Home charging schedule / ToU

[ADDZ71]

I am hoping that someone can give me guidance. I have a schedule set up for my MME (currently 1-6 am). Last Thursday when I arrived home with ~15% SOC and plugged in at 7 pm it began charging until it reached the 90% level. It did not follow the schedule in the least. I had originally created the schedule on the FordPass app so I deleted it there and did the schedule in the car. I also though it could have potentially been the low SOC and colder temps that caused it to begin charging. Fast forward to today and I went out this afternoon and returned home with ~81% SOC and plugged the car in thinking it would start charging at 1 AM. About 15 minutes after plugging in I get a notification that it will need to charge outside of my preferred hours since I have a departure time scheduled for tomorrow (6:45 AM). I then look in the Chargepoint app and see that it started charging at my normal rate (7.5 kW) right after I plugged in and charged for 30 minutes before shutting down. The FP app says it will charge beginning at 1 AM and reach the desired level by 2:15 AM. Can anyone shed any light into why it start charging immediately? How do I get the car to actually follow the schedule. BTW the outside temp was 45F.

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[hybrid2bev]

I am hoping that someone can give me guidance. I have a schedule set up for my MME (currently 1-6 am). Last Thursday when I arrived home with ~15% SOC and plugged in at 7 pm it began charging until it reached the 90% level. It did not follow the schedule in the least. I had originally created the schedule on the FordPass app so I deleted it there and did the schedule in the car. I also though it could have potentially been the low SOC and colder temps that caused it to begin charging. Fast forward to today and I went out this afternoon and returned home with ~81% SOC and plugged the car in thinking it would start charging at 1 AM. About 15 minutes after plugging in I get a notification that it will need to charge outside of my preferred hours since I have a departure time scheduled for tomorrow (6:45 AM). I then look in the Chargepoint app and see that it started charging at my normal rate (7.5 kW) right after I plugged in and charged for 30 minutes before shutting down. The FP app says it will charge beginning at 1 AM and reach the desired level by 2:15 AM. Can anyone shed any light into why it start charging immediately? How do I get the car to actually follow the schedule. BTW the outside temp was 45F.

Set your charging hours schedule in the ChargePoint app too. Then the car cannot charge outside of the schedule. (This is what I do.)

If the car thinks that it cannot reach your SOC within your short schedule then it will charge immediately. The car prioritizes reaching the SOC over following the time schedule.

 

[ADDZ71]

In this case it did not prioritize reaching the SOC because it could have easily accomplished that in the charging window. I will keep fiddling and see if I can make it work. It seems to be working somewhat but not sure why it started charging immediately upon being plugged in rather than before or after the scheduled window.

 

[hybrid2bev]

In this case it did not prioritize reaching the SOC because it could have easily accomplished that in the charging window. I will keep fiddling and see if I can make it work. It seems to be working somewhat but not sure why it started charging immediately upon being plugged in rather than before or after the scheduled window.

And that’s the issue. You and I know that if the car is at 81% it should easily reach the set SOC within the time schedule. But the car sometimes does a terrible job at estimating the time it needs. Hence it starts charging immediately. Set the time schedule on your EVSE and you’ll never charge off-schedule again (unless you specifically override it).

And don’t ever fully trust what FordPass says.

 

[ADDZ71]

Thanks! My ChargePoint charger only allows one window to charge where I need two. The FP app allows at least two which works well. I may end up just broadening the window for winter charging. The ToU rate here is lowest from 1-3 am. I may just bump it to 5am.

 

[Mach-Lee]

That’s a really short charging window, I recommend making it at least 6 hours long. In your case I would make it from 1 AM to 7 AM in the car. That will allow it to use a little bit for power for your departure time.

 

[ADDZ71]

That’s a really short charging window, I recommend making it at least 6 hours long. In your case I would make it from 1 AM to 7 AM in the car. That will allow it to use a little bit for power for your departure time.

Yeah - the best option would be two windows where I charge from 1-3 and then from 11a-4p. I opened it up to 1-5a o see if that gets better. The winter schedule for ToU is a little wacky in that there are multiple windows to get the lowest rate. Summer is a little easier since the window is continuous and runs a little longer.

