Introducing Charge Anytime - next generation EV charging

I believe it was Octopus. However, I’ve heard that FordPass has been pretty unreliable anyway and I’m pretty sure someone on the OVO Forum said that folks are getting fed up with Octopus Intelligent being a nightmare for also being unreliable. Something like that anyway.

Your mileage may vary, but you’re probably better just going down the Charger route with one of the supported options for OVO Charge Anytime. At least that way, you’ll get a better experience! Up to you what you pick, but we hear quite a few folks on the Forum seem to love Hypervolt at the moment.

Thank you… 

Hi all,

Apologies as this must have been covered before but I can’t find the ‘right’ post with the info I’m looking for!

This is my first post after owning our EV which is a BMW i3s for 2 weeks, really enjoying the car but charging costs seem very high and I’m using the OVO ChargeAnytime app as the ‘controller’ - my BMW app is set to ‘Charge immediately’.

We are using a granny charger so plug the car in about 6pm and the OVO app is set to have the car fully charged for 8am so it seems to charge the car randomly over the evening/next morning.

I’m keeping a daily report on costs from the OVO and BMW apps and the info doesn’t seem to tie up that closely.

As an example this is the info from one day:

Car was @ 51% charge before charging and BMW app states 23kWh charged over 9h24m but the ChargeAnytime app shows 9.3 kWh charged and a saving of £1.60. 

I’m unsure what the cost is per kWh or if the app only uses low cost electricity, my smart meter is set to send usage data every 30mins.

TIA

Barry. If you charge at home you will be paying 24p per KWh. I KWh will take you between 3-5 miles in your EV. If you charge on a public network you will probably pay 79p per KWh which is expensive and comparable to petrol costs for an equivalent non  EV.

When properly set up OVO Charge Anytime costs 7p per hour. To put it into context my Hyundai Kona gives me a range of 255 miles when it’s cold and 280 miles when the weather is warmer. It costs me £4.50 to fully charge my car when the battery is depleted.

In the first few weeks of ownership I charged my car by reference to its onboard technology with mixed results and often waking up in the morning to find that charging had stopped after 50 or 60%.  I ordered an Indra Pro from OVO and they organised the installation for a cost of just over £1,000 and it has worked well giving my car whatever %age charge overnight I chose. The Indra app doesn’t  work Charge Anytime and so on the recommendation of Indra support  I have installed Kaluza, a paired down app which works fine.

OVO recommends a limited list of chargers to work with Charge Anytime. Ohm is another one and the list is published on their website.

i have no affiliation to OVO or Indra but I can say that my set up is satisfactory and works consistently, charging my EV overnight (and not during selected hours although this is possible for the full 24p per kWh tariff)

So my takeaway from this is not to fiddle around with charging by reference to the cars technology, ditch the Charge Anytime app and install one of the recommended chargers. Before you do this make sure that you can get a decent WiFi,cellular or wired network signal from the chargers proposed location.

Most probably others have had a different experience to mine.

Hi BobTom, thanks for your detailed reply. 

I am using the OVO ChargeAnytime app for charging my car which I believe means that OVO will charge the car at the most economic rate (presumably 7p per kWh). Whilst the OVO app shows savings it doesn’t show ‘cost to charge’ but if I look at my daily use of electricity during January (before we acquired an EV) and then subtract the January average cost from my daily cost in February I’ve had days where the car has cost me £5 or £6 to recharge the EV from a starting point of approx 40% charge back up to 100% so something definitely seems amiss.

Although a dedicated charger is clearly a more practical solution will it actually save money to charge as it still needs to put the same amount of charge back into the battery but just over a shorter period.

Hi Barry, we have a BMW also but decided to use the ChargeAnytime to control the Hypervolt Home Pro 3 rather than the car. It seems to work well and the car is always 100% charged by 9am (which is what we set). It does stop/start charging at all sorts of weird time intervals, its not just when OVO show excess of green energy. Can’t quite work that out, but seems to be doing its job.

Only had the PHEV 3 weeks, so I am awaiting next months bill to see if OVO apply the discount down to 7p. The app shows a certain amount of cost savings, but I want to see that reflected in the bill to be sure.

I also compared the the daily usage before and after car charging. Seems to be roughly £2.50-£6 difference depending on how much charge we required. But thats at the full rate.

Hi Barry, we have a BMW also but decided to use the ChargeAnytime to control the Hypervolt Home Pro 3 rather than the car. It seems to work well and the car is always 100% charged by 9am (which is what we set). It does stop/start charging at all sorts of weird time intervals, its not just when OVO show excess of green energy. Can’t quite work that out, but seems to be doing its job.

Only had the PHEV 3 weeks, so I am awaiting next months bill to see if OVO apply the discount down to 7p. The app shows a certain amount of cost savings, but I want to see that reflected in the bill to be sure.

I also compared the the daily usage before and after car charging. Seems to be roughly £2.50-£6 difference depending on how much charge we required. But thats at the full rate.

Barry - I agree with Aho’s remarks which reflect my own experience.

Are you looking at your energy hub on the OVO website? It details your home and car usage and the cost of both.

Yes, it’s not particularly helpful to see statements on the charge anytime app telling you how much you have saved. A better approach would be to state what had actually gone in your battery. I have deleted the app. I did not think it was particularly helpful beyond assuring me in the middle  of the night that my vehicle was charging: but I found it to be inconsistent.

The kaluza app gives you the data with a breakdown of the KWh actually charged on a daily basis. I simply multiply the daily figure by 7p and the result seems to tie in with what I see on my account on the OVO web site. I think the data originates from there so not too surprising.

Also, your slow charger delivers at the rate of 1.4 Kw whereas a modern dedicated charger will charge at 7.4 Kw, substantially faster and OK for an overnight charge.

My own view is that I don’t want to leave things to chance and the installation of the home charging point has given me trouble free charging on a daily basis.

Hi oho, it sounds like we’re on a similar journey except I’m holding off on the 7kWh charger for the time being. Your daily costs seem similar to mine and I guess the main difference if OVO ChargeAnytime is controlling the charger instead of the car but I can’t see that having any impact on the amount of charge.

Hi BobTom, I don’t see an Energy Hub on the main OVO website so what menu option is it under? I’ve tried searching for the Kaluza app but can’t find any details of it so what exact name does it go by in the App store? Once we get to the bottom of charging costs we’ll look at a dedicated home charger.

Hey ​@BarryM,

I’m sorry that your thread occasionally diverged down a different path. This happens sometimes, so I've separated the threads to preserve your original intent. If you need anything else please give me a shout and i’ll be happy to help!