Macan 4 EV - Octopus intelligent sync issue

[SimonEV]

This thread has a number of valid, but not always resolved, issues:

1. Test Charge fails by Op (Kristian)
2. Octopus Test Charge not "passing"
3. Octopus Test Charge is it required to “pass”?
4. Octopus Test Charge how to “pass”
5. PointPoint/Zappi problems with schedule with Macan EV
6. Anderson not recognising Macan (Turbo) EV
7. Octopus programmed after 5:30 am window charged at 7p rate
8. Octopus doesn’t control when the car charges
9. Why the Random Departure Time set?
10. Macan EV now charging only at 3.6kW
11. Macan also doesn’t respond to preconditioning, lock/unlock requests 100%
12. Trying to connect to octopus Intelligent Go without success – (Mike) giving up
13. Also issues with OVO Electric Supplier
14. Octopus with Macan EV – it worked and charged correctly
15. Bypass Octopus App using Macan Internal Timer

The original issue was that setup of Octopus Go Intelligent didn't always work when reaching the "Test Charge" at the end of the setup. Typically, you have the Octopus App installed and setup your car and charger followed by a "Test Charge" that can be tricky to "Pass".

Afterwards, the Octopus Intelligent Go sets up a Charging Schedule and charges your Macan EV at a lower rate of about 7p. If it charges the Macan EV outside of the 23:30 - 05:30 Window then the electric bill will also show a change to the tariff at the lower rate.

The way Octopus controls charging is by setting and enabling a future dated Departure Time and by toggling this on/off, synchronise the charging at a time where the lower tariff is applied.

Points: #1, #2, #3 and #4: after selecting your Macan EV, the Charger, passing the Test Charge is problematic. The Macan EV has to be Ready to Charge, but has to be stopped, so that Octopus can turn on the Charging, and then turn it off during a seven minute test.

The issue is that it cannot be both Ready to Charge but also stopped. During the Charging Test (and for normal operation) only Octopus should be turning the Charging on/off. There are a number of ways to "Pass" the "Charging Test" and a "Pass" is required to complete and use the Service. I raised a Support Call to suggest that they might like to consider starting with the assumption that charging was already active e.g. turn it off, turn it on and then off during the Charging Test.

Points #5 and #6: there can be issues with using Charger Apps with the Macan EV since not all Chargers are supported and I know that my Macan 4S isn't listed, so I use Macan 4 as the best match.

Point #7: this is the reason to use the Octopus Service because the lower cost tariff can be used outside of the Window 23:30 - 05:30. This can often result in more than a six hours of charge being available.

Point #8: plug in the Macan EV and the car will start to charge, Octopus send a signal and the Departure Delay is turned on so that Charging can be inhibiting. I know that whilst this often does work it isn't 100% effective. I have examined the January Octopus bill and it's clear that the Macan was often charged up to my limit at the higher rate. There are times where Octopus reduced the rate outside of the Window but many times they didn't. I raised a Support Call about this and later a second Support Call when there was no explanation or help provided.

Point #9: the Random Departure Time is setup by Octopus so that the Macan charging can be toggled on/off to control when charging coincides with Octopus's Schedule. If it is deleted or expires it will be replaced with a new Departure Time about a week in the future. Initially, it can be an odd thing to see but it is one way to control charging of the vehicle if, as seems likely, direct control of the Charger isn't practical.

Point #10: I did once see the charging rate drop down to 3.6kW. It occurred when I wanted the Macan EV charged to 100% and preconditioned the Cabin Temperature with charging enabled and the battery also at 100%. For other situations, this would be a considered a fault, for Porsche to investigate.

Points #11, #12 and #13: this is the crux of why Macan EV Owners are frustrated. The MyPorsche App does not always control the car with absolute certainty. Gaining control of the car is also required to control the charging process. Requires Octopus (or other company), Charger and Macan to interoperate.

