Honda SmartCharge expanded?

I don’t use charge schedule on my clarity but on the ChargePoint Home EVSE which I don’t think does this. My Kia Soul EV does though, The car should be set to start charging during that window if already plugged in and to allow charging to start anytime during that window if you plug it in.

 

And this isn’t some big brother program this is a program that allows you to more easily lower the CO2 emissions that are produced to charge your vehicle. I’m iffy on it from what I see here already.

 

Well I just had to disable it, it is constantly not charging my car during the day... you know... during the hours when solar would be beneficial??

I like the *idea* behind it, but not the execution.

It almost *never* charged my car except early morning, which means its not using the huge amount of solar power available and instead using coal power.

It also left me using far more gas than I would otherwise, because my car was constantly not charged when I went to use it. Basically only charging overnight so my mid-day charging was removed which means my daily commute would use up all the charge and engage the gas engine.

I even ended up having to use a public charger which cost me ~$2 ($10 really since it does it in $10 chunks), for just under an hour so I'd have some charge to pick up my kids later....

I took a few screenshots of how it was "working" for me, so glad that someone found the way to disable it! Sure I "saved" 0.1lb of CO2 during the week I used it, but I burned through 40+ miles of gas as well... sooo yeah doubt I "saved" any

 

My initial charge cycle with SmartCharge went well, but the second one, last night, left the Siemens Versicharge unit showing a Fault Condition, with the Red Halo. I have used the Versicharge as my only charging source for almost 4 years on the Clarity, and never experience a Fault condition, so I'm now a bit skeptical regarding SmartCharge.

I'll try SmartCharge for one more cycle next time, but if it gives me another fault condition, I may just have to ditch it, and go back to the totally reliable DumbCharge method.

 

I turned this off as well. Kept not charging, but when I let it do a complete cycle, it wold tell me it saved 0 CO2.

So it takes longer to charge and didn’t offset any carbon. Great execution.

 

It takes a week or so before it will tell you if you save any CO2 or not.

 

After each completed session, it shows you the results.

Where did you see that it only adds up carbon on a weekly basis and not after each completed session?

 

I don't remember but I do remember seeing it.

 

partially agreed.

if you have your own electricity generator, you are 100% correct: just do it when you want to, get it at your earliest convenience.

but when you use the power grid, then you should worry about how the grid works. even if only for the selfish reasons to keep it healthy for your own good.

the main issue with this "honda whatever charge" i see (and i don't ever want to own a honda after reading all this) is they don't deliver at all what they promise. looks like a prototype program at best.

a simple and actually smart solution to all this have already been done with heating water, for instance: just get a few batteries at home to charge at all the better times... and be ready for when you need it. ideally, with the newer cars, even simply physically swap the batteries for instant charge.

this whole idea is broken from its beginning.

(sorry this won't solve the issue for most readers subscribed to this thread. but it will hopefully give a better idea to everyone else! )

 

Thanks. I’m not really looking for anyone to agree with my charging practices.

Your going to have to explain your “better idea” real slow, because I missed it the first time.

 

i gave 2 ideas...

# batteries

get batteries made for this. lots of people can even take ev batteries that have no use for the ev anymore and adapt then to use with solar panels or whatever.

fill them up with energy from whatever source.

if energy is plenty, fill it more. if it's lacking, hold back.

simple enough?

this is readily and easily doable today... although there are still many technical challenges to it, so it ain't cheap to install it at first.

i am personally working to get something like this very soon, by simply using a solar panel and 2 electrical cars (since i hardly use electricity for anything else at home).

sorry if i took it for too obvious.

and then...

# replaceable

there are new car working prototypes already in which you can even swap their battery...

so if your home battery is compatible, this could help to instantly fill up your car's energy.

this will be very hard to do today, though. i haven't heard of anyone doing it in practice.

all in all, just ideas that, for whatever reason, weren't even mentioned in this thread.

 

Neither meets my description of better when compared to simply connecting the car to an available outlet. Neither was mentioned as the thread topic is the Honda Smart Charge app rather than alternative charging methods.

I have 4500 watts of panels on the house and 8-10kWh’s of useable battery storage. I’ve been averaging about 3kWh’s a day of solar production here in the Pacific Northwest. In the summer it will top 30kWh’s on a good day. The batteries are intended to provide backup power to mission critical systems. The last thing I would do with that stored energy is charge a car that can be driven on gas.

We do charge on a battery/inverter powered circuit, so when that is done in the daytime we are charging “directly” from the panels. Solar and batteries are expensive. There are other components as well and if you’re going to be grid-tied it will require permits and need to be designed and installed to Code.

Depending on your location, you’d probably need 10,000 watts of solar, not “a panel” and 20kWh’s of battery storage in order to charge a Clarity on a regular basis. You’d also be subjecting both the home battery bank and the vehicle battery bank to frequent charge cycles.

