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Preconditioning settings like pre-heat from my BMW EV app not working due to clashing with OVO's Charge Anytime?

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  • RM84
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Good Morning,

 

I’ve recently added Charge Anytime to our account, however as our charger (Zappi v2) isn’t compatible, I’ve gone down the route of linking the Charge Anytime app directly with the car itself (BMW i4), which is where the problems have started.

 

So to provide context, before we added Charge Anytime, I was using the My BMW app to control the charging, preconditioning and vehicle preferences. In my case I had a schedule set up, so the car would precondition the batteries and warm the cabin prior to departure, however since the Ovo app ‘took over’, the preconditioning functionality has gone haywire.

 

It appears that the schedule I had in place (Mon-Fri 7am departure), keeps being replaced with bizarre times of the day and night (I had a random 3am departure scheduled the other night) and no matter how many times I go back to reset, it keeps happening.

 

Somehow the Ovo app is clashing with the manufacturers app and essentially rendering the preconditioning functionality useless, which is a problem. If the Ovo app does need to be the dominant app for controlling the car, it needs more functionality. Did any issues arise during testing, Ovo? I’d be interested to know.

 

Has anyone else experienced anything like this yet? If this continues I’ll probably uninstall it, as in my opinion, essential vehicle functions shouldn’t be compromised as a trade off for having a cheaper electricity rate to charge your car.

 

Any help and advice would be appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Best answer by Tim_OVO 20 March 2023, 13:46

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Can you not set the preconditioning in the Charge Anytime app and disable the schedules in the vehicle app? The Ohme charger app allows you to do this and it seems to be working for me.

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We are also having this problem and the car hasn’t charged for the remainder of the night now. We have removed all the departure schedules and setting etc but they still keep resetting them self. 

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Can you not set the preconditioning in the Charge Anytime app and disable the schedules in the vehicle app? The Ohme charger app allows you to do this and it seems to be working for me.

 

Unfortunately not. The Charge Anytime app doesn’t appear to have that depth of functionality. You’re probably ok with the Ohme charger, as that’s one of the two supported brands, whereas the Zappi isn’t. I assume you’ve linked Charge Anytime to your charger rather than your car?

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That’s a bummer. Charge anytime is linked to Ohme charger in my case.

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We are also having this problem and the car hasn’t charged for the remainder of the night now. We have removed all the departure schedules and setting etc but they still keep resetting them self. 


Yes it’s very frustrating. I’m going to try starting the pre-conditioning manually from the BMW app and see if that makes a difference, rather than using the schedule. I’ll feed back once I’ve tried it.

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Thanks. We’re charging it using a public charger to see if it resets everything so will let you know too!

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Charged fine on public charger but still pausing after exactly 10 minutes at home. Tried another vehicle and it charges fine so we know it’s definitely the OVO app causing the problem.

Tim_OVO
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Updated on 01/11/23 by Tim_OVO: 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! 

 

Hi @RM84 @KC1986 and thank you for coming together hear to flag this. 

 

I’m told that we've found that for some vehicles, including BMW & MINI, our Charge Anytime smart charging control automatically overwrites any existing pre-conditioning schedules.


Our technical analysts are working hard to try and rectify the issue, but it might take some time given how our smart charging control currently operates.

 

If anyone’s affected by this issue, please make our team aware via email to smarthome@ovoenergy.com 

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Thanks for confirming @Tim_OVO hopefully we don’t have to wait too long.

 

I tried some ‘on the day’ pre-conditioning’ @KC1986 with the car plugged in and that worked ok. It just seems to be the scheduling that has problems. Hopefully OVO can rectify this in the near future.

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I have just taken delivery of a Tesla and am about to try the same things that have been discussed here. I suspect it will be the same as the BMW case above but will let you know. 
I am using Charge Anytime connected directly to a Model Y as I have a Zappi 2 that’s not compatible!

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Ok…couldn’t set a reasonable departure time. Kept trying to set a departure time of 2am.

 

not the end of the world for me I guess ..but hoping you guys at OVO can figure something out.

 

thanks 

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Manually precondition using the Tesla app 30 mins before departure?

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Anybody out there having problems with Charge Anytime messing up their BMW i3 pre-heating and charging settings ?

Granted it’s not that big a deal right now, but in winter it’s nice to get into a warm car with clear windows.

I get home in the evening, set the car’s charging options for ‘charge anytime’, set my departure time and tick the pre-heater option.

