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Anyone else getting lower than expected amounts from Charge Anytime ?

D
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I have a Kia Niro EV and a Pod Point charger.  After some initial incomplete transactions, I now seem to have the system working OK, but the savings are lower than expected.

To avoid peak rates, I started the last two chargings at around 1:00 to 1:30 am each time, with the car itself set to charge to a maximum of 80% - both times from existing levels of around 40%.   As expected, the details shown by my PodPoint App show charge amounts of 30kWh each time over around 4 hrs each time - so finishing well before 7 a.m.

For 30 kWh the Charge Anytime rate of 7.07p/kWh compared with my OVO rate of 27. 07p/kWh gives a saving rate of 20p/kWh, so I expected to see saving of around £6.00 for each charge.   However, in my Charge Anytime App, savings are shown as around £4.00 each time.

When I sent copies of my data to Charge Anytime at OVO, I received a reply containing the following:

Comparison with vehicle manufacturer and charger apps have in some cases shown discrepancies, that suggest customers are missing out on savings accrued from Charge Anytime. It’s worth noting that in each of these situations there are no absolute truths as the vehicle and charger manufacturers will all estimate figures in a different way, with varying accuracy.

 
Environmental factors also come into play as the vehicle might end up using power provided by the charger to precondition the battery to a optimal charge state, which we can’t account for using the telemetry we receive from the vehicle.
 
Rest assured that energy accuracy will continue to be an ongoing focus for us, as there will always be more ways to develop and improve how we work with the data that is being sent from your vehicle.
 
Having seen the programmes about Sub-Post Office managers being told that they were the only ones affected by computer problems, I thought that I would ask here whether other users are experiencing similar problems.
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Best answer by Peter E 30 March 2024, 10:03

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Blastoise186
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Hello,

This response was originally left by Forum Volunteer Blastoise186. The Forum Volunteers do not work for OVO. ALL our comments are posted in a personal capacity.

Firstly, the Horizon scandal was a whole bunch of factors - including dodgy code combined with deliberate manipulation of the data by Fujitsu employees. If you’d read the case/court files and transcripts like I did, you’d know that. It is arguably one of the worst - or perhaps even THE worst - tech scandals ever to exist. If you want to know the full story, go read it on Wikipedia or something along those lines, as I won’t dig into the details here.

This particular issue with Charge Anytime doesn’t sound anything like that. Electricity is - as I keep saying in my Fire Safety Talks - an unknown beast. No-one can truly control exactly how the flow of electrons will behave and it does whatever it wants. While Smart Meters go through rigorous calibration and certification checks to ensure total accuracy to the maximum possible extent, EV’s and Chargers do not go through that same process and therefore cannot 100% guarantee that same level of accuracy. This is a matter beyond OVO’s control.

If your EV and/or Charger reports electricity usage way above or below what it actually used but within the 10% margin of error allowance and/or doesn’t properly report preconditioning, you’ll just have to swallow the difference and complain to the manufacturer to get them to fix it. My understanding is that OVO and Kaluza do try to fix these cases dynamically by using data from multiple sources, it’s an imperfect science that is unable to be 100% certain that it actually can fix the data.

OVO is far more heavily regulated than the Post Office is or ever was. Deliberately manipulating the data could be seen as potential fraud - and the Post Office/Fujitsu have learned that the hard way. Somehow, I doubt OVO is doing the same to try and profiteer and this just sounds to me like different algorithms are being used between the Kaluza Flex platform, PodPoint and Kia - which will inevitably result in different calculations and therefore different answers.

Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way!
Peter E
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There are a couple of points:

 

Is the Kai App also showing the energy used in any environmental pre/post-conditioning which could happen outside of the charge times? My Zoë does that. It can draw anything between 750-2,000W for a period of time to bring the battery temperature up to what it wants but this is always outside of the set charge times.

 

The charging process from a 7kW charge point will be about 90-92% efficient (due to the car’s inverter inefficiencies and system power consumption) and may or may not be a factor in this. For instance putting 30kW hours into the battery will need about 4 hours + 10% or 4hrs 24 mins.

 

What you actually need to know is the power drawn through your domestic meter from Ovo’s HH data during the charge times set up by Charge Anytime for that session. As far as I have read the T&Cs anything used outside of that time slot will not be deemed as charging the car and will not qualify for the discount. What could be difficult there is how to interpret HH data where the charging start / stop is not exactly on a HH boundary unless Charge Anytime only uses HH boundaries. That I don’t know.

