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Preconditioning once car is charged but still plugged in (Zappi) - Overriding OVO Charge settings?

  • November 20, 2025
  • 5 replies
  • 78 views
T
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Hi all,

 

I've had a search of the forums here and on the internet in general, but I've not found a definitive answer to this.

 

Now the weather is getting colder, I want to have the option to precondition/preheat my car before I depart. However, I don't want the car to use up any charge already in the battery, rather I'd prefer the preconditioning to be using electricity from the grid to ensure the maximum charge I've set gives me exactly that and it doesn't drop any because I'm preconditioning /preheating the car.

 

Important variable - The way my Zappi 2.1 is set up is it's the charger which is integrated with Ovo and NOT the car. The Zappi is showing that it's in 'Managed' (MNGD) mode. Therefore everything charge wise is controlled by and limited by the Ovo app and system. Car is a 2024 Porsche Taycan GTS. 

 

Thus, the scenario would be as follows:-

 

I return home in the evening and set my ‘ready by’ time for 0700 the following morning. The charge is set to 85%. I plug in the charging cable and leave it to decide when it wishes to begin smart charging. 
 

Next morning, the car has charged to 85% and Smart charging is complete. 
 

It's now 0800 and I want to depart at 0900 with my full 85% charge. However, I first want to precondition/preheat the car due to the cold temperatures. 
 

This is the point I'm stuck at. It was suggested on a Facebook owners group that within the Zappi settings there is an option to switch on Preconditioning and set how many kWh you wish to allocate to it. However, if I try and access this via the Zappi’s screen to switch it on, it tells me that this function is not available in MNGD mode. So that option appears to be a non-starter.

I then thought - okay, if the car is left plugged in and the car has reported a full charge to the Zappi/Ovo and I click on ‘Precondition’ in my cars app then because the car has reached its target charge but is STILL PLUGGED IN, once preconditioning commences it will send a request to the Zappi/Ovo to pull power from the grid and this power would be used to precondition the car instead of using part of the 85% charge that the car is sitting with already. 
 

BUT…...having tried this earlier this morning, when you hit the precondition button in the cars app, once power begins to be used the Zappi checks if there is a surplus in the grid and can therefore begin a smart charge and supply the preconditioning operation currently underway. However, as happened this morning, if there is no surplus in the grid and the Zappi/Ovo decide it can't commence 'smart charging' then it will not supply the car with any power. Charger won't kick in at all. 
 

Now, I should state at this point that I'm not posting this question because I want to use a smart charge to do this and save money…...I'm happy for it to cost me the full price rate to allow me to precondition the car. But I am unsure as how to achieve this as the Zappi has talked to Ovo/the grid and decided ‘Nope, no smart charge available so you will need to wait until a slot becomes free'

 

Can I just click on the ‘Urgent Charge’ button in the Ovo app and then immediately click on 'Precondition’ in my cars own app and the Zappi will begin to pull power from the grid at full (not smart) rate, thus after preconditioning is complete, leave me with my original 85% charge, ready to drive off? 
 

Many thanks for any advice and assistance on this!
 

 

Best answer by woodstok2000

I was trying this with urgent charge and it seemed to work ok most of the time, but there were a couple of occasions where the urgent charge stopped because it hit my target, and then the precondition continued to draw power and I ended up below the charge I wanted.  You may not find the same issue,  but I also found a couple of other workarounds that I prefer to use:

 

  1. Set your charge to 5% above the actual value you want e.g. I charge my car to 80%, but set the app to 85%.  That way the preconditioning doesn’t take me below the charge I want, and it’s done using charge gained at the 7p rate.

    OR
     
  2. When starting preconditioning, also change the minimum charge level to the charge you want (or just above to be safe), and urgent charging will kick in automatically if you drop below.  I tried it at 81% and it worked fine, kept my battery at 81% while it preconditioned.

5 replies

Blastoise186
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  • Blastoise186Plan Zero Hero
  • Plan Zero Hero
  • November 20, 2025

Hi ​@Tango 22 ,

AFAIK yes - you should be able to do that via Urgent Charge as long as you’re OK with paying full rate.

