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Charge Anytime - how can I switch from one car to another or to connect Charge Anytime to multiple vendor accounts?

  • 8 February 2023
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After a small number of charges with the Charge Anytime bolt-on I can see a credit on my OVO account so it seems to be working albeit with a few small issues.

The sign up process asked if I had one or more EVs so it would follow that the ability to add more should be available or if a manufacturer account which is connected to the Charge Anytime account has multiple cars within it there should be some mechanism to either manually select which vehicle is waiting to be charged or perhaps Charge Anytime should detect which is ready to charge automatically.

 

I need to charge a second car which is in my "My Renault" account but am still waiting for a reply regarding my situation and what I should expect to do to make this work.

 

Does anyone know how one can switch from one car to another or to connect Charge Anytine to multiple vendor accounts? (For example Renault and Vauxhall or two Renault accounts).

 

Any help much appreciated so I can charge at the reduced rare.

 

Thanks 

 

Gaz

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Best answer by Emmanuelle_OVO 9 February 2023, 13:14

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Emmanuelle_OVO
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Hey @Gazwad,

 

Welcome to the OVO Online Community,

 

I’ve asked our specialist team and will update this topic when they respond 😊

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Many thanks,

I have tried plugging the second car in for several hours but nothing helped so I ended up charging a little at full price.

 

Hopefully we can move this forwards soon.

 

Gaz

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Updated on 01/11/23 by Tim_OVO: You are now able to add more than one EV for Charge Anytime from within the Charge Anytime app. Under ‘connected cars’ you should see the option to add another vehicle at your home location. 


As of the 1st November 2023, Charge Anytime now offers  7p per kWh for smart charging. It can be added to any OVO plan, including electric-only households

 

 

Who can get Charge Anytime

 

There are now two ways you can get Charge Anytime:

You must have an eligible EV or Smart Charger, we’re constantly looking into ways to broaden eligibility of this product so if your technology isn’t currently on this list keep an eye on our page for updates! 

 

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Hi,

Thanks for the instructions which I have followed but I get an error when trying to use your app.

As per the instructions I have registered the app on a second phone using a second google email address and have also created a second renault account in readiness.

All was going well to the point where I had to enter the credentials for my OVO account into the Charge Anytime app.

 

If I use the OVO account number I get a "wrong username or password error" if I use the email address which is how I usually log into OVO I get a different error "Something went wrong".

 

Two different errors whilst trying to associate the OVO account with Charge Anytime but using essentially the same (correct) credentials.

 

I guess there is something amiss due to the OVO account already being associated with another Charge Anytime account or some other reason which needs clearing.

 

Perhaps it's as simple as me gaving to log out from the furst Charge Anytime account?

 

If you can get the relevant information to the correct team for me I will be grateful.

If the need me to dpeak with them my number is below.

 

Best regards

 

Gaz

*Edited by Mod*

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Hi,

Not sure if the issue was at your end or a glitch with my phone although the credentials were correct and the app up to date but I decided to log out of the Charge Anytime app on my tablet and try with the new account I had created.

Not only did it work this time but it also sorted itself out on the old phone I was using so it looks like it was either the server was overloaded or an issue existed which the team have resolved.

If the account numbers are contiguous then it looks like another 300,000 customers have recently joined Charge Anytime so perhaps the odd glitch is to be expected.

 

I have gained a bit of insight as to how this all works, unfortunately it means I'll need a new Renault account and a new Charge Anytime email address for each courtesy car I might need to charge or if I were to change my own Vehicle but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Anyway, please mark this as being resolved.

 

Many thanks,

 

Gaz

 

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Can the OVO Anytime app/system support charging of more than 1 EV in a household. How do you link to a second car ?

Blastoise186
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Hey @bmcswiney ,

Yup! That’s supported. If you’re doing it via the Charger you can simply plug in whichever EV needs a top-up. If you’re using D2V Mode, simply set up each EV individually. You may need separate accounts for this route though.

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thanks for that. I am using D2V, so my best option would be for my partner to set up her own OVO Anytime app and link it to our joint OVO Energy house bill ?

Do you know if there are any plans to include KIA in the list of supported manufacturers ?

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Yes, that’s what we currently recommend.

As I understand things, Kia support is being considered but might be a while before it becomes available.

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Or are there any plans to integrate with Myenergy Zappi, which is the charger we have 

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That’s also something that might be on the radar. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is!

