Charge Anytime not recognising when I charge

If you’re still having trouble, try the Smart Home Team via smarthome@ovoenergy.com . They can help.

Hi Matt,

did you manage to get it working successfully? Got an etron and Project EV charger and struggling to get it to boot.

thanks

Hey @GcGibson,

Have you tried contacting chargeanytime@ovoenergy.com?

Hi Emannuelle,

Yes - I had been speaking with Owain but haven’t heard back in a while and no solutions as of yet. Still haven’t managed to charge, it says it’s scheduled but nothing happens…

is there anyone else I can get some support from?

thanks

I’ll ask the team and report back @GcGibson 

After some back and forth with OVO they have sent me the below, relating specifically to Project EV chargers:

Apparently, we don't see many issues with Project EV anymore, so I'm not sure why you're having problems.

I've done some digging and found this statement for historic Project EV charger issues:

"In order for the Charge Anytime app to work correctly, your wall charger has to provide continuous charge to your vehicle, otherwise it can cause conflicts with the smart charge schedules sent by the Charge Anytime app.

The Charge Anytime app calculates a new smart charging schedule for your car every time it is plugged in at home, which sometimes requires the vehicle to start, stop and restart charging to help balance the local electric grid, attempting to make best use of green and surplus energy.

We have noticed that there is an issue with Project EV chargers which is causing interference with the Charge Anytime smart schedules. What we have deduced is that the charger is not able to provide continuous charge at all times, which is crucial for our control. After any period of significant inactivity, it appears that the Project EV charger enters a state whereby it stops offering power to the EV. This is not a problem if the EV charges immediately on plug in and stops accepting charge once it is full. However, this interferes with Charge Anytime schedules and, if there is a gap between charging intervals, the subsequent charging commands sent by our app are not successful as the Project EV charger no longer offers power.

We have raised the issue with Project EV and they have advised that the latest firmware should allow the chargers to continue to offer charge if the vehicle schedule stops, then starts a charge later on. However this has not worked for some customers.

We noticed that for those customers that plug in the EV later in the evening ( closer to their ready by time) there are less issues as there are less and shorter gaps between charging intervals and this may prevent Project EV charger from entering the inactive state.

We understand that this incompatibility can affect the day-to-day use of your vehicle. Our engineering team is working hard to identify possible solutions for Charge Anytime with Project EV chargers, if the above workaround is not helping, as a last resort we suggest that you delete your Charge Anytime account via the account page in the app."

Not sure if that helps much but thought it might be better than nothing.

In my previous email I mentioned turning on 'instant charging'. In case that's caused confusion, the setting is actually called Plug & Charge mode. The instructions to turn it on are here: https://support.projectev.co.uk/hc/en-gb/articles/4411132936851-How-to-use-Plug-Charge-mode-on-the-Project-EV-Car-Charger

Apparently, the last few project EV issues that were raised to us were solved with an update to the chargers firmware. Please also try contacting Project EV or your installer for the update and let us know if that helps.

I have then since contacted Project EV and they informed me that my software was not up to date. I was on version 9, and they remotely updated my software to version 13. You can find your version number by going in the Project EV app and going to: Charger Settings, Charger Information, Version Number. After the type of charger, it will say “V4.2.13” if you are on the latest version (being the 13 element). I actually had an open case with Project EV due to some hardware issues I had been having (separate issue) and so I just replied to this email to request the software update: contact@curv360.com but I’m sure there will be other contact addresses for them.

I am yet to try charge since the update but can let everyone know if it works tonight. Worth noting that I am not too sure about OVO’s guidance related to “Plug & Charge”, as this generally just means the car charges as soon as it’s plugged in and therefore not really what OVO is about.