Charge Anytime and Ohme Home Pro kWh usage figures don't match

UPDATE - I put my wife's car on for another charge last night. After unplugging this morning and giving it a few hours I checked the monthly usage stats in both the Ohme app and my Ovo account. As previously discussed, they don't match. 

Now, when I plug in, the smart charging doesn't start charging until about 10pm normally, and it finishes charging in the early hours of the following day, so it is spread over two days. When I look in the Ohme app, I can see the charge sessions for each day i.e yesterday when it started, early hours of today when it finished. The difference in £ and kWh that I am seeing between Ovo and Ohme matches exactly the charging stats for today (i.e the post midnight bit). So it seems Ovo is not including the incurred charges after midnight…...until you next do a charge, when it then adds it to the totals.

I did the same calculation for the previous charging session as I had the figures recorded in my post above, and guess what, the difference matches exactly the bit of charging after midnight.

This does seem to indicate that Ovo is not including the most recent charging data that occurs after midnight in its totals, so is always one charging session behind when reporting the totals.

@Dark Perhaps you can see if this is also the case for you?

So far my charging has never straddled midnight, but based on what I am logging I’m going back to my original assertion that OVO doesn’t apply a credit for a given charge until after you have carried out a subsequent charge. This seems a bit weird but agrees with what you’ve just described. 

Thanks again for sharing these details, @simong. The team would really like to take your details and have a look. Please can you email the OVO Smart Home team with your Ohme ID in the email and a link to this topic? 

Email address to send this to is: smarthome@ovoenergy.com 

Done - I have emailed them the link and my Ohme user id as requested

I am also finding that my figures don’t match and the missing kwh don’t match any one charge so can’t be a case of one hasn’t been added yet.  I have looked on both my Ohme charge app and on my cars app and both those match (car is very slightly under the charger so assume that is where some is lost whilst charging) but they are both VERY close to each other. I have listed them per day (so from 12.01 - 12.00 each day) and then what my OVO app says.

Used each day                        running total            Showing in OVO account

10/3 - 0.4 kwh                           0.4 kwh

11/3 - 14.2 kwh                           14.6 kwh

13/3 - 23.7 kwh                          38.3 kwh                        

14/3 - 25.9 kwh                         64.2 kwh                        36.27 kwh

15/3 - 16.3 kwh                          80.5 kwh

16/3 - 10.2 kwh                          90.7 kwh                        76.74 kwh  (for some reason they have only updated my account twice with readings so first figure appeared after a few days and then stayed the same until today when it updated to the second reading)

So even if this was not showing the last charge as that was only today (although they state they take ½ hourly readings to keep it up to date) that still doesn’t work out as the difference is 13.96 kwh which does not match any of the charging sessions so doesn’t seem like they have just not added one on yet. 

I wanted to keep my eye on it as don’t normally charge at home as my car has free charging so usually go out and charge due to the prices of charging at home, so when I saw this smart charging offer was happy to see that I could now use the easier option as can just charge overnight but if they are not actually discounting all of the electric used then it will not be worth it.  I have my Ohme set to only use electric under 10p per kwh, do not use boost charge as just plug it in all night and once car is on charge i check on my Ohme app that it shows smart charging just to be sure so cannot figure out why the discrepancy.  Will continue to charge occasionally at home for rest of the month to see if it evens out at all and then decide whether to continue.  I just wonder how many customers are just seeing a discount on their bill and not actually checking the figures assuming that they are correct and not actually receiving the full amount.

What I know so far:

As you’ve seen, there is a delay between smart charging (scheduled through the app) and the credits appearing in your Ovo account page.

The credits seem to be added based on the kWh usage on the last day you smart charged - as @simong has found this means a charging ‘session’ that spans midnight will have some of its kWh usage counted as belonging to the following day and so the credit for that session will be added to your Ovo account in two chunks. I suppose this is logical as Ovo can’t know what you are going to use until the end of the day.

Here’s the most confusing thing I have noticed: your Ovo account doesn’t seem to update daily usage data unless you do another smart charge. This means if I don’t charge on a particular day then the credits owed from the previous day won't show up.

I haven’t worked out yet what it is that triggers the Ovo account to add the credit from the last day of charging, whether it is (A) plugging in to the Ohme (B) completing a charge session or (C) unplugging at the end.

What I can say is that Ovo does seem to catch up eventually: all of my smart charing session are accounted for bar the last one on 15th (yesterday) - but I haven’t charged again since then and I expect it will turn up when I next plugin.

I think though trial and error I’ve worked out what is going on

Ovo tracks daily smart charge usage reported by Ohme in 24hr blocks

Ovo will only add up total usage for a given day when it receives additional usage data timestamped with a later date (I assume this is to make sure it is not going to receive any further usage reports for the day in question e.g if an upload from Ohme has been delayed)

The charger reports usage only when you stop a charging session by unplugging

So your Ovo credits are always going to be at least 1 day in arrears and maybe longer depending on your charging habits

Thanks for sharing this insight, @Dark.

The terms and conditions for Charge Anytime specifically say: “OVO takes no responsibility for the accuracy of the data received from your EV charger or compatible EV and therefore the accuracy of the Charge Anytime Credits paid using that data” …“Please consult with your charger manufacturer or compatible EV manufacturer if you are concerned about the accuracy of data recorded.”

Would you be able to check with Ohme that the data being sent to OVO (Kaluza) is accurate please?

@Tim_OVO I don’t have any problem with the accuracy of the data from the Ohme - I have worked out how to correlate Ohme kWh consumed to Ovo kWh credits and they match pretty well. The observations I have made relate to how Ovo calculates the credits and how quickly they appear in response to the Ohme data. I expected the credits to be applied per charge session, and so would appear soon after the session completed. What I have found is that they are calculated based on daily kWh and therefore don’t appear until Ovo has confirmed the full day’s usage (well, this is my assumption but seems to be holding up sop far).

Does the rate charged for normal electricity use increase when signed up for Charge Anytime?