Off Peak Charging - could Porsche have made it any more difficult!

[Shug]

I finally managed to get Off Peak charging at my house and delved into what I thought would be an obvious part of the system - tell the car what the off-peak times are and that would be it.

I spent hours looking for that setting and was incredulous to find that there is no such option. Instead you can only get close to this if you use many tedious steps.

There may be an easy way to achieve this with Octopus, but without their subscription and app, this is as close as I could manage.

The settings in PCM are the same as in the App, so will describe the steps I used in the app.

Step 1.

Select Vehicle Details

Step 2

Select Functions

Step 3

Select Charging then Profiles and set up a location-based profile at your house with the off-peak hours.

The minimum charge is important since the car will start charging to get you to this minimum as soon as you plug in. The lowest it will go is 25%

Surprisingly, it appears Porche ignores the last step since to get the car to stop charging at the desired time, you have to tell the car it is about to go on a journey.

Step 4 is therefore to set a timer to tell the car about your journey.

The timer menu is accessed from the same page as the Profiles.

Step 5 is also managed here.

I have 5 hours off-peak available from my supplier.

My charger provides 6.5 Kw/hr, so the most I can charge off-peak is 5hrs * 6.5 kw = 32.5 Kw.

The battery in my Taycan is the Performance Battery Plus, which offers 93.4 kWh (83.7 usable)

I can therefore charge the Taycan battery by 38%, so to get this to work only within the off-peak hours, you have to select a final charge that is less than 38% above the charge in the car at this time.

The reason the above works is that Porsche will time the charge to stop at 5:00 am in this case and it calculates back from this point to commence charging.

Many will no doubt think that all of the above is mad and I agree.

Perhaps there is a setting I have missed somewhere that would allow a simple setting to only use off-peak charging. Hopefully someone will clarify a better way.

Am off to look at Octopus to see if their app is reliable and will allow for a simple off-peak charging process.

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[RBGtaycan]

I finally managed to get Off Peak charging at my house and delved into what I thought would be an obvious part of the system - tell the car what the off-peak times are and that would be it.

I spent hours looking for that setting and was incredulous to find that there is no such option. Instead you can only get close to this if you use many tedious steps.

There may be an easy way to achieve this with Octopus, but without their subscription and app, this is as close as I could manage.

The settings in PCM are the same as in the App, so will describe the steps I used in the app.

Step 1.

Select Vehicle Details

Step 2

Select Functions

Step 3

Select Charging then Profiles and set up a location-based profile at your house with the off-peak hours.

The minimum charge is important since the car will start charging to get you to this minimum as soon as you plug in. The lowest it will go is 25%

Surprisingly, it appears Porche ignores the last step since to get the car to stop charging at the desired time, you have to tell the car it is about to go on a journey.

Step 4 is therefore to set a timer to tell the car about your journey.

The timer menu is accessed from the same page as the Profiles.

Step 5 is also managed here.

I have 5 hours off-peak available from my supplier.

My charger provides 6.5 Kw/hr, so the most I can charge off-peak is 5hrs * 6.5 kw = 32.5 Kw.

The battery in my Taycan is the Performance Battery Plus, which offers 93.4 kWh (83.7 usable)

I can therefore charge the Taycan battery by 38%, so to get this to work only within the off-peak hours, you have to select a final charge that is less than 38% above the charge in the car at this time.

The reason the above works is that Porsche will time the charge to stop at 5:00 am in this case and it calculates back from this point.

Many will no doubt think that all of the above is mad and I agree.

Perhaps there is a setting I have missed somewhere that would allow a simple setting to only use off-peak charging. Hopefully someone will clarify a better way.

Am off to look at Octopus to see if their app is reliable and will allow for a simple off-peak charging process.

When I setup my Taycan for off peak charging, I spent days of trying, testing, failing until I got it to work (German software engineering at its "best")...Then I got a KIA EV6 and it took about 3 minutes..what a contrast!

 

[j.w.s]

I finally managed to get Off Peak charging at my house and delved into what I thought would be an obvious part of the system - tell the car what the off-peak times are and that would be it.

I spent hours looking for that setting and was incredulous to find that there is no such option. Instead you can only get close to this if you use many tedious steps.

There may be an easy way to achieve this with Octopus, but without their subscription and app, this is as close as I could manage.

...

This is 100% true and - maddeningly - it's a problem that could be easily fixed in software. The Taycan has every technial feature needed to precisely control charging, but the software developers made a mess of it with their horribly obtuse implementation.
I want to sit the Porsche developers down in almost any other EV to show them how it should be done.

 

[Shug]

Looking at the Octopus option.

Intelligent Octopus Go | UK's favorite EV tariff | Octopus Energy

The Taycan options are a bit vague.

There are no Porsche chargers listed (what I have), it's completely dumb anyway, so is not part of the story.

According to their website, the Octopus app does not interact directly with the Taycan.

 

[DerekS]

I couldn't agree more. Porsche took an extremely simple concept and overengineered the hell out of it.

