Charge Anytime and Ohme integration update: important information for our customers

Thanks - I’ve sent them an email already but will likely call them on Monday - guess we’ll be moving to Octopus, which is two households lost as a result as our sons house is also OVO and Ohme

Whether you stay or go doesn’t make much difference to me - I’m not OVO staff so it doesn’t affect my income streams anyway. But people come and go all the time so it won’t be long before OVO gets new customers coming along to buy the electricity you would have otherwise purchased.

I have exactly the same issue on a Skoda Superb PHEV since moving from an Ohme Pro being in control to the Ovo app taking control. I think this is also responsible for sometimes not getting a full charge - at the point at which the 12v limit is exceeded, the car will cease to take remote instructions, so might charge a little in the first session but then won’t respond to subsequent instructions to start charging. The upshot is a system which used to work entirely reliably has now become one where it is entirely random as to whether I get a full charge or not. 

After having to run my Ohme charger in dumb mode & switch the smart charging capabilities over to Charge Anytime,

CA has again fallen short in charging my Kona as requested,

Having plugged in about 6pm Saturday evening & set up for a 100% charge by 10am Sunday morning,

It has only hit 80%,

I know the Kona is only on the beta compatibility list but is this the best we can expect from CA.

Since having to use CA for smart charging, it has only completed a full charge on 1 of 5 attempts.

An 80% charge when requested 100% & not charging at all being the worst.

The full charge was accomplished after a busy morning, when plugging in at 3pm & requesting a 90% charge by 10pm that same evening, it charged from the off & continued charging thru until it completed about 9.30pm, all on smart charging.

(I wasn’t expecting a full charge considering the time of day, but any charge would have been beneficial)

So CA ignored the restrictive 4-10pm charge timeframe & charged anyway,

but can’t complete overnight charge with a 16hr window.

Going downhill from there, I readjusted the ready by time to 12pm today (Sunday) hoping to gain the last 20% charge before venturing out.

But CA has decided it’s charging next after 13.30. A complete letdown.

Is this the best I can expect from CA? 

Tom…

Aside from this being most annoying there are some technical deficiencies in this.
Having the charger managing things makes the most sense since it has a clamp on the properties supply to monitor and ensure that the load (of the charger + house general) does not exceed the main cut-out fuse (60/80/100amp).

With the OHME charger integrated with OVO everything would work perfectly.
NOW, when charging I can see that the EV (at least in my case) is drawing the full 7KW at all times when charging; whereas the OHME was more intelligent and varied the current based on how long was left in the schedule (plus local load?).

So now the OVA app will calculate charge time needed to meet the time you set, but IF the charger need to drop the current (to protect the properties fuse) for a time then the OVA app is not aware of this; thus it’s calculations will be skewed and the target EV charge might not be met on time.

Also … logging out of the OHME is rather rubbish. Doing this you turn it into a dumb charger and loose the ‘ authorize charge ‘ function. Not to mention someone could walk up with the OHME app, scan your QR code and register it to another account; just to be stupid of course ...

[EDIT] Apologies, I can see that was already answered, but I cant delete this post.

Very good point.

Ohme addresses this in an update to this post: https://ohme-ev.com/support/anytime_update_1/

“ Ohme will continue to protect your home’s electricity supply, even if your Ohme account is deleted and whether your charger is online or offline. However, OVO will not be able to detect if your charging rate is reduced due to load balancing. This means the Charge Anytime app may create a schedule based on a higher charging rate than your charger is able to deliver, which could result in your vehicle not reaching its set target in time. “

So there was never any risk to the properties supply being overloaded, but CA’s calculations could be skewed as it has no awareness of then the charging output needs to be reduced by the charger. So we need to either account for (estimate this) in our charging target time and/or avoid those ‘busy’ times in the home (e.g. when the electric cooker/shower will be running etc).

The security risk you describe is considered self-inflicted, so I cannot feed this back to OVO - the idea is that you rebuild your Ohme account and reconnect it to the charger. That will restore all functionality including almost everything the article says you’ll lose.

As much as I want to warn Ohme directly… They’re no longer willing to speak to me (or anyone for that matter!) so I can’t initiate Responsible Disclosure.

Once again, Terrible Ohme Article Syndrome has struck!!!

IMPORTANT NEXT STEPS

For your security and to ensure you get the desired features i.e. locking buttons/plug-in approvals back, you must re-establish ownership of your Ohme Charger by rebuilding your Ohme account and linking it back up after you migrate to the Charge Anytime app.

Failure to do so may allow someone to seize control of your charger without your consent - you’d have to ask Ohme to fix it if that happened.

I will ask for the instructions on OVO’s side to be updated.

This is an email I have sent to OVO having not received any response to date regarding similar question about the change over. 
 

if anyone is able to assist I would be grateful but having read a lot about the issues on the forum I think it would be easier to platt fog.

anyway here goes.

I have recently followed all instructions to the letter with regards to changing from ohme app to charge anytime app. 

I have set charge to 0600hrs each day , min charge 0% max 100%.

My car is a Mercedes 250e on beta with app, max battery charge 7.4kwh.

As soon as I plug in it starts charging, usually plugging in the late evening.

I am not convinced it is the greenest time of the day, but because the app does not display any savings i do not know.
The dashboard on the app has not once recognised my car although the ‘last update tab’ is usually up to date. And yes I have followed the instructions to try to locate the ev but it has not happened. Although details of my car are linked to the app. The dashboard just shows the wheel of death circulating. 

I have looked at my ovo account and found the usage information detailing ev usage estimation. I have divided this by the kWh used and it calculates approximately 22p per KWh.
This is not the cheap rate and I cannot do anything else to change the functionality. 

Firstly can someone please get in touch so this can be rectified. 

Secondly, can you confirm my tie in to a fixed rate exit fee until September this year will be waived if this cannot be resolved so I can change supplier.
 

regards

I’ve recently switched from using my Ohme app to the CA app. It’s worked the last few times without issue but tonight the CA app remains last updated at 18:29 and it’s not recognising that I connected the charger 50mins ago at 20:59. Any suggestions on how I might charge my car overnight?

PS disappointing to see the OVO phone lines close at 5pm, long before any overnight charging issues might arise 
 

Root cause is an upstream incident with Enode. Please see https://status.enode.com/incidents/01JZ7VA48HPFCHAJ2XDVK721QE for details.

Thanks