Point #14: it certainly has worked. I did get the "Test Charge" to complete successfully and I do have the Macan EV always plugged when I'm at home. Mostly, the car will start to charge and within about 5 minutes, Octopus will create a a Schedule, charging will stop and in the morning I will find the car charged to 80% which I set in both the MyPorsche App and the Octopus App. My EV Charger has no Schedule set to inhibit charging. I do see the Departure Time toggle between On/Off and Octopus create a Schedule. But, there are many times when it just charges out of control and Octopus so far have not provided an explanation or resolution. One consequence is that my electricity bill has increased since switching to the Macan EV.

Point #15: One obvious "fix" is to control the the timing of charging outside of Octopus' Control - at least until they can provide a fix or say where the problem lies. The problem with setting a Departure Time in the Macan EV is that it has to be enabled to stop the Charging, so if Octopus toggles it off, this no longer inhibits the charging in future charging cycles.

I have an EO Home Pro 2 Charger which was supplied by Octopus and carries their branding. It is no longer sold by EO. As far as I know, Octopus are not controlling the vehicle charging with the Charger but are instead requesting the car to take control.

As an alternative, I'm experimenting with setting a charge window 23:30 - 07:30 within the EO Home App so that Octopus can only control charging within their low tariff window 23:30 - 05:30. I 'm setting the finish time on the Octopus App to 05:30. When they cannot reliably take control and inhibit the charging I won't be charged the higher tariff. I set the window to be active for eight hours everyday rather than allowing 24 hour charging that hasn't been too effective. If necessary I will experiment with altering the finish time in Octopus to also be 07:30 or set both Controls to 05:30.

One downside of inhibiting a charge outside of the MyPorsche App is that you can receive a Porsche error message and be told that there is an error with your charging configuration. The green charging picture also turns red. I just see this as confirmation that I have control over when the Macan isn't charged and the car still charges soon after 23:30.

Thinking back to my previous EV, a Tesla Model 3 LR, I used to inhibit charging in the car before 23:30 because I wasn't convinced Octopus could reliably control my Charger. Octopus couldn't vary the setting in the Tesla and this worked well enough.

I recently discovered that I have a Charging log from my EO Home Pro 2 Charger - I can export a CSV file and import it to an Excel Spreadsheet to compare how Octopus charged the car and how they adapted their tariff in my last bill. Whilst waiting (too long) for Octopus to respond I will ask them to be a bit more proactive.

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[Jonny McCann]

I had similar issues with my Macan 4 and the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff, but it seems to be fine now.

However, crucially, I had to select my charger (a Hypervolt 3 Pro) as the 'device' on the Octopus app. and not the vehicle itself.

I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but if I had to start from scratch, here's what I'd do:

• Phone the Octopus customer service team, and ask them to reset your account by removing any devices from the app.
• Switch off your charger's main switch (typically located near your electricity smart meter), and switch it on again, linking to your wi-fi if prompted.
• In the Octopus app, 'add device'. You will need to add details of your charger and your car.
• When prompted, choose to link the charger, and not the car.

I did all this, and this time, the test didn't fail, and all seems well. The Intelligent Octopus Go seems to be working, and schedules my charging according to my settings.

Good luck with getting this sorted.

 

[P11VLM]

How is everyone getting on with IOG and the Macan at the moment?

Mine is set up and Octopus are managing the schedule, but my issue is that the car isn’t receiving the scheduled departure. This means Octopus aren’t intervening to stop the charge. It did work for the first couple of days, but it hasn’t worked since.

 

[Jonny McCann]

Sorry you're experiencing problems. Mine seems OK.

I've found Octopus' customer service to be excellent.

 

[P11VLM]

yeah I reached out them and they deleted me from their systems and I re added. But it didn’t resolve it. I’ll give them a call again today see what they say is next.

 

[QuiteBig]

I have found Octopus intelligent go to work flawlessly since April. On initial setup I couldn’t register the car so I changed to letting the Hypervolt 3 be in charge. A big benefit of that that I wasn’t aware of is that despite Octopus saying you can only have one car registered, the charger is agnostic, and happily charges our Mini if we plug that in.
I am genuinely running two electric cars for free (comparing my costs to last year at the same time of year) which I put down to a lot of 7p charging during the day, meaning the whole house is running at 7p.
All the free electricity over the last 10 days was also very welcome , we still have an old dumb charger so we managed to charge both at the same time when the free offer was running. We were pulling 17.1Kw / 71A at one point.

