Does the Mach E charge while waiting to charge?

[krafty81]

Recently made a change to charge between midnight and 5 AM based on my new time of use electric rates. I plugged the car in at 6 PM. App said "waiting to charge" until midnight. My home use spiked at a rate of 8.5 KWh from 6 to 8 PM. We were doing nothing in the house, most lights off, etc. The only way my power company could explain it was that the car was charging. Has anyone else seen this?

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[JohnFoxeSheets]

AFAIK I've not experienced that, but I've heard of the car continuing to charge past the end of the charging window if it needs to do so to reach the target charge (and I think preconditioning is also needed).

Do you have preconditioning enabled? If so, is there any chance that could have been triggered? What kind of EVSE do you have? If it's internet connected it may be able to show you when it charged your car. Also what's your EVSE capable of delivering to the car?

 

[RickMachE]

If the car doesn't think it can hit your target within the hours specified, it will start charging early. Faint possibility it did that at 6PM, by 8PM it realized it now could make it, stopped charging, and started again. Many utility companies provide hourly data that would tell you this.

If you're using the Ford Mobile Charger, it will run at a rate of 7.7kWh.

 

[Murse-In-Airy]

With such a short window, only 5 hours, the car will charge outside the window, up to the point where it knows it can reach the “maximum charge” requirement during your 5 hours. I’ve been complaining about the inappropriate use of the word maximum for years now. Someone at Ford failed the “greater than less than” part of basic math.

 

[krafty81]

With such a short window, only 5 hours, the car will charge outside the window, up to the point where it knows it can reach the “maximum charge” requirement during your 5 hours. I’ve been complaining about the inappropriate use of the word maximum for years now. Someone at Ford failed the “greater than less than” part of basic math.

Well that makes sense/no sense. I would think it could get 60% in five hours, maybe not. So I should set it to charge less than 80% or not let it get below 40% I guess. I wonder if I could tell my Chargepoint EVSE to not turn on until midnight. I will see if CP website has charge logs.

Update: I looked at my CP app logs and you are exactly right! It decided on it's own to charge between 6 and 8 PM, which happens to be the most expensive time to charge. My "fix" is to set it up to charge between midnight and 7 AM. That way, whatever I leave for work with early is what I get! Geez!

 

[JohnFoxeSheets]

Odd. I can plug in any time and the car only charges during off-peak rate times. Even if I plug in shortly before peak rates start, it will charge until the peak rate starts, then stop charging and start up again when we're back to off-peak. Note: I almost never use departure times, so I don't know what impact they might have on the above.

I used the "Provider and Plan" feature in FP to set my charge schedule. It automatically looks up the preferred charge times based on the lowest rates. (Go to the Vehicle tab, then select Charging, then Preferred Times, then the location where you'll be charging, and then scroll down to Preferred Charge Times. Below the section there you can set the times, there's the Provider and Plans section. That's where you set it up.)

 

[krafty81]

Looked them up and they are not quite right for my plan - NEM 1.0/TOU5

 

[EMachE]

Why not just plug in every night so that it doesn’t need to charge prior to the hours you set up.

 

[Jack Roberts]

Recently made a change to charge between midnight and 5 AM based on my new time of use electric rates. I plugged the car in at 6 PM. App said "waiting to charge" until midnight. My home use spiked at a rate of 8.5 KWh from 6 to 8 PM. We were doing nothing in the house, most lights off, etc. The only way my power company could explain it was that the car was charging. Has anyone else seen this?

Mine charges for about 1 min when plugged in and then interrupts the charge until the schedule time.

 

[AKgrampy]

Mine charges for about 1 min when plugged in and then interrupts the charge until the schedule time.

Demand is normally based on a rolling 15 minute average (if that is the issue) so 1 minute should not impact the charge that much.

 

[James III]

Well yes I just noticed exactly that lately on my 21 MME. and overcharging presets.
I definitely have preferred charge times 00:00 -05:00 set up for my home location, max 80%.
I have Intelligent Octopus @ £0.075 kWh from 23:30-05:30 daily. Unfortunately Ford in their great wisdom only allows on the hour pre-set times. Not rocket science for IT to change that, but obviously not priority.
Anyway the other night I was at 28% and plugged in about 23:00. App said waiting to charge, good! I got up around 08:00 and checked. It was 80% and stopped. but no FP messages?
Later that afternoon, I popped into th App to set up a trip. OMG it was 100% charge! ? I never touched a thing. But it was as if the ‘house ghost’ ? had pressed the ‘Charge to 100%’ and I can’t blame the wife. ?
Worse then the extra 17.5kW @ £0.29kWh. It’s the unintentional charging to 100% then sitting for a day before driving. Not good especially if a risk of happening often.?

 

[krafty81]

Why not just plug in every night so that it doesn’t need to charge prior to the hours you set up.

That is an option but I try to keep my "cycles" as low as possible. Will look at charging when I am at 30% instead of 20%. That way it just needs to go from 30 to 80, which it can hopefully do inside six hours.

 

[Adventureboy]

Recently made a change to charge between midnight and 5 AM based on my new time of use electric rates. I plugged the car in at 6 PM. App said "waiting to charge" until midnight. My home use spiked at a rate of 8.5 KWh from 6 to 8 PM. We were doing nothing in the house, most lights off, etc. The only way my power company could explain it was that the car was charging. Has anyone else seen this?

The car makes a somewhat intelligent decision especially if you have departure times set. It will calculate if it can make your SOC by the departure time or by the end of the charge window. If not, it will start charging when you plug it in to fill the gap. Once it hits a level that will fit in your charge window, it will stop and wait for the start of the charge window. I've seen this happen since the recent update.

 

[krafty81]

What the car does not know is that charging anytime outside of midnight to 6 AM costs and arm and a leg in CA!

 

[david_quick]

Recently made a change to charge between midnight and 5 AM based on my new time of use electric rates. I plugged the car in at 6 PM. App said "waiting to charge" until midnight. My home use spiked at a rate of 8.5 KWh from 6 to 8 PM. We were doing nothing in the house, most lights off, etc. The only way my power company could explain it was that the car was charging. Has anyone else seen this?

I saw yesterday that I could let the car pick charge times base on what the best times were as published by the power company. When I first got the car this was not available for my power supplier. Are you you using time you selected manually or did you use the automated option? If yo IM here uses the automatic one they may be your answer.

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