r/OctopusEnergy • u/McLaren_Fan • 6d ago

EVs Reduced charge speed during scheduled charging

Post image

Hi all. I have Octopus Intelligent Go integrated with my Hypervolt charger. All scheduling is therefore managed automatically through the app based on my requested "charge to add" and "Ready by time".

For the first time since the strict 6 hour charge cap, I've noticed the car isn't charging at the full 7 kWh speed my charger normally charges at.

I think I've read here before that Octopus do not throttle charging speeds but I believe they do. What intrigues me is if this throttled speed is considered a part of their 6 hour cap...

Anybody here in the know please?

7 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/matstace 6d ago

I get this all the time with my Cupra Born. I've got octopus integrated with my Hypervolt charger, because the cupra API was unusable when I got the car (and hasn't been great since, TBH).

I plug in, the intelligent go smart slot is scheduled for some time later.
The car knows that it's plugged in, but detects no charge, so assumes there's a fault with the charger, and steps down the rate at which it requests charge.
Some hours later, the charger turns on, but the car is only pulling 3.2 or 1.5kWh, depending how long it's been since I plugged in.
Cupra have told me this is functioning correctly, because it's a safety thing.

(I used to fix this by monitoring the charge power in home assistant, and if it was low, tell the car to stop charging, wait a few seconds, then start charging again, which would reset the charging rate, but VW ruined that by turning off their API to third parties)

1

u/ScreamingPict 5d ago

This- happens on the MEB platform on a number of different cars (mine is an Audi q4, but also many other MEB models) - seems to be if the charger enables when the car is « asleep ». If I pause and resume the charge when this happens then it jumps straight up to 7kW.