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Can you Help I have two EV and have just signed up for charge anytime with an OHME charger, will I be ok when I switch cars to charge the other vehicle?

Blastoise186
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Yup! You'll be fine 

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BPLightlog
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Hi @Nevison as Blastoise says, that should work ok. The details show that either a compatible charger or compatible EV should work. Just watch for the need for a smart meter on 30 min readings and no solar panels

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

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Just to add that if you wish to charge a different car either concurrently or just a change of vehicle the current system in place for signing up with just a compatible vehicle cannot cope very well.

The issues are being looked at but are more pronounced if you have two cars from the sane manufacturer.

The workaround is to have a different email address used for each car and the associated vendors account.

When you then connect to charge anytime you'll need to sign up with a different email address for each vehicle, feed the credentials to the app but remember you'll still be giving the correct account details for your OVO account.

Depending on which vehicles you have and what account details you set up as well as the age of device being used it can get a bit frustrating.

 

Hopefully you have a couple of google email addresses you can use, perhaps create a new knew specifically for the vehicle and it's owners app.

 

HTH

 

Gaz

Tim_OVO
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Thanks @Gazwad, so registering two vehicles with direct to vehicle is a bit fiddly? 

 

I wonder if that helps those with two compatible EVs and a compatible charger to choose the latter as the best option...

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At my property I have a small Solar PV setup 2kWp which meant I couldn't have the plug-in there.

After talking to Indra it seems doable to change my Podpoint for an Indra Smart Pro without too much waste so just in case we have a sunny day I'm getting one installed.

It has not arrived yet but I fed OVO just the chargepoint name and it said I was good to go.

I'm thinking that since the configuration is done completely differently if you have a compatible chargepoint then the complication of which car is plugged in is simply ignored as OVO can see how much power was used via Kaluza and determine how much of that was imported.

 

Gaz

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I’ve just switched to OVO from Octopus to use Charge Anytime. Just got my Smart meters installed in super quick time and my gas meter is up and running with half hour readings but I’m still waiting for my electricity smart meter to show up in app so I can’t yet register for Charge Anytime in the OVO app. 

While waiting for this I decided  to test the Charge Anytime App and I’m glad to see it all works fine with my Tesla Model 3.  

However I see you have to login to Charge Anytime with your Google or Apple credentials which makes me wonder if 2 people can use Charge Anytime with the same vehicle, specifically a Tesla. Can anyone clarify this? 

I also don’t see how my Charge Anytime App is linked to my OVO account but this might be clear when I can register for Charge Anytime within the OVO App. 
 

Lastly  I have a Hypervolt charger so are there any plans to support this charger for Charge Anytime? I assume this would be much simpler as having 3 apps (Tesla, Hypervolt and Charge Anytime) to control charging is just an added complication. 

Looking forward to getting some feedback and to having Charge Anytime up and running on my OVO account. 
 

 
 

 

 

Tim_OVO
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Hi @RobG-Reading and welcome to OVO and Charge Anytime!

 

But am I right in thinking you have the one Tesla EV but you want more than one person to be able to access the Charge Anytime app to manage charging?

 

Lastly  I have a Hypervolt charger so are there any plans to support this charger for Charge Anytime? I assume this would be much simpler as having 3 apps (Tesla, Hypervolt and Charge Anytime) to control charging is just an added complication. 

 

I can’t give you a specific time frame for charger or EV compatibility updates, but I know we’re working with these companies in the hope of unlocking as many as possible as fast as possible. One thing though: make sure to turn off scheduled charging on your Tesla app and Hypervolt. You should just use Charge Anytime app for anything charging related. 

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Hi @Tim_OVO,

    Many thanks for your reply.  Yes we have  2 people sharing a single car so I can imagine we might individually need to change charge level, immediate charging or even the schedule. This was just to cover one of us being away and the other needing to change the charge schedule. Normally I’d assume we’d share the same login credentials but as it chooses Google/Apple login then I’m not sure that’s possible (although I haven’t tried it). 

Regarding  multiple apps, I notice that the Tesla controls the max charging level so if your Tesla is set to 80% then setting a higher level in the OVO Charge Anytime App doesn’t override this. To avoid changing this in two apps I assume you can leave  the OVO Charge Anytime App be set to 100% and you just change the actual level in the Tesla App? 
Other than possibly using the lock command in the Hypervolt App, if you want to secure it, then I agree this can be left alone. 

