Hi.
I’m on a day/night and weekend electricity pricing plan. 10c/kWh 9pm to 7am weekdays and all weekend. 28c/kWh 7am to 9pm Mon thru Friday. With the Electricity Authority’s push for more cost reflective pricing, I think that pricing plans like that will become more common.
The charger only lets me set a start and finish time that applies every day. I’d like to schedule it so that it starts charging at 9pm on weekdays, but starts charging straight away on weekends. I know I can hit the “charge now” button, but that’s too hard.
As a follow up - it would be good if the electricity price that calculates the costs could also reflect the prices at different times.
Thanks for your suggestion. We are planning on adding more comprehensive charge scheduling options into the app, so it’s good to hear your specific use case so we can make sure that’s one of the capabilities we make possible.
There are a few other things we need to get done first, so it won’t be coming in the very near term - probably a couple of months out based on what I know today. Hopefully you can survive using the Charge Now button for the next few weekends!
Fully agreed with you on the push for cost-reflective pricing and the need for this to end up being passed through to customers via the retailers. We’re going to struggle to get EVs charging at the best time for the grid without something like that in place.
Hi
I would also like this feature. My power company has 1 free hour of power 9 -10pm and then off peak 11pm - 7am.
Pressing charge now at 11pm each night will be frustrating.
I guess I can achieve this in the meantime by setting my schedule to be 9pm - 7am and using the Load Management - and setting 10pm - 11pm to be 0A. I assume the Charge Now button never overrides this though so if I wanted to charge between 10pm - 11pm I would need to adjust the Load Management Profile?
Welcome to the Evnex community! Apologies for the late response
Thank you for putting forward a feature request.
You are correct you can use a combination of schedule + load management profile settings.
As you might already have figured out, pressing the Charge Now button does override the load management profile therefore you would not need to adjust the Load management profile.
Plus one for both the multiple scheduling and multi-rate cost calculation.
Is there any ETA since your note in January, @TomRose ?
@PedroCassini could you direct me to the load profile management setting, please?
[Edit] found https://app.evnex.io/ through rummaging around in this forum and can see it there
We’ve been doing some background work on our app to make it easier for us to expand it with new features. The first release is coming shortly, and the comprehensive scheduling will be in a future release this quarter.
We are also on a mixed rate plan. It would be useful to be able to set all of the time bands for each rate and the actual price per unit for each. (including free as a free hour is becoming more common) and then be able to prioritise useage.
eg priority 1= Free, 2=Off peak, 3 =shoulder etc
Maybe that data could even be scraped from the providers so that an EVNEX app user simply selects their provider and the plan they are on and the times / rates are automatically populated. That way, when the rates change the apps rates would automatically reflect this.
Initially it won’t be possible to scrape from providers (largely because rates are not the same for everyone even if they’re on the same plan), but you’ll be able to configure Peak / Off-peak / Night / Free / Solar costs and have prices calculated much more accurately than with the existing flat rate.
Keep a look out for an app update later this month!
Well we got a bit delayed with Covid and school holidays intervening, but this morning we’ve released the updated app which enables you to set up more comprehensive pricing schedules.
It also shows breakdowns in the session and summary pages so you can see the proportions of your energy coming from different pricing periods (plus solar).
At this stage you can’t automatically generate a charging schedule from your pricing, but that’s an extension that’s on the cards for the future.
Hi Tom! It’s really great to see this and be able to use it, I have already setup my weekday tariff and the costs.
I have noticed one thing and it could be the way I am using it. I have a flat off-peak rate over the weekend but I cant seem to find a way to enter that in the app? I have tried setting the day start and night start to be the same but I am not allowed. The closest I can get is setting them half an hour apart see screen dump below.
Am I right in saying that a method of having your schedule match your off-peak pricing would work for you Alex? That way you’d avoid having to type in a complex schedule by hand.
Hi Tom
Quite separate to pricing, I just want to be able to set different start times on different days of the week. When I plug in on Saturday or Sunday, I’d set it to charge straight away. Can I “type in a complex schedule by hand”? I can only see a start and end time on the app. Lots of $30 app connected smart switches have suitable and easy to use solutions.
Just by the way, my pricing plan is the one you hadn’t spotted, as described in my opening post.
Yes I was thinking that if your schedule “followed the price” then essentially it would not charge during the peak period on weekdays but would charge at any other time. So if you plug in during the day at the weekend it would charge immediately, and if you plug in during the day on a weekday it would wait until the off-peak pricing.
I’m working on the assumption that at the moment the main thing drivers are trying to avoid with schedules is charging at expensive times, and am keen to clarify what other motivations are out there for setting different schedules.
We’ve just released an update to the app (v3.2.5) which enables you to select “Weekend is all night rate” on a Day / Night plan. This should make it possible for you to set up those tariffs with Flick and Ecotricity which have Day / Night during the week and then Night all weekend (possibly called Peak / Offpeak).
Any progress? I’m really keen to see comprehensive scheduling … I just want to be able to set different start and end times on different days of the week.
We’ve been busy with the carbon accounting capabilities just released, so haven’t been able to devote any time here yet. There are some other scheduling changes required to support different tariffs in Australia, so we’ll probably try and do all of that work together - tentatively timetabled for next quarter at this stage.
