Charger often ignores preferred charging times

[nukeflyboy]

I always charge at home, 240v Ford charger, and want to restrict charging to peak daylight hours when my solar system can handle it. No departure time is set, preferred charging is 11AM to 4PM. Sometimes it follows this, often not, requiring a lot of oversight. Any ideas why the preferred charging time is being ignored? This is another one of those “it has a mind of its own” things, like periodically changing driving modes to engage from whisper, or the brake coach that has never worked.

Sponsored

 

[E90alex]

How many amps is your charger? What % is the car at when you plug in and what’s your target charge %?

 

[Mach-Lee]

I always charge at home, 240v Ford charger, and want to restrict charging to peak daylight hours when my solar system can handle it. No departure time is set, preferred charging is 11AM to 4PM. Sometimes it follows this, often not, requiring a lot of oversight. Any ideas why the preferred charging time is being ignored? This is another one of those “it has a mind of its own” things, like periodically changing driving modes to engage from whisper, or the brake coach that has never worked.

That's only a 5 hour charge window, the car will start charging immediately if it cannot finish before the end of the charging window. It needs to be long enough to allow a near full charge.

I suggest you make your charge window longer, e.g. 10 AM to 5 PM. Also make sure you have your target set to 90% or less, because 100% adds a lot of extra time to the equation.

 

[RickMachE]

Yup

 

[Bad Dolphin]

That's only a 5 hour charge window, the car will start charging immediately if it cannot finish before the end of the charging window. It needs to be long enough to allow a near full charge.

I suggest you make your charge window longer, e.g. 10 AM to 5 PM. Also make sure you have your target set to 90% or less, because 100% adds a lot of extra time to the equation.

I believe the OP is trying to do what we do, which is to charge only on solar. We would actually prefer that the charger only work during the indicated hours, even if that means we are not filling up all the way to 80%.

We have also throttled the charger back to 32amps, which seems to be yielding a 7.5 kw/hr charge rate. Because we often have clouds midday but clear skies either side of midday, that keeps the charger from exceeding our production rate.

For our Tesla Model 3 on the Tesla charger, we could actually change to charging rate during charging as the sun came out or was hidden in the Tesla app. I really miss this feature, especially since we've just added a VW ID BUZZ to the garage and both vehicles share the Ford Pro Charger.

I have noticed that you can start charging the Mach E outside of the window by selecting "start charging" in the app, but it seems to want to charge it 100% if you do this (even though I have an 80% limit set.) So I have to set an alarm to make sure I remember to manual Stop Charging.

 

[Mach-Lee]

I believe the OP is trying to do what we do, which is to charge only on solar. We would actually prefer that the charger only work during the indicated hours, even if that means we are not filling up all the way to 80%.

We have also throttled the charger back to 32amps, which seems to be yielding a 7.5 kw/hr charge rate. Because we often have clouds midday but clear skies either side of midday, that keeps the charger from exceeding our production rate.

For our Tesla Model 3 on the Tesla charger, we could actually change to charging rate during charging as the sun came out or was hidden in the Tesla app. I really miss this feature, especially since we've just added a VW ID BUZZ to the garage and both vehicles share the Ford Pro Charger.

I have noticed that you can start charging the Mach E outside of the window by selecting "start charging" in the app, but it seems to want to charge it 100% if you do this (even though I have an 80% limit set.) So I have to set an alarm to make sure I remember to manual Stop Charging.

If you only want it to charge during the specified time, you’ll have to set a schedule on the EVSE instead of the car.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

If you only want it to charge during the specified time, you’ll have to set a schedule on the EVSE instead of the car.

This.

I have mine set to charge 4 hours a day, starting after the solar batteries are full and giving enough time to refill them. Set the schedule on the EVSE or simply accept the fact that the car will charge early to get to your goal.

 

[Bad Dolphin]

If you only want it to charge during the specified time, you’ll have to set a schedule on the EVSE instead of the car.

Thanks. That's the way we have it set up through Ford Pass.

 

[Bad Dolphin]

This.

I have mine set to charge 4 hours a day, starting after the solar batteries are full and giving enough time to refill them. Set the schedule on the EVSE or simply accept the fact that the car will charge early to get to your goal.