So I’m seeing the credits logged in the OVO Charge anytime app but frustratingly assume these are being lost as my OVO energy account  doesn’t think I have a Smart meter installed. Sadly this seems to take a while as no  daily electricity readings are showing in my energy account even  though it has been showing daily gas meter readings since the day after the smart meters  were installed. This was only a week ago but I’m not sure why the electricity readings show take much long than the  gas ones to show in my account.  I have seen some forum posts suggesting you may have to wait 6 weeks so I hope that’s not the case! 
 

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Hi @RobG-Reading,

 

Back with an update here.

 

I’m told you’d be able to have the app on multiple devices, but will need to log in with the same Google/Apple account (if the account is not already on the second phone, you’ll need to add it) and the same OVO online account details.

 

With regards to your bills, these will be suspended whilst you’re having a meter exchange, however, this is a little confusing as you shouldn't be on Charge Anytime already if you don't already have a smart meter in place. Can you elaborate on the situation at the moment?

Carbon neutral - we need a community to get there! My green tech: Aclara SGM 1411-B smart meter, Chameleon IHD6
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Hi @Tim_OVO,

    Thanks for confirming on using the same login details to share the app.

   So the exact situation is I  had Smart Meters installed on  3rd May. I could see Gas half hour readings in my OVO Energy app around the 4th/5th but electricity didn’t show. I checked with customer support on 5th May and they confirmed they were seeing the 30 min updates from my Smart meter but I’d just have to wait a few weeks for my account to be fully updated (the app still showed the old meter number and not even the manual reading from the Smart meter install). The electricity smart came live in my app yesterday (11th). Hence it only now says I’m eligible to join Charge Anytime and asks if I give permission to share data and link accounts.

   However I had download the Charge Anytime App on the 6th May (knowing that OVO could see my Smart meter readings) and set it up and connected to the Tesla. All works fine and it’s been showing me my savings. However I couldn’t recall if if asked for my OVO Energy account and neither app has any reference to being linked to the other. For example I was expecting the OVO energy App to say I had Charge Anytime active and ideally the account number of the Charge anytime app and not offer to check my eligibility. I did see a reference in the Help section of “My offers” but I don’t see this. Does anyone who has Charge Anytime see this in their OVO Energy account? 

 So I called Smarthome support and I was astonished to find that they had no way of checking this other than a report generated on 25th April showing which customers had Charge Anytime. So they have to contact the Charge Anytime team to verify this and say they will confirm - but I’m not sure this will be quick. 
  Smarthome support believe that I must have logged into my OVO Energy account or I couldn’t have set up the Charge Anytime app, and I’m hoping they’re correct. 
 So I do have a Smart meter which now reports Smart readings back to 3rd May and hopefully the Charge Anytime app had a smarter way of verifying this when I setup the Account up in the 6th May. Like I say the OVO Energy didn’t recognise I really did have a Smart meter until the 10th May so thought I wasn’t eligible.

 SmartHome support recommended I don’t now go through the setup using the eligibility check in the Energy App as that might confuse the situation but at the moment I can’t tell if the two accounts are really linked. So I’m waiting to hear. 
 My Charge Anytime app is happily reporting my savings from charging my Tesla so hopefully it’s all fine and it’s just that this is not unified on OVO’s systems given the Charge Anytime App is,  I assume,  a third party product. 
 At worst case I guess I’ll see no credits applied to my account in early June and then have to report this. 
  So very happy to have Charge Anytime reporting my savings and just disappointed this isn’t better integrated and the length of time it takes to get through to customer support and lack of automation in tracking the linking of the two accounts, Energy and Charge Anytime). 
 

Thanks

 

 

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Hi @Tim_OVO 

  not sure if you can help but I incorrectly marked this as solved -can that be undone?

  I was trying to see if you edit a post but couldn’t see a way to do this. 

Thanks


 

 

juliamc
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You can edit a post (within an hour of writing it I think) by clicking the three dots lower right of your text, if the option Edit is available.

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Thanks @juliamc. I tried the three dots but no edit function was listed, but it was well over an hour later. I’m surprised you can’t do  this even if changes are flagged.

 I assume there is no way to untick a post - ie say you’ve had an answer so the question is marked as solved.

 I may just start another post/question as the subject title of this post has been answered.  

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