National Grid Massachusetts new Charging Program

OWG

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We have Eversource for electric and they have the ability to limit my thermostat setting in the summer, but they send a notification when they're doing it, which I can then choose to override. And, they don't shut off the AC, but just bump the temperature setting up a little bit.

I would hope any car charging events would be similarly handled in the future.
The MME doesn't support this currently, but if the utility told the car to only draw 15A for a couple hours instead of 40A, that would be fine with me. Aggregated across several hundred cars in a region and that would really help reduce usage during peak events.
It seems there are two programs at work with NG:
Ford Mustang Mach-E National Grid Massachusetts new Charging Program 1651233559675

This seems to be what they are branding as Connected Solutions.

The PHEV Program (or EV and PHEV Program) is broken for Ford:
Ford Mustang Mach-E National Grid Massachusetts new Charging Program 1651234922305
 

OWG

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So at the bottom it says Connect your Vehicle OR Charger so can you just link it to the Charge Point if you have one?
@oadesign
Bob,
Which path did you follow, FordPass or ChargePoint? What was you experience?
 

Gullwingdmc

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Heads up,
I emailed national grid about not connecting to the ford pass account and they said you could just select a “dumb” car from the list and just connect the charger.

I went to try it today but now it doesn’t like my national grid electric account, but it was fine with that yesterday. I’ve got an email in about that now.
 

Gullwingdmc

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Finally got it setup without connecting it to my ford account.
Here’s how,
When it asks you to pick a vehicle, pick VW, then pick the eGolf, then pick any trim. It won’t ask you to log in.

Next setup your ChargePoint access and your home location. I had to use the “find my location” feature for the home location because it didn’t recognize any address I typed in.

Then you are brought to the main screen of the app. Go to Account, Settings, Vehicle, Update Vehicle. Now pick Ford, Mustang, and your trim. When it brings you to the screen asking you to log in to FordPass there is now a skip button in the upper right. Do that and you can bypass the Ford log in. That skip button is missing from the initial setup.

Now to see if this all actually works!
Ford Mustang Mach-E National Grid Massachusetts new Charging Program C686A0B4-FD73-4D50-A268-4DE93114CAC2
Ford Mustang Mach-E National Grid Massachusetts new Charging Program F61CBA4C-28FF-49DF-BE3B-32EC0444214C
 

Gullwingdmc

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Update on this saga. After I got all this set up I tried plugging my car in aaaaand it wouldn’t charge. The CP app just kept spinning like it was waiting for something, the car said charging paused. Tried my husbands MME, same response.

Went in to the CP app and removed The connection to EV Energy and magically it all worked again.

I wonder if this was because I plugged in at 5pm (peak) and it was preventing the charging from starting. Either way, another big NO. Sent a support email in. I’m curious if anyone else has had this issue.
 


Gullwingdmc

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Heads back from National Grid today. I guess it’s a known issue and they are working on fixing it. They recommended I disconnect the ChargePoint for now and offered to reimburse me if I send the records in manually after the problem is fixed. So that’a good response!

We've become aware of a reporting issue with ChargePoints to our app and we're very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused. Our engineers are currently working hard on fixing the issue
 

Eric_C_Boston

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I signed up for the Smart Charge app since I will earn more than $20 a year in rebates. It is too bad they do not support more EVSEs. The OpenEVSE I have supports OCPP 1.6.

The reason the app needs the car's location is to see if you are charging at home (within a 500 foot radius).

One problem I saw on my initial charge is some of the charge was considered peak. The graph showed the peak part of the charge starting at 8 PM when I plugged in at 9:05. It looks like the peak/off-peak calculation is not considering DST.

PS: I reported the problem through the link in the app.
 
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OWG

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One problem I saw on my initial charge is some of the charge was considered peak. The graph showed the peak part of the charge starting at 8 PM when I plugged in at 9:05. It looks like the peak/off-peak calculation is not considering DST.

PS: I reported the problem through the link in the app.
Ford Mustang Mach-E National Grid Massachusetts new Charging Program 1654516629207

They definitely have a DST issue. Note the +5. Should be +4. From an incorrect charging response.
 

Gullwingdmc

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They are working hard on bugs. I just heard back from one of their support reps and they are close to fixing all the issues with the ChargePoint integration.
 

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I had a problem with the app connecting to my FordPass account. It would go through to the verifying vehicle step and just go back to the connect to FordPass screen.

I logged into my Ford Account on the website and was greeted with a popup to acknowledge new terms and conditions. I did that and was able to use the website.

After I acknowledged the new terms and conditions, the app automatically connected and updated when I ran it again.
 

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After I acknowledged the new terms and conditions, the app automatically connected and updated when I ran it again.
Have you shared that back with ChargeSmartMA?

When I reported the issue they seem somewhat confused: "Yes, unfortunately we've received a number of reports from other Ford owners so we're opening an investigation to understand what is causing these tokens to continuously expire. We hope to have a quick resolution for this issue but in any case, we will keep you posted on any progress."
Sponsored

 
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