Joined
·
60 Posts
Thanks for that Rod.
So if I set the departure time to the end of cheaper rate time. It won’t start charging earlier than beginning of cheaper rate to ensure car is at 100% on departure?
Limiting charging to cheap rate hours
21 - 40 of 51 Posts
So if I set the departure time to the end of cheaper rate time. It won’t start charging earlier than beginning of cheaper rate to ensure car is at 100% on departure?
Joined
·
459 Posts
Unfortunately my July 2022 SE does. If the car thinks that it cannot get to 100% before the end of the charging period it starts earlier. My only current solution is to set my departure time as 11am and my cheap rate at 12.30 am to 4.30am and make sure I have more than 70%ish already in my battery ( I charge on a granny charger at 2.5kwh). If you have a 7kw charger you can obviously charge from a much lower % without the charging starting earlier than the cheap rate period.
Joined
·
60 Posts
Yes that’s what I thought I had read on here.
I don’t have a 7kw, so was wanting to take advantage of the 7 hours of low cost electric using the granny charger.
Is 2.5kw/h the max from the granny charger?
Joined
·
459 Posts
I think it’s 2.3kwh on the granny charger. If you have 7 hours cheap rate then that good for 16.1kw but I guess some of that is lost in the charging process. Suggest you set your mini app to show the cheap rate 7 hour period and set your departure time a few hours after the end of that period. Try starting with say 50% remaining in your battery and see if you can charge to 100% within the 7 hour period.
Joined
·
60 Posts
Thanks Mark, I will try that.
I presume the Mini app advises when charging has started and stopped.
Is it possible to stop charging via the app? if the vehicle hasn’t fully charged before the end of the cheap rate window.
Joined
·
459 Posts
Yes the app shows when the car is charging. Somewhat strangely you can’t stop the charging via the app.
Joined
·
60 Posts
Thanks again.
Will give it a try. Appreciate your help
No, as Mark confirms it only cares about being 100% at departure time so will start early if it calculates 4hours isn't enough for the charger rating. I presume it must interogate the charger first to see its capacity and calculate if from there.
Very obvious with the 2.3kW granny charger, less so since I got my 7kW wall charger.
Don't rely on basic maths though - you would think 4hrs at 7kw could fully charge the MINI battery - it doesn't, there are losses in the charging process.The App that came with my BP charger records charge duration (as well as start/stop times) and energy added and, for example on my most recent charge it recorded 12.7kW in 2hrs 6mins, if 7kW was actually all going to the battery, 2hrs 6mins would be 14.7kW (or my 12.7kW required would have been a lot quicker).
Joined
·
357 Posts
ProjectEV charger and mini app
Hoping someone may be able to shed some light on a minor issue I am having. I've recently had a second array of solar panels and 20kw of battery installed at the house. I've then moved onto an EV tariff with Bulb energy, with that I've tried to set a scheduled charge time from 0200 to 0600. I...
www.minif56.com
Joined
·
25 Posts
Seems like they could fix that with an update over wifi?
Joined
·
459 Posts
You would hope they would but I won’t hold my breath
Joined
·
154 Posts
Hmm me thinks you may have something wrong with the 7KW charger ?
There are reports of other cars (VW) selecting ‘low current’ when there is a gap between plugging in and starting the charge. I haven’t heard this for the Mini.
I regularly charge from 20% or less to 100% using my cheap rate 23:30 until 7:30. I have the departure time set to 07:30 but this is just coincidence.
It starts always at 2330 and can see at what time it finishes via the App because I get a notification or I can look at the charge history. I have never had it go longer than the departure time. Usually the latest has been around 0530.
The theoretical output of the charger is 7,8 KW and regularly the ‘real’ average charge rate at the car is 6,8 to 7 KW. Assuming the battery is 38KW and charge rate 6,8KW/h then maximum time 0 to 38 should be 5,5 hours. Or do I miss something ?
Joined
·
4 Posts
We bought a Mini Electric for my wife about 5 months ago, we are having problems with getting it to charge during our Octopus Go tariff cheap rate. We also have an Ohme charger, it's been flawless with my Tesla for last 3 years. Do you use "charge in time slot" (set to 0030hrs - 0430hrs) or "charge immediately" setting in Mini app? I've tried using both settings, 75% of the time it'll work though starting to be like a lottery.
I don't want to bash Mini, however the app is poor compared to Tesla. Still baffles me you can't set a charge limit, thankfully the Ohme takes care of that. Interesting to read above about Mini basing charging on getting to 100%
As you use same charger would be grateful to hear what setting you use & if you've had any problems with car not charging or getting to desired charge percentage set in Ohme app? Thanks.
Joined
·
819 Posts
I don't use the Mini App or set anything on the Mini apart from charge immediately.
I just set my Octopus Go Faster tariff on the Ohme app and set it to only charge at the 5p/kHw off peak rate. It then charges from 20.30 to 00.30 and switches off.
This suits me perfectly, no matter what time I plug it in it will only charge at the off peak rate.
Just set the car to charge immediately and do everything else on the Ohme app.
Joined
·
4 Posts
Thanks for reply, have been doing that & still have problems. Like last night car was at over 30% when plugged in, it didn't reach the 80% target I'd set in Ohme app. Though had charged enough to be useable. Think my next port of call is to contact dealer, hopefully it just needs a software update. Just lucky we have a 2nd car so when the charging bugs we aren't screwed.
Joined
·
105 Posts
Have you checked the charge rate in the Mini settings - all of them ship with it set to Minimum and you have change it to Maximum to get the full charge speed.
Tesla's allow you access to 96% of the battery cells - reserving only 4% for dealing with cell problems so having the user help with battery conditioning by only charging to 85% for example is useful.
Mini allow access to 88% of the battery cells - so reserving 12% for dealing with battery conditioning and cell issues - much in the same was SSD hard drives in computers have spare cells for dealing with corruption.
Apparently this was so Mini could say charge to 100% and use the small range letting the car handle battery conditioning, rather than giving it an extra 15 miles range and asking users to charge to 85% unless 100% needed.
That's the theory anyway - with anything EV it's all a bit experimental and we won't really know for a few years. During the summer I tend to charge to around 85% by adjusting the timeslot on the chargepoint app. But during the Winter i've been doing 100% every night due to the effect of the cold on the range - I do around 40-50 miles a day.
Joined
·
154 Posts
There are numerous reports with other EVs about problems with the ‘time in slot’ with the Ohme chargers. According to the Forum for VW is due to a conflict between safety features in the car software and the charger software which results in a lower charge rate than the capacity of the charger ( eg 7KWh charger the car charges at 2KWh). The issue happens because there is a gap between plugging the car in, and the charge starting.
The software detects a ‘charging fault’.
Having said the above, I have never experienced it with my charger and the Mini app. It is flawless compared to the cr*p we go through with our other VW EV.
You possibly have a bug in the Mini software and they can fix it by a reboot. However suggest before you go to the dealer, that you check in the Mini App under ‘Electromobility’ / ‘Charging History’ and just quickly check the rate of charge.
The app gives the total KW taken and the on/off times. From that you can work out the actual charge rate. This should be close to theoretical output of the charger. Eg my 7,8KWh charger 6,8-7,2 on average.
Also just check that by accident ‘charge at reduced current’ isn’t selected. I know it is stupid, but I have done that mistake once.
Yes but nobody seems to know how the 12% (approx) is split between top and bottom.
Alan
21 - 40 of 51 Posts
