Once only activate or deactivate scheduled charge

Feature Requests
1

Scenario:
I want most charging to occur from solar so mostly I don’t want a scheduled overnight off peak charge to run, but I do want solar charging to run during the day if enough solar generation. For this reason I always connect my charge when at home. Occasionally during the week I have the need to top up my battery by charging from the grid during off peak hours overnight. When this is necessary varies from week to week depending on my vehicle usage and the amount of solar generation.

Issue:

To activate, ad-hoc, a scheduled overnight charging period involves tapping through multiple menu levels to select or unselect the relevant day on which the ad-how session should run. See video for the 6 selections that are required. I find this frustratingly cumbersome when having to do a few times each week.

For example, by default I have an overnight scheduled charging period 22:00 - 04:00 set to all days unselected. This is because solar charging generally meets my needs. However, if I find on a particular Tuesday that I need a top-up, I will tap into the schedule and activate ‘Tuesday’ so my vehicle will charge that night (attached video). In the ensuing days I then need to deactivate Tuesday because I may not need it to charge the Tuesday in the following week - it will depend on my vehicle usage and the amount of solar generation. This involves repeating all the steps again. If I don’t do so, the risk is simply that I will charge unnecessarily from the grid until I reach the charge limit, increasing my costs.

It would be really handy to have a one-tap option in the app to run or not run a particular scheduled charge for the immediate next occurrence only, but then default back to its normal state of active or inactive. Ideally this could be a one-tap option from the Home screen, perhaps with an option to customise which scheduled session it applies to, or a pop up to select which scheduled session to run or not run once only.

I understand from the ChargeHQ knowledge base that the suggestion would be to keep the scheduled charging session active for every day, and simply not plug in the vehicle if charging is not desired. This page states: “ If you need to temporarily disable an overnight scheduled charge period, you can disable scheduled charging entirely or simply not plug the vehicle in - selecting STOP will not prevent the scheduled charge from occurring.”

However, this is not suitable: by not plugging in when I arrive home one evening so as to avoid unnecessarily charging from the grid overnight, this will not only prevent scheduled charging that night, but also solar charging the next day if I have working from home. And the alternative if “disabling scheduled charging entirely” requires 6 taps, which is rather a nuisance.

I understand also that using the Stop function in the app will not override a scheduled charge session.

I love this app and this is just a suggestion/request that would for me make it much more user friendly.

2

@adamcook are you aware of the Charge Limit setting in the charging schedule? The vehicle will only charge up to that level and then stop. This is intended to provide an automatic overnight “top-up” charge when the previous day’s solar charging did not provide enough range for the next day.

For example, say you need 40% SoC each weekday morning. You could set an overnight schedule with a Charge Limit of 40%. If solar charging only gets the vehicle to 30% on a given day, the schedule will charge it to 40% overnight. If the vehicle is already over 40% at night then no charging will occur.

This mechanism only works if you regularly require a particular SoC each morning, although a different schedule can be created for different days if required. It’s not suitable for “one time” schedules eg charging overnight ready for an unusual long trip the next day. We have another feature in mind to address “one time” charging.

3

Hi Jay.
Thank you so much for this - using the charge limit feature in this way hadn’t occurred to me. I think this may indeed address my issue in most circumstances. I’ll test it out.

There are those situations however, as you eluded to you at the end of your response, where I am seeking to charge higher than usual in preparation for a long trip or in anticipation that the weather will be poor (and solar generation poor) for several days. Or conversely that solar generation will be higher than usual for coming days and I can rely more than usual on solar rather than grid. In these circumstances I think there would still be a benefit to a one time charging or charging override function, but I will need to test out the charge limit setting for a while to see for certain.

4

I don’t think the SoC is available for non-Teslas though, is it?

I’d like to see a feature where I could just postpone a scheduled charge for one cycle, so I can plug in, charge on surplus, but skip the overnight charge based on my plan to have the car sitting there the next day.