 

I hope that helps but also hope you get some feedback from someone who does use Charge Anytime.

 

Peter

Don't make life more complicated than it absolutely has to be
ChristopherS_OVO
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Hi @DonJohn24, 

 

We’ve had some good insight from other members of the community on this topic so far. 

 

Just as a reminder that bank holidays and weekends are excluded from any calculations. Click here to find all our Charge Anytime FAQ’s.

 

It would also be good to have a chat with your vehicle manufacturer. They can help share insight into the charging capabilities of your EV. 


You can also email the team at chargeanytime@ovo.com. They are always willing to look any account specific questions with you

T
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with my Tesla I get a differential of about 25% (between charge anytime and pod point usage)…with the credit being much lower than expected. With my BMW i3 the difference was only 5%. 

M
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With my Indra, the energy usage estimate in the Indra app corresponds almost exactly with the amount of credit shown on my OVO bill, if I multiply it out to convert it to kWh. I do find it irritating that OVO don’t quote it as kWh in the first place!

 

Blastoise186
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with my Tesla I get a differential of about 25% (between charge anytime and pod point usage)…with the credit being much lower than expected. With my BMW i3 the difference was only 5%. 

That’s mostly down to differences in the algorithms in different EVs. Charge Anytime uses a secondary check to verify however - the half-hourly Smart Meter data.

However, some EVs don’t report certain charging related tasks to Kaluza very well, such as Preconditioning. If Kaluza doesn’t know about that - then neither does OVO.

Securing energy by zapping security bugs... For that is The Blastoise Way!
T
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with my Tesla I get a differential of about 25% (between charge anytime and pod point usage)…with the credit being much lower than expected. With my BMW i3 the difference was only 5%. 

That’s mostly down to differences in the algorithms in different EVs. Charge Anytime uses a secondary check to verify however - the half-hourly Smart Meter data.

However, some EVs don’t report certain charging related tasks to Kaluza very well, such as Preconditioning. If Kaluza doesn’t know about that - then neither does OVO.


perhaps but not sure that is the case in this instance. I’m getting the below energy use from my latest charge:

 

pod point: 49kw

tesla: 45kw

charge anytime: 37kw

 

so the difference between pod point and Tesla is roughly 10% and accounts for pre-conditioning/charging losses (although I don’t think there is any pre-conditioning with mild 14 degree weather and only 7kw charging speed). 
 

The difference between Tesla and charge anytime is still quite large at 18%.

ChristopherS_OVO
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perhaps but not sure that is the case in this instance. I’m getting the below energy use from my latest charge:

 

pod point: 49kw

tesla: 45kw

charge anytime: 37kw

 

so the difference between pod point and Tesla is roughly 10% and accounts for pre-conditioning/charging losses (although I don’t think there is any pre-conditioning with mild 14 degree weather and only 7kw charging speed). 
 

The difference between Tesla and charge anytime is still quite large at 18%.

Hi @Tes_M3,

 

Have you emailed the team with the charging data so they can look at it for you? If you drop them an email at chargeanytime@ovo.com they will check it. 

T
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Yes, I had reached out to that team and was advised that this is a “quirk” of Tesla and specially the M3 model. Just putting this out there to see if other Tesla owners are seeing a similar difference. 

ChristopherS_OVO
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Hi @Tes_M3, 

We have a few Tesla threads and users on the Forum. Hopefully someone with a similar model can share some insight with you. 

If you hear anything more, come back and update the thread and let us know 😊

Taj
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This post prompted me to check my consumption data and in that respect I can’t fault Kaluza/Indra which match fairly closely to the smart meter. What had me scratching my head was that the charge anytime rebate calculated by Ovo was higher than I was expecting by about 20p. Unfortunately, if applied here it would only make it worse. So in case anyone else is making the same mistake could I admit to it to avoid any further confusion.

I have always assumed electricity rates were quoted before vat. So my standard rate is currently 23.34p before vat. My error was in assuming the charge anytime rate of 7p was also pre vat. This is not the case, it includes vat, so before vat the rate is 6.666p(recurring). So to calculate my rebate:

23.34 - 6.66667 = 16.67333

So on my total charging so far this month I have earned 

0.1667333 * 41.9 = £6.99

 Ovo reports £7.01 The 2p is probably down to the Kaluza app only displaying to one decimal place.

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