 

[Mach-Lee]

Yeah - the best option would be two windows where I charge from 1-3 and then from 11a-4p. I opened it up to 1-5a o see if that gets better. The winter schedule for ToU is a little wacky in that there are multiple windows to get the lowest rate. Summer is a little easier since the window is continuous and runs a little longer.

Who cares if you use a couple kilowatts during the mid-peak times? That probably won’t end up costing you much. My point is I think you are creating a lot of aggravation with the narrow charging windows that will probably only save you $5/mo. You don’t always have to get the lowest rate all the time. It’s okay to charge during the mid-peaks sometimes, and it’s not going to cost you a lot of money if it only happens a couple times per month.

If you still have charging issues, think about what I said and lengthen your charge window. That’s just a quirk of how charging works on the Mach-E.

 

[ADDZ71]

Who cares if you use a couple kilowatts during the mid-peak times? That probably won’t end up costing you much. My point is I think you are creating a lot of aggravation with the narrow charging windows that will probably only save you $5/mo. You don’t always have to get the lowest rate all the time. It’s okay to charge during the mid-peaks sometimes, and it’s not going to cost you a lot of money if it only happens a couple times per month.

If you still have charging issues, think about what I said and lengthen your charge window. That’s just a quirk of how charging works on the Mach-E.

No worries. I just shifted to the ToU rate and the 6-9 am window is 3x the 1-3 am window. I was not avoiding the mid peak hours just trying to figure out the logic the FordPass and ChargePoint handshake was doing. I think what tripped the system up was the departure time setting. I will delete that and see if it works as desired.

 

[AKgrampy]

No worries. I just shifted to the ToU rate and the 6-9 am window is 3x the 1-3 am window. I was not avoiding the mid peak hours just trying to figure out the logic the FordPass and ChargePoint handshake was doing. I think what tripped the system up was the departure time setting. I will delete that and see if it works as desired.

No expert here but there are threads where others have reported issues trying to manage charging by setting charging windows in both their car and their EVSE. I would recommend trying to use the car only to control the charging now that you realize that setting a departure time will override the charge window and see how that works. Of course the narrow windows you mentioned may not fully charge a car at 15% SOC in a 24 hour period.

 

[GuliblGuy]

I believe if you have a 1:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. Window set and then another one after it, it's going to think that by 3:00 a.m. it needs to reach your 90% of the state of charge or whatever you had it set at... So it's going to start charging immediately regardless because of where it thinks it needs to be by the end of your first charge session.

 

[RickMachE]

I believe if you have a 1:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. Window set and then another one after it, it's going to think that by 3:00 a.m. it needs to reach your 90% of the state of charge or whatever you had it set at... So it's going to start charging immediately regardless because of where it thinks it needs to be by the end of your first charge session.

That is correct. If the car has a target set, and it calculates that it can't hit that target in the scheduled time, it will start charging immediately. The only way to prevent this is to either unplug the car, or to set a schedule in the EVSE, preventing the car from charging.

This is also true of 120v charging, basically you have to buy an outlet timer to stop it from charging.

 

[nashbrydges]

Set your charging hours schedule in the ChargePoint app too. Then the car cannot charge outside of the schedule. (This is what I do.)

If the car thinks that it cannot reach your SOC within your short schedule then it will charge immediately. The car prioritizes reaching the SOC over following the time schedule.

I've avoided setting a time window in my EVSE because I found that if I set a departure time in the car, the EVSE refused to provide power if that departure was outside the scheduled active window. Because of that I only set charge times in the car and allow my EVSE to power at any time the car asks.

 

[hybrid2bev]

I've avoided setting a time window in my EVSE because I found that if I set a departure time in the car, the EVSE refused to provide power if that departure was outside the scheduled active window. Because of that I only set charge times in the car and allow my EVSE to power at any time the car asks.

True.

I fixed that by only departing during my ToU charging window. ?

 

[ADDZ71]

just to finish this thread. it will only charge during the window unless you have preconditioning set. If you limit the time windows it does not attempt to reach the limit unless you have a departure time set. Then it will attempt to reach the limit before departure and ignore the windows. In my case it charged from 40-70 % during the first window and then completed the charge to 90% in the second window.

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