You don’t need a smart charger to get Charge Anytime if you have a compatible electric vehicle

I am getting fed up receiving from emails from OVO about charge anytime only to find out that neither my car nor my charger is compatible and that as I have Solar I can’t have it anyway! This has been going on for many months. There is no indication whatsoever when or if this situation will change. It’s galling!

The Indra chargers do work on Charge Anytime if you have Solar. They’re currently the only ones that provide the required data for the system to figure out where it’s coming from.

And that helps me how? I would have thought a good time to draw cheaper electricity would be overnight when lo and behold there is no solar activity to interfere.

Overnight isn’t always the cheapest time - it’s certainly not the greenest. The idea of Charge Anytime is to make the most of the greenest - not necessarily cheapest - power and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

Hi, I have just had a EV charger installed. The brand is not one of the compatible chargers. The charger has its own app with a stop/start/smart charge functions. How would I get the OVO smart charging to still work? If I leave the car plugged into the charger and not start a charge, I’m presuming the OVO anytime app can’t control it. Any ideas would be great. Thanks. 

Can you set the charger to charge if a car is plugged in or do you need to do something in app?

If you can set it up like that then dont do anything on the charger (unless you want to stop it charging between 6 and 9pm for Powermove) Provided your car is on the OVO list, it talks to the car and passes it instructions to draw power at the appropriate time.  I think it uses the programmed charging feature of the car to stop it drawing power, then overrides that when it wants the car to start charging    If you want to be certain it wont just start charging then set a time period in your car for just before you plug it in - that way OVO will have plenty of time to get the charging right. 

Hi, thanks for replying. I spoke to the chargers help line and they have said that the ‘car need to be offered power first by the charger app’ then the OVO app would see that the car is charging from the Ford connect app, and stop the charge. I tried that last night, when I ‘offered power’ to the car from the app, the OVO app when automatically to the urgent charge. The charger is Vchrgd charger if that helps. 

Hi @Can,

Welcome to the EV community! I have added a badge to your profile to show you’re an EV user 🎉

I just wanted to highlight as you mentioned the Ford connect app that we’re currently aware of some issues with Ford customers and Charge Anytime. Keep an eye on the thread below for updates if this affects you. 

We also have a handy guide on setting up a compatible vehicle on Charge Anytime: 

Let us know how you get on 😊

Was the power in the car below the minimum setting in the Charge Anytime App - I always set it to 0 so it never Urgent Charges automatically - I’ve only not got a charge when I wanted once  since last December when I got the tariff, but I have a PHEV so its not absolutely an issue (but it is much cheaper than petrol!) 

Hi, I have a PHEV also, a Ford Kuga. I have set the minimum setting to 0 also, as I use all 39 miles of the battery every day. I think the issue is that the charger is telling the car to charge and the Ford app is telling OVO that it need to go into urgent charge mode. Maybe I need to have a look at the setting on the car/car app.