Charging rate limited to 3kwh with ohme

[mr87]

Hello guys,

I have 2021 Enyaq 80 and a ohme home pro with Octopus Intelligent. The charger is associated with OI, not the car.
Never had any issues with charging, until December last year, which coincidentally (or not) was went the car's software was upgraded to ME3.2.
Here's what is happening:
I plug the car and ohme calculates the charging schedule, as expected. When the charging starts, it only charges at 3kwh. I thought it could be the charger sending only 3kwh on purpose, so to exclude this, I go the ohme app and set the charging to "Max Charging" (which should send 7kwh), and nothing changes, i.e., the car is still charging at 3kwh.

The only workaround that I found is to go to the "My Skoda" app, click the "Stop Charging" button and then "Start Charging". After this, the car starts charging at 7kwh without any changes in the ohme app.
Additionally, if the charging schedule calculated by ohme includes several charging blocks during the night, then this issue will happen for every block.

All the charging settings in the car are the default ones. i.e. charging location, times, etc. And the "Current limiting" option is also disabled in the app.

I don't know if this is a problem with the car or the charger, but honestly I think it's the it's the car.

Does anyone had any similar issues?

[Panagon]

Yes, I have the same issue with my Zappi charger. It appears to be the negotiation with the car and charger decides on the lower rate of charge. It seems to happen when the car/charger has been waiting for Octopus to start the charge.

I can change mine by dropping the zappi into eco charge (where it maintains 1.5kw) and then setting it to fast again. This causes a renegotiation which results in full charging speed. As you indicated, this is not a good solution in the middle of the night.

[Aragorn]

I had something similar happen at my old workplace.

They had a basic wallbox which a few people shared. If i arrived at work and the charger was busy, i would plug the cable into the car, and leave the other end hanging over the wallbox. The other guy could then plug it in when he finished.

Some of the time when it was plugged in by someone else, it would start charging at 3kw. If however i walked upto the car, unlocked it and plugged it in, it would always charge at full speed. Seemed to be related to "sleeping car" + no charger on the end of the cable

I think part of the issue is that there is no correctly defined state for the charger to say "i'm here, but not ready to supply power, i'll be ready soon, please wait" in the J1772 standard. All the signalling states assume the charger is ready to go. I think different charger makers use different methods to try and signal that state to the car and some unexpected results come out of it.

Before i was on IO, i had a super basic charge point and a timeswitch which turned the controller off outside of peak hours. That setup never caused any issues and always charged at full speed. Now i let octopus control the car and the charger is just on 24/7.

[mr87]

I had something similar happen at my old workplace.

They had a basic wallbox which a few people shared. If i arrived at work and the charger was busy, i would plug the cable into the car, and leave the other end hanging over the wallbox. The other guy could then plug it in when he finished.

Some of the time when it was plugged in by someone else, it would start charging at 3kw. If however i walked upto the car, unlocked it and plugged it in, it would always charge at full speed. Seemed to be related to "sleeping car" + no charger on the end of the cable

I think part of the issue is that there is no correctly defined state for the charger to say "i'm here, but not ready to supply power, i'll be ready soon, please wait" in the J1772 standard. All the signalling states assume the charger is ready to go. I think different charger makers use different methods to try and signal that state to the car and some unexpected results come out of it.

Before i was on IO, i had a super basic charge point and a timeswitch which turned the controller off outside of peak hours. That setup never caused any issues and always charged at full speed. Now i let octopus control the car and the charger is just on 24/7.

I was thinking about adding the car to OI instead of the charger, but skoda services are not great and sometimes are unavailable. Do you have any issues with your setup? For example if the My Skoda app is not available.

[Panagon]

As it is happening with different chargers I would suspect it's the car software that's the problem.

[Aragorn]

I've had the car added to IO since the integration became available and its been pretty much perfect TBH. Maybe once or twice in 2 years has it gitched and done something a bit weird and not fully charged.

Got my car back from the dealer after 3 months of not using IO, plugged it in and within 10minutes i had the charge schedule.

I think its actually smoother using the car integration, as Octopus can see the SoC and seamlessly just create the charge plan without having to go in and edit how much charge you want.

[orrery]

I find the car integration to be unreliable. The mobile signal to car isn't great and the car refuses to use the WiFi for this (apparently).
To make it work more reliably I set the charger to 'timed' 11.30 to 5.30. That way, if OIG doesn't react to the charger activation (through either Octopus or Skoda being down, or the comms being flakey) the car will just start to charge and go to 100%.