Charge Anytime & pre-conditioning via Grid energy

Thanks for getting back so promptly, will have a look at that.

colin

Are you sure you need to routinely pre condition your battery before a journey? Does your vehicles manual recommend this?

The advice I have received for my Hyundai is that pre conditioning is only required to facilitate a fast charge (at a public charge point) when temperatures drop much below 10 degrees centigrade. Without conditioning the speed of fast charge drops considerably. The implication is that battery conditioning is not required at home where perhaps your maximin charge rate is only 7.4kwh . I think I received the advice in a YouTube video but I don’t recall the advice as being restricted to my make of vehicle. 
What I do recall about that advice is that fast ccs charging at a public charge point when it’s cold and you have not preconditioned your battery can take an age.

I hope this helps.  

I have just read your post again. Do you mean ‘preconditioning’ ie warming the battery to facilitate a charge or ‘conditioning’ ie warming up your vehicle on a cold morning before you drive? 
if ‘pre conditioning’ then my understanding is as above.

What prompted this debate for my vehicle is that on the Blue Link app the words ‘battery conditioning required’ appears in orange text at all times giving the appearance as highlighting the instruction. The general consensus is that it should not not be highlighted at all times, or at all.
I hope I haven’t misunderstood your point.

Hi , thanks for your comments. On the Tesla app, you can schedule when you want the car to be ready, Tesla calls it Precondition (appreciate that might be different from warming battery for charging) and makes sure the car is warm inside, though I think it may also warm the battery for regenerative charging. If it’s really cold regenerative charging gets switched off. Similar to yours it starts warming the battery for fast charge if driving to a charging destination.

Ideally, would prefer to do this from mains electricity rather than use up battery power, I think Tesla uses mains power if it’s available .

Hi folks - other than a two year old post I found in a search / I can’t find info on how OVO have set up the pre conditioning scenario. 
 

Charge Tesla overnight whatever time the Charge Anytime (CA) app chooses.

​​​​​Tesla is set to precondition the car and battery for a departure time. Let’s use 06:30 as an example

Does the CA app then block that? Or is there coding built in that allows this? 
 

I assume this will have been part of the testing and implementation side of things at some point so wouldn’t mind a guide to how that is expected to work 

The reason I ask is the way things ‘appear’ to work, no charge can be provided to the car without doing an actual boost charge which of course makes little sense as the car needs to decided when to draw house power for preconditioning as and when, based on all sorts of things (eg it’s currently iced up and -2C so it will need longer to precondition the battery)

Hi ​@scoob198,

Thanks for your post, I hope you’re doing well.  

I’ve reached out to the Charge Anytime team about this and they’ve confirmed:

Please bear in mind when you precondition your vehicle any charging that’s done while your car is heating up won’t be a smart charge, so it will be at your standard tariff rate. If you do precondition your vehicle unplug the charger first.

So Charge Anytime won’t stop your preconditioning from happening, but the preconditioning does override the cheaper charging rate if the vehicle is left plugged in. I hope this answers your question ​@scoob198?

Thanks. And thanks ever so much for asking the question for me
 

Yes that helps, but perhaps not 100% clear. 
 

So what many (me certainly and I’ve seen other questions about this across the internet) of us want to do is the opposite of the suggestion “unplug the charger”. 
We explicitly want to keep it plugged in, and let the car use the house electricity. Rate doesn’t matter - the primacy here is with using the cars features (especially battery preconditioning) without draining its battery. 
 

So that reply from the CA team is (I think) them thinking I’m worried about the cost. 
The concern is actually - will the car and charger be allowed by the CA app to draw charge? 
Their reply isn’t definitive about that (I understand why their reply was focussed on the charging rate - no problem … just looking for a reply on the CA app allowing it to happen for definite. Otherwise in v cold conditions the battery is being used materially rather than the house power)

Does that make sense? 
 

thanks again for taking the time to reply. 

Hi ​@scoob198,

So if you do leave the vehicle plugged in it will continue to charge whilst the car is preconditioning, so you’ll save battery this way, just the charging during the preconditioning will be charged at the normal unit rate. Hope that helps!

Cheers 😀

I have a sense I’m labouring this a bit. The reason is I’m not sure I’ve got a definitive iron clad answer (could be because this stuff is complicated) 

Definitively, will the CA app allow preconditioning of a vehicle to use house electricity is the following scenario 

• The car is charged to its defined limit already overnight, which was controlled by the CA app scheduling. Charging has now stopped. Car is at 80%. Let’s say that’s done by 06:00. 
• a few hours later the preconditioning cycle is set - and this is the car choosing to precondition based on the user setting that in the cars app as the OVO CA app doesn’t control that. 
• Let’s say that’s for an 09:00 departure. The car may start its preconditioning (battery / climate) half an hour in advance (but it’ll vary). 
• the car is still plugged in but the CA app doesn’t have any charging scheduled. 
• ignoring tariffs - what happens next. In the car restricted to inky preconditioning using it battery, or has the CA app been set up in a way that recognises that pull from the car as a need to supply electricity?

The replies from CA aren’t clear enough in that last point as the car doesn’t ’keep charging’ as it isn’t charging at that 09:00 preconditioning time. 

I could try and test this tomorrow morning but rather than individual customer trying test sxhenarions, was hoping there was a crystal clear yes or no on whether the car would be allowed to draw power from the charger or not (as the way the CA app ‘feels’ is that it wouldn’t). 
 

Sorry for long post. Trying to be more specific myself.  
 

​@scoob198 thanks for getting back in touch. I’ve reached out to the Charge Anytime team for more answers. 

In the meantime, I’m wondering whether ​@Jeffus may be able to shed some light on this?

​@scoob198 just to update you, the Charge Anytime team have requested that you email your question over to them if that’s ok? Their email address is chargeanytime@ovo.com.

Will do

Thanks ​@scoob198,

If you’d be happy to update us on your progress we’d appreciate it!

Cheers, and have a great weekend.

Hi,

my experience is that it won’t do what you want. The charge anytime app is the decider of when and what charge you get. I’m sometimes lucky and it will allow a smart charge at the required time. I think I raised a similar point to you earlier in another post.
 

however you can override it (manually) to get the preconditioning and assuming it’s fully charged from the overnight charge will only draw what it needs.

Share here if you get something different back from the team.

colin