t show ‘cost to charge’ but if I look at my daily use of electricity during January (before we acquired an EV) and then subtract the January average cost from my daily cost in February I’ve had days where the car has cost me £5 or £6 to recharge the EV from a starting point of approx 40% charge back up to 100% so something definitely seems amiss.

Although a dedicated charger is clearly a more practical solution will it actually save money to charge as it still needs to put the same amount of charge back into the battery but just over a shorter period.