Home Charging Methods & Tariffs in the UK

[BigBob]

Lots of similar guidance on other threads

I switched to OVO and rely on the Charge Anytime app for automatic control of the PCM profile and timers - works seamlessly and at 10p / kWh it's a no brainer for home charging.

First day for, Ovo charge anytime for me. I'm not entirely sure if i need to turn off my 'general profile' in the PCM (which is currently set to 85%). Or does the Ovo thingy override these?

Thanks and apologies in advance as this has no doubt been asked (and answered) before!

edit

I'll answer my own question partially. I see ovo has paused my charge at about 40% until 11pm. So i guess the general profile is override by ovo on the way up.
.

I guess supplementary question is if i have maximum charge level (in the ovo charging schedule tab) set to 90%, will that also override my PCM general profile of stopping at 85%?

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[W1NGE]

First day for, Ovo charge anytime for me. I'm not entirely sure if i need to turn off my 'general profile' in the PCM (which is currently set to 85%). Or does the Ovo thingy override these?

Thanks and apologies in advance as this has no doubt been asked (and answered) before!

edit

I'll answer my own question partially. I see ovo has paused my charge at about 40% until 11pm. So i guess the general profile is override by ovo on the way up.
.

I guess supplementary question is if i have maximum charge level (in the ovo charging schedule tab) set to 90%, will that also override my PCM general profile of stopping at 85%?

Everything is overridden.

A profile called enode is created when in use

Set you min, target and ready by in the OVO app.

 

[D00]

First day for, Ovo charge anytime for me. I'm not entirely sure if i need to turn off my 'general profile' in the PCM (which is currently set to 85%). Or does the Ovo thingy override these?

Thanks and apologies in advance as this has no doubt been asked (and answered) before!

edit

I'll answer my own question partially. I see ovo has paused my charge at about 40% until 11pm. So i guess the general profile is override by ovo on the way up.
.

I guess supplementary question is if i have maximum charge level (in the ovo charging schedule tab) set to 90%, will that also override my PCM general profile of stopping at 85%?

Was your own profile set with a minimum charge (after plug in) of 40%? Or is that OVO’s ENODE profile spreading the load up to the completion time and target you set in their app?

 

[BigBob]

Was your own profile set with a minimum charge (after plug in) of 40%? Or is that OVO’s ENODE profile spreading the load up to the completion time and target you set in their app?

In the ovo app, i had 30-85% as the range.

My general profile was set at 85% before i adopted ovo, but car has just come back today from the garage having a new 22kw onboard charger fitted, so i guess they could have changed that!
When i look at profiles on the porsche app currently, my general profile seems to be toggled off and charge set to 25%. I guess this must be the enode thingy. Dunno. Will have a look in the car in the morning/on the app when it's unplugged.

Not sure exactly why it stopped at 40% first time, but i'm guessing it was just 5pm and coming in to peak usage time.
Anyway, it started charging again at 11pm, so guess the ovo app is spreading the load/skewing the charge to overnight. I did fiddle about with the 'ready by' time on the ovo app to see if i could make it start charging sooner, but it didn't. Still I'm in the money by £2.66 right now. Yeaaay.

 

[W1NGE]

Was your own profile set with a minimum charge (after plug in) of 40%? Or is that OVO’s ENODE profile spreading the load up to the completion time and target you set in their app?

This could be due to the periods when electricity was cheapest as the charging may not take place in one contiguous block - charge - pause - charge

 

[BigBob]

This could be due to the periods when electricity was cheapest as the charging may not take place in one contiguous block - charge - pause - charge

Another question on ovo, sorry. I've noticed that some function is now setting timers in the porsche app, which seem a bit random, but i know it's not me as i've never used them in the past.

I have deleted a couple of them (probably shouldn't have in hindsight i guess) but right now i have the ovo app set to 100% at 6.20am tomorrow (Friday). But a ready for departure timer in the porsche app has activate for 100% charge at 7.05 on Sunday!

Profile is set to enode.

Should i just ignore it.?

 

[kurand]

Enode is used by OVO via the Porsche charging API to modulate charging to grid usage. Enode can get set to some very strange times and charge states so that charging is paused. Later, OVOs back end servers reset enode to start the charging process according to your schedule and SoC. Generally, this works reasonably, but fails miserably whenever the car cannot be contacted to adjust enode. I’ve had this happen a few times (car is garages). Sometimes the car ends up not being charged from some arbitrary intermediate SoC; other times it has ended up being charged to 100%.

I’d recommend anyone wanting to charge their Taycan with either OVO or Octopus EV schemes uses one of their supported chargers rather than relying on Porsche’s flakey connectivity. Doing so should result in more reliable charging and has the additional benefit of including charger and cable losses in the discount rate.

 

[D00]

I have used the Porsche supplied dumb charger with OVO Anytime and then with Octopus Intelligent . Both use ENODE profiles.
I experienced flakiness with OVO (car charging to 100% regardless of OVO app being set to require 85%). After switching to Octopus Intelligent, their flakiness was the other way round - the Octopus app charging % not being fulfilled.
I‘ve been waiting for Octopus to advise what the problem is since 6/8/23.
It was unclear to me if the OVO and Octopus flakiness is unreliable connectivity, their misunderstanding, or unreliable beta systems. Their logs should include connectivity failures. It should be easy for them to advise quickly if that is the issue.
From email conversations with OVO, they did not appear to understand the purpose of the Profile settings. I gave up when Octopus announced direct support for the Taycan regardless of having a compatible charger and reduced their standard rate to match OVO’s.
Despite escalation, after almost 4 weeks, Octopus have not given me a diagnosis of their problem or confirmed that they’ll adjust my bill for the days I had to bump charge.
From my Octopus experience, the most reliable answer if you don’t have one of their compatible chargers is to delete the car as a device from the Octopus app and use only the Porsche App/The PCM to set your preferred charging times and percentage. Delete the ENODE profile and create your own profile and timer.
A dumb charger, a 23:30-05:30 car profile and an 85% by 05:30 car timer works reliably for me. On one occasion the 85% target was exceeded, but that was because I had used a public charger, had set the car to do a direct (instant) charge but didn’t unset that afterwards.
If you do have an OI compatible charger, you could delete the car (device) from their app and use either the car‘s charging scheduler or the charger’s scheduler, as in Nick’s suggestion above.

 

[W1NGE]

Another question on ovo, sorry. I've noticed that some function is now setting timers in the porsche app, which seem a bit random, but i know it's not me as i've never used them in the past.

I have deleted a couple of them (probably shouldn't have in hindsight i guess) but right now i have the ovo app set to 100% at 6.20am tomorrow (Friday). But a ready for departure timer in the porsche app has activate for 100% charge at 7.05 on Sunday!

Profile is set to enode.

Should i just ignore it.?

Generally, just let OVO do its thing and it should disable your other profiles and timers as needed.

If you have other location based profiles which aren't your home location then these should activate as normal when at that location,- OVO will only take control when at the address of where you registered.

If things have got muddled just delete everything and start over by disconnecting your OVO account.

Deactivating other non OVO profiles and timers manually should also work.

 

[Graeme]

Thanks for a great write-up. Can I ask, do you have Porsche Connect/still in subscription for the vehicle or have you had to subscribe?

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