Next morning the cars fully charged - all good there - but no pre-heater.

The car’s charging menu shows the the pre-heater option un-ticked and the the next scheduled day sometime next week !

Like I say, it’s not a big deal. I’m getting my car charged at a great rate, but I would like my cake and eat it ! !

What say you ?

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Thanks kopweb

It’s good to know I’m not alone - seems it’s a BMW thing.

I’ll also raise my issue with the OVO contact and hopefully it’ll be resolved before next winter ! !

Cheers

DaveH

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I see this topic says SOLVED but I have an almost identical problem with 2020 G20 330e where my car often does not charge at all and changes my settings to weird and wonderful days and times due to presumably a clash happening with my bmw app and the OVO charge anytime app.

This topic was raised nearly a month ago does anyone have a fix yet?

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Hi @SJTH,

 

Can I ask what actions and settings you’re applying via your BMW app?

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 @SJTH,

 

Can I ask what actions and settings you’re applying via your BMW app?

Hi, I have tried setting the BMW departure time to the same as charge anytime i.e 08.00 and leaving the preferred charging slot to 00.00 - 08.00 and I have also removed everything and set it to charge immediately and with both it tends to completely overwrite them with a random time, i.e today it randomly set my departure time to six days from now.

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@Dark @RM84 and @KC1986 may be able to go into more detail, but @SJTH my understanding is that the Kaluza Charge Anytime app should be the one place for assigning charging settings. The vehicle app features that are similar shouldn’t be used. Might this be causing the issues?

Carbon neutral - we need a community to get there! My green tech: Aclara SGM 1411-B smart meter, Chameleon IHD6
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No, the vehicle app isn’t used but automatically tries to override the charge anytime app. 

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No, the vehicle app isn’t used but automatically tries to override the charge anytime app. 

@Tim_OVO as mentioned above I can’t even find away to disable the vehicle app, the best I can find is that you set remove all the time settings and switch it to charge immediately and even when I do this the app settings change to random charge time slots and departure times.

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@Tim_OVO it must be a a huge issue for full EV BMW’s as it turns off charging completely. Its not as bad for me as I have a hybrid car.

Tim_OVO
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@SJTH the team advised me that this issue shouldn’t be impacting the charge ready time. It relates to the schedule impacting on the preconditioning settings.

 

No, the vehicle app isn’t used but automatically tries to override the charge anytime app. 

@Tim_OVO as mentioned above I can’t even find away to disable the vehicle app, the best I can find is that you set remove all the time settings and switch it to charge immediately and even when I do this the app settings change to random charge time slots and departure times.

 

Based on this can you make the Smart Home team aware if you haven’t already: smarthome@ovoenergy.com

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 I have not long got a BMW IX3 and I am having the exact same problems plug in and runs for around ten minutes then sets it’s own schedule that prevents the charging for the next day no matter how many times I put it right it alters to random times and days. 

Tim_OVO
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Thanks for letting us know you’re also affected, @Robbo. Please pass on your details to the Smart Home team so they can take a look at things behind the scenes: smarthome@ovoenergy.com 

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, I’ve jumped on this thread to see if there is any update to this. I also a BMW 330e (2022) which has been for the past 4 months working in perfect harmony with the OVO charge anytime app. 
Until a week ago when the OVO App stopped receiving updates from the car. I contacted the Smarthome team but haven’t to date received any reply from them. However all of a sudden the OVO app on Monday reset its self and unlinked the car. This allowed me to reconnect the car to the OVO app and now the app is again talking to the car. 

However, since re linking the car to the OVO app it appears to be doing the same to my BMW as it is to others in this thread. Randomly setting bizarre departure times. I get about 2-3 minutes of initial charge when I put my car on charge with a 0500 hours departure time set via the OVO app, then the charge is paused and won’t charge any further. The OVO app then reverts to saying charge will resume after 0100 hours but doesn’t. 

I cleared all the departure times in the car and keep resetting it back to ‘Charge immediately,’ however the OVO app appears to continuously overwrite this with its bizarre times, which I’ve noticed on the BMW app appear to always be for the preceding day. This may be a reason why the car stops charging as it’s an historic date.?


My Hypervolt charger wont work with the OVO app so I have to connect it via the car. It’s frustrating as it was all working perfectly until recently. Now the only way I can get the car to charge is via the Urgent charge feature and so the charge cost rises to standard rate. 
 

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