 

[SimonEV]

yeah I reached out them and they deleted me from their systems and I re added. But it didn’t resolve it. I’ll give them a call again today see what they say is next.

The issue seems to be that Octopus rely on toggling the departure on//off to control the charging but this (for me) doesn't seem to be reliable. In fact, I can't use the My Porsche App to reliably do simple task like unlock the car or flash the headlights. The Octopus App doesn't seem to retry failed operations so the car gets charged anyway.

I get around this by only enabling my charger between 23:30 and 05:30 so that when Octopus doesn't control the car it doesn't matter. But my Octopus branded charger is due to have the app removed later this year and for it to be converted to always on. So when this happens I won't have a solution that works.

Others have said that they just ignore the app and set charging via the PCM however I always found that Octopus remove this and insert a departure that doesn't toggle properly. The standard reply from Octopus seems to be that they want to control the charging but when this doesn't work reliably then there doesn't seem to be a fall back solution from them.

 

[SimonEV]

How is everyone getting on with IOG and the Macan at the moment?

Mine is set up and Octopus are managing the schedule, but my issue is that the car isn’t receiving the scheduled departure. This means Octopus aren’t intervening to stop the charge. It did work for the first couple of days, but it hasn’t worked since.

I have the same issue. It sometimes works and at other times it doesn’t get a message through to the car so it may charge anyway.

A further complication is that my Wall Charger will become “dumb” in November and always allow a charge when car is plugged in.

I used to rely on the Wall Charger only charging between 23:30 and 05:30 so that Octopus could start/stop it but not charge outside this window.

I tested it without the Wall Charger controlling things and result is somewhat random so my new “dumb” Charger will allow Octopus to continue to fail to control the charging. I have no doubt that talking to the car is dependant on good Mobile reception and this is most of the problem. I suspect they also don’t do too much when signal doesn’t get through.

I’m now using the car to set a schedule 23:30 to 05:30 and a drive away at 7:00 everyday.

Although Octopus will delete my schedule (if allowed) changing the Porsche password has allowed only my schedule to “stick” and a review of energy used shows charging at night working as I requested.

Simon

 

[Degenatron]

For those of us with Andersen chargers they have now added compatibility with IOG. All chargers Including A2 from 2023->on.

I used to have IOG control the car instead of the charger, and as as we all know, it is super unreliable and will charge the car outside of the arranged off-peak slots.

You will need to remove the car from IOG and then add it is a new vehicle again. Note that if you select your Andersen charger and car as a Macan it will default to controlling the car instead of the charger. Not what we want. I got around this by choosing a car I knew could not be controlled by IOG, my previous car the Fisker Ocean! Then IOG logs into your Andersen account instead.

Andersen app shows this for the first time below. The charger now only releases power when it gets a slot from IOG, not the instant that the car is plugged in. Finally!

 

[Jonjh1964]

Macan 4, Myenergi Zappi and Intelligent Octopus Go. I'd been charging my PHEV and daughters Zoe with 'charger' integration for the last couple of years with no issues and even charged a weekend 'demo' Macan with no problems. Once my Macan arrived, I went through the delete charger, install Macan routine then had numerous issues getting it to charge reliably, plus it wasn't clear how I'd charge my daughter's Zoe when she visits. In the end Octopus enabled charger integration and all has been fine since on both the Macan and Zoe (just half the fill %). I do get an error message from the Porsche App if Octopus switch off the charging and the car isn't full but it doesn't seem to prevent charging restarting when Octopus tells the zappi to charge. I was looking at going back to Octopus Go and using a set charge window, principally because of issues depleting the house battery, but so far the benefit of getting more than 6 hours at 7p is keeping me with IOG.

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