 

[Sace]

I agree that using the car for this kind of scheduling is a nightmare.

Luckily the most common around here is that the chargers are smart and control all of the scheduling. My home chargers are both hooked up to an app that controls charge times depending on schedule or prices.

I very rarely touch the cars timer/profile settings.

 

[W1NGE]

I finally managed to get Off Peak charging at my house and delved into what I thought would be an obvious part of the system - tell the car what the off-peak times are and that would be it.

I spent hours looking for that setting and was incredulous to find that there is no such option. Instead you can only get close to this if you use many tedious steps.

There may be an easy way to achieve this with Octopus, but without their subscription and app, this is as close as I could manage.

The settings in PCM are the same as in the App, so will describe the steps I used in the app.

Step 1.

Select Vehicle Details

Step 2

Select Functions

Step 3

Select Charging then Profiles and set up a location-based profile at your house with the off-peak hours.

The minimum charge is important since the car will start charging to get you to this minimum as soon as you plug in. The lowest it will go is 25%

Surprisingly, it appears Porche ignores the last step since to get the car to stop charging at the desired time, you have to tell the car it is about to go on a journey.

Step 4 is therefore to set a timer to tell the car about your journey.

The timer menu is accessed from the same page as the Profiles.

Step 5 is also managed here.

I have 5 hours off-peak available from my supplier.

My charger provides 6.5 Kw/hr, so the most I can charge off-peak is 5hrs * 6.5 kw = 32.5 Kw.

The battery in my Taycan is the Performance Battery Plus, which offers 93.4 kWh (83.7 usable)

I can therefore charge the Taycan battery by 38%, so to get this to work only within the off-peak hours, you have to select a final charge that is less than 38% above the charge in the car at this time.

The reason the above works is that Porsche will time the charge to stop at 5:00 am in this case and it calculates back from this point to commence charging.

Many will no doubt think that all of the above is mad and I agree.

Perhaps there is a setting I have missed somewhere that would allow a simple setting to only use off-peak charging. Hopefully someone will clarify a better way.

Am off to look at Octopus to see if their app is reliable and will allow for a simple off-peak charging process.

The solution here is to use something like Ovo's Charge Anytime service. Talks directly to the PCM, uses the Ovo App and pay £0.07p / kw for anytime of the day charging. Brilliant - worked flawlessly for me.

Prior to that I used profile + timer which to be honest I found very easy to do to manage my off peak period.

Repeating timers are necessary as the logic of stop start is controlled by the next charging event.

The forum is littered with charging advice but dig back to 2021 posts and you'll uncover step by step guidance from myself and others (UK based) on trouble free charging session control using My Porsche App, Porsche EVSEs - PMCC & PMC+ - relevant to J1.1 generation cars.

 

[Bennachie]

Octopus manages mine seamlessly. Charges 'outside' of off peak too (at off peak rates) if there are plenty of green electrons about

 

[Shug]

Thanks Bennachie,

Is it the charger or the car that Octopus are managing?

 

[Shug]

Thanks W1NGE

I trawled through may posts but could not find the details I was looking for.

Great explanation and have reached out to Ovo.

There is very little to choose cost wise from the suppliers even with off peak charging.

The more we can do to use energy at night is environmentally the right thing to do.

 

[AceArora]

Use the app for your charging station. I have pod point and set the timer on the pod point app.

 

[Dave Birch]

Octopus manages mine seamlessly. Charges 'outside' of off peak too (at off peak rates) if there are plenty of green electrons about

Me too. No settings in PCM at all, just tell Octopus when I want it charged by and to what percentage. The only issue I have had is when the car thought I was still on a journey and charged up to 100% overnight. So now I cancel any journeys in the nav

 

[tophamn]

Thanks Bennachie,

Is it the charger or the car that Octopus are managing?

I have Octopus and they control my wall-box (MyEnergi Zappi); I found their control of the car directly very unreliable. Also, as you have discovered, the options for control are limited.

 

[GMarcs66]

It can be a nightmare. My solution is set charger (Andersen) for 11-30-0530 turn of octopus intelligence as this messes up system and they don’t always charge at lower rate when out of cheap hours. Set Porsche profile to 80% max, though this isn’t strictly necessary if you wait till your low. Been great for a couple years now.
If I need less charge I have set different timers on Andersen app 4hrs 3hrs etc. girl in octopus told me to turn of intelligent in app as this is what she done with her Tesla.

 

[W1NGE]

Thanks W1NGE

I trawled through may posts but could not find the details I was looking for.

Great explanation and have reached out to Ovo.

There is very little to choose cost wise from the suppliers even with off peak charging.

The more we can do to use energy at night is environmentally the right thing to do.

Only these settings in the Ovo app which then automatically creates a profile as required when charging is cheap and within the departure time you set.

You can continue to use My Porsche to set cabin preconditioning but not to control a charging session unless away from home which isn't registered for Ovo.

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