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  • woodstok2000
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  • Answer
  • November 21, 2025

I was trying this with urgent charge and it seemed to work ok most of the time, but there were a couple of occasions where the urgent charge stopped because it hit my target, and then the precondition continued to draw power and I ended up below the charge I wanted.  You may not find the same issue,  but I also found a couple of other workarounds that I prefer to use:

 

  1. Set your charge to 5% above the actual value you want e.g. I charge my car to 80%, but set the app to 85%.  That way the preconditioning doesn’t take me below the charge I want, and it’s done using charge gained at the 7p rate.

    OR
     
  2. When starting preconditioning, also change the minimum charge level to the charge you want (or just above to be safe), and urgent charging will kick in automatically if you drop below.  I tried it at 81% and it worked fine, kept my battery at 81% while it preconditioned.
T
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  • Tango 22
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  • November 21, 2025

I was trying this with urgent charge and it seemed to work ok most of the time, but there were a couple of occasions where the urgent charge stopped because it hit my target, and then the precondition continued to draw power and I ended up below the charge I wanted.  You may not find the same issue,  but I also found a couple of other workarounds that I prefer to use:

 

  1. Set your charge to 5% above the actual value you want e.g. I charge my car to 80%, but set the app to 85%.  That way the preconditioning doesn’t take me below the charge I want, and it’s done using charge gained at the 7p rate.

    OR
     
  2. When starting preconditioning, also change the minimum charge level to the charge you want (or just above to be safe), and urgent charging will kick in automatically if you drop below.  I tried it at 81% and it worked fine, kept my battery at 81% while it preconditioned.

I’ll go with option 1 for now until I figure out if this can even be done.

I tried out option 2 this morning and nothing happened. Charging to 85% had completed early in the morning and the Zappi displayed a message saying ‘Charging Complete’.

I started preconditioning via my Porsche App and after the charge percentage dropped to 83% I tried pressing the ‘Urgent Charge’ button in the Ovo app. A message appeared on the screen saying it was going to carry out an urgent charge and that it may take up to 5 mins to start. Screen stayed like that for a few minutes and then just went to the default screen with the urgent charge button showing again at the bottom.

Tried tapping it again, but it did the same and wouldn’t start charging.
​@woodstok2000  - is your system connected in such a way that Ovo manages your charger or does it manage your car? Does it show ‘MNGD’ on your charges screen?

I get the feeling that because the car has reported that charging is complete, then in order to then carry out any sort of ‘top up’ or additional charging, you may need to go and pull the charging plug out of the car, leave it for a few seconds until its kinda reset things and then plug back in for anything to work further, charging wise. 

So still no further forward, really. I suppose another option would be to change the way the whole thing is managed and have Ovo set up connected directly to the car rather than the charger which I think may well afford added flexibility, but I’m really not clued up enough to go changing all that over to be honest!

 

Hi ​@Tango 22 ,

AFAIK yes - you should be able to do that via Urgent Charge as long as you’re OK with paying full rate.

 

Doesn’t appear to work for me, even if I wanted to pay full rate!

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  • woodstok2000
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  • November 24, 2025

​@Tango 22  - I do everything through the Ovo app. My charger is essentially in ‘dumb’ mode and so I don’t have an app for it or any other interaction with it.

Peter E
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  • Peter EPlan Zero Hero
  • Plan Zero Hero
  • November 25, 2025

​@Tango 22 It's worth noting that preconditioning a car doesn't take very much energy in the first place. My Zoe takes about 350Wh to completely defrost the car (2kW for 10 minutes) and warm the interior to 20C which equates to about 1.5 miles or less than 1% of the battery. It could be a bit more for your car if it doesn't have a heat pump but if you added 2% to your charge target it would cover it. The energy used would also be at the CA rate.

 

Peter 

 

Reducing my yearly fossil fuel usage with an EV (-900 litres petrol), A2AHP (-8,500 kWh gas) and Timed Immersion heater (-1,500 kWh gas)
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