NIO is doing battery swaps. It requires a lift and other specialized equipment. Sure, it can be done. It just isn’t currently in the cards.

 

thanks for all information!

again, i mostly agree. no matter if you don't care.

the exception...

"smart charge" are still words in the title. if honda isn't being smart, than what is? i rather fucus on the positives.

i also agree connecting the car to the grid looks simpler and better, if we choose to be blind to the whole structure.

indeed, using energy in any kind of vehicle transportation for humans will almost always look like a waste when compared to anything else that energy can do when applied locally for whatever. even heating generated from electricity.

do notice i am not using energy and electricity interchangeably. never did.

still, there are a few good reasons to use a car and, in my personal case, i only need electricity for 3 things: computing, light, and car.

since i don't do any kind of industrial computing, and i believe light should always be restricted to a minimum, and only at night, i got plenty of electricity left for the car.

also, because my cars require less energy than most, and it will only improve on efficiency in the next generation, 45kw array of solar is more than i need. plenty enough.

i actually got around that, which is pretty average to anyone getting serious about solar electricity. but i'm still working on installing an inverter to start using it in the car, instead of only selling it to the grid.

i don't even want to sell it to the grid, actually... but taking baby steps here.

so my only theoretical issue for the practical future is finding out what to do with the exceeding electricity in three summer!

 

Yes, “smart” and “charge” are words in the title. They’re actually capitalized and combined to form a bit of a nonsense word SmartCharge, which follows the word Honda. The title is about the app and the availability of that app in new areas. Why not start a new thread where we can discuss smart, better, optimal, efficient and warm fuzzy charging options?

Why did, or would, you install 45,000 watts of panels if your electricity needs are so low, you don’t want to sell surplus electricity or offset your consumption and you have no means to store the generated electricity? I’ve yet to be convinced that you’ve devised a better mousetrap.

Install a battery bank. With an array of 45.000 watts, something in the 200kWh range would be suitable. You’ll need quite the inverter and charge controller set up as well. But it sounds like you’re serious about solar, even though you’re just taking baby steps at this point.

 

RE: Honda SmartCharge, the app. I unenrolled my account from it yesterday, due to the fact that it was repeatedly causing Fault conditions on my Siemens VersiCharge unit. The Siemens had never faulted during almost four prior years of charging the Clarity, prior to enabling SmartCharge.

I would have really liked to continuing with the program, but I am more concerned about the potential of damage to the charger, or to my car.

 

thanks for all your latest input!

i will address them soon enough, anther time... but perhaps you can find your answers elsewhere, if you dig me up. i'm an open book.

way ahead!

https://www.insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/connecting-my-solar-panel-to-my-car.12699/

 

Since I unenrolled from SmartCharge, a week ago, due to charger faults using SmartCharge, I haven't had any more charging faults, BUT, I now can't successfully set up the Daily Charge Schedule. I can change the time set in HondaLink for Plug In Reminders, but my attempts to change the Daily Charge Schedule invariably give a result that "There was an unknown error and we were unable to establish a connection."

It seems to me likely that having had SmartCharge in operation temporarily has changed some setting at the Honda server, blocking the Daily Charge Schedule for my Clarity.

 

We also unenrolled from SmartCharge because our car no longer charged to full nightly ready for us to use next day... Let me explain further...

We signed up for TOU (Time-of-Use) plan with our local Electric company (Portland General & Electric). With this plan, we were told to charge our car during off-peak hours in order to save money, since the rate would be the lowest during off-peak. We scheduled our Clarity to start charging from 3am every morning. We have Level 2 charger, so our Clarity should be fully charged by 5:30-6am. This schedule has been working well for us for 2-3 years until we signed up for Honda's SmartCharge.

After we enrolled in Honda SmartCharge program, we've noticed that our Clarity no longer charged to full each morning. In fact, we sometime felt that the charging never took place at all. For several days in a row, we were disappointed to find our Clarity with an empty battery when we need to use it in the morning.

We like the idea of Honda SmartCharge program to reduce the carbon and save the environment... but it seems to have undesirable effects when some of us need a fully charge car for work in the morning. If Honda can fix this... we would love to enroll in the program again.

 

I have found that I need to plug in the charging cable after the programmed SmartCharge time window starts to get a charge to the programmed maximum. If I plug in before the programmed start time, the final amount of charge seems random, sometimes less than the programmed max charge and sometimes 100%. So, it appears that SmartCharge cannot be used to start the charging at specified time after plugging in but only to SmartCharge when plugged in during the programmed charging time window.

I have some other observations on how SmartCharge can be made to allow a non-SmartCharge (full charging immediately when plugged in and only stopping at 100% or when unplugged) but I need to make more observations before I am sure about how the SmartCharge enrollment works (or does not work).

I use SmartCharge to stop the charge at 85%. This seems to work for me if I plug in after the programmed SmartCharge time window starts.

 

Clearly, on those occasions, it was smarter for you to use gasoline rather than dirty electricity.