I apologize if this question has been answered previously - I searched first, but didn't find it. We recently changed electricity plans to one with free electricity at night. I set the charging schedule both via the instrument panel settings in the car and on the mobile app to charge from 8pm to 6am. It works fine if I plug the car in before 8pm. But if I plug it in at say, 8:30pm, it doesn't start charging unless I manually over-ride via the key fob (and then it doesn't stop at 6am). Does anyone know how to fix this behavior so that it will always charge between 8pm and 6am regardless of what time I plug it in? Thanks.
This had been noted previously, perhaps not as the main subject of a thread, but it's a shared rritant. I just override when I connect past scheduled start. It helps that I get a HondaLin email notification when charging hasn't started as scheduled.
I believe your only alternative is to get a 240-volt EVSE that charges faster and then set your charging to begin later. The Clarity isn't smart enough to do what you want. Edit: You could just use a 120v timer to shut off your Level 1 EVSE at 6 am.
Wow, free fuel ongoing, incredible! I’d get an L2 like the juice box pro with wifi control if I were you. Where are you?
Not sure where Matthew lives, but here in Texas there are REP (retail electric provider) plans available that offer "free" electricity at night. However, in life there is no real "free" lunch, so the "free" nighttime power is paid for via a higher rate for daytime power consumed than one might have to pay without "free" nighttime power. We selected a plan with the lowest overall 24/7/365 cost / kWh, but still choose to charge via L2 in the middle of the night so as to not add load to the grid during peak daytime hours of a/c use, etc. and to assure availability of the Clarity to maximize use of electricity for driving chores during the daytime hours.
I live in Texas, as guessed. Texas2Step is right - "free" electricity at night is offset by higher cost during the day. But we go to work during the day, and use more than half of our electricity at night. Not sure about other states, but we can download our hour-by-hour electricity usage and you can calculate the best energy plan. With energy deregulation in Texas, you have a lot of providers to choose from. The free nights plans usually assume that 35% (or so) of your energy consumption is at night. I calculated that we use 55% at night currently - mostly due to charging of the car at night and our thermostat detects when we both leave the house (when we go to work during the day) and adjusts the temp setting to save money. So, the night plan was cheaper than a fixed rate plan for us. I'm just making sure the car charges during the free hours to maximize the night/day ratio a little. I thought about an L2 charger, but doesn't seem to be worth the money and hassle of installing a 220V outlet in the garage. Charging overnight works great for us.
Thanks for your detailed response. Of course, not every REP plan fits all consumers, so that's why there are a lot of variations. In our case, we are retired, so the "go to work" during the daytime that Matthew relies upon to divert more power consumption to the night hours doesn't help us at all. To each his own, but the bottom line is that whatever the electrical cost one pays it is likely to be lower than the price of gasoline at the pump for equivalent mileage of our Clarity cars.
I have the PG&E E-TOU-B rate plan in California and I'd like the car to charge whenever it is plugged in, except not between 4pm and 9pm. Sounds like the car is incapable of this and I need to get a charging station that has this feature (and, cost of the charging station will eat the next 25+ years of savings I might be getting from the time-of-use rate plan!).
As @insightman noted above in this thread, if you use a L1 charger you can just set a 110v plug-in timer to start & stop charging whenever you want. Just make sure the timer you pick will handle the load of whatever charger you choose. Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Inside EVs mobile app