We do have e it set up through the Ford Pass app and it has been working. EXCEPT we often get a failure notice if we plug in before the charging window, and have to go back to the vehicle to unplug and replug. Just happened this morning when I plugged in at 9:30 for a 10a-6p scheduled window.

And if we plug in during a non specified window and start charging from the app, it seems to want to charge to 100% in spite of our setting the charge limit at 80%. (The charge limit works fine during scheduled charging sessions.)

 

[RickMachE]

We do have e it set up through the Ford Pass app and it has been working. EXCEPT we often get a failure notice if we plug in before the charging window, and have to go back to the vehicle to unplug and replug. Just happened this morning when I plugged in at 9:30 for a 10a-6p scheduled window.

And if we plug in during a non specified window and start charging from the app, it seems to want to charge to 100% in spite of our setting the charge limit at 80%. (The charge limit works fine during scheduled charging sessions.)

START means charge to 100%.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

START means charge to 100%.

 

[Bad Dolphin]

START means charge to 100%.

In "FordEVspeak"

 

[nukeflyboy]

This didn’t get posted when I thought, so trying again.

The charging amps are variable from 6 to 48 amps (1.5 to 11.5 kw) and I always limit it to 90%. I often adjust the charging rate to balance the available solar power between the house loads (includes the charger) and 80 kwhr house batteries. Most of the time the charger starts and stops based on the preferred charging times but maybe 20% of the time it ignores it and starts immediately and never stops unless I intervene.
The comments above suggest that the charger will attempt to complete the charge in that window and if it can’t, will start immediately or keep charging beyond the cutoff time. That defeats the purpose of preferred charging times.
Having said that, yesterday the SOC was lower than normal, about 30%. I did not expect it to reach 90% with the charge rate selected. It started to charge immediately, several hours too soon. I had to intervene and stop it from my Ford app. Restarted it around 11AM but then it did not stop at 4PM.
What I am hearing is that the 90% is not a charge limit but a charge demand. Is that how this works?

 

[RickMachE]

This didn’t get posted when I thought, so trying again.

The charging amps are variable from 6 to 48 amps (1.5 to 11.5 kw) and I always limit it to 90%. I often adjust the charging rate to balance the available solar power between the house loads (includes the charger) and 80 kwhr house batteries. Most of the time the charger starts and stops based on the preferred charging times but maybe 20% of the time it ignores it and starts immediately and never stops unless I intervene.
The comments above suggest that the charger will attempt to complete the charge in that window and if it can’t, will start immediately or keep charging beyond the cutoff time. That defeats the purpose of preferred charging times.
Having said that, yesterday the SOC was lower than normal, about 30%. I did not expect it to reach 90% with the charge rate selected. It started to charge immediately, several hours too soon. I had to intervene and stop it from my Ford app. Restarted it around 11AM but then it did not stop at 4PM.
What I am hearing is that the 90% is not a charge limit but a charge demand. Is that how this works?

I think you're playing with semantics.

The 90% is what you want to charge to, whether it's a target or limit or a demand, or whatever. When you plug in, the vehicle calculates whether, in the hours you've specified for that location, it can reach the target number. This calculation is not perfect, in fact it's often quite a bit off. If it determines that you cannot reach the targeted 90% in the specified hours, it will start immediately (it doesn't say "I need an extra hour so start an hour early).

To stop this from happening you have 3 options:

1) Don't plug in until your hours begin.
2) Use an intelligent EVSE to prevent charging except during the hours you want (or, for 110v charging, get a WiFi outlet and set the hours).
3) Lower the limit from 90% to a number that it determines CAN be achieved during the specified hours, which of course changes depending on the SOC you start from.

 

[E90alex]

Having said that, yesterday the SOC was lower than normal, about 30%. I did not expect it to reach 90% with the charge rate selected.

That’s exactly why it started charging immediately, because it determined it couldn’t reach 90% within the allotted time.

Are you manually adjusting the amperage or is it automatic and tied into your solar setup? If you want it to strictly obey the charge window, you need to delete the preferred charge times in the car/FordPass and set up the charge window with your EVSE/charger instead.

Otherwise you’ll need to manually do some math each time based on your charge rate for that day to see how much energy you can add within your charge window and adjust the target charge % down accordingly in the car.

Sponsored