Cheap-rate charging

N

neil arundel

New Member
Most threads I have read seem to be USA. I am in Ireland and have had a pretty constant problem with getting my Kona to charge overnight to avail of cheap-rate electricity. I set it up properly (sorry, I'm not very technical) and the display tells me "Waiting to charge at scheduled time" but charge, it does not. It does if I go sit in the car after the set time and turn on the power. It then starts charging!!! Defeats the object of setting a time, and very annoying. Is there something wrong with the electronics in the car or with the home charging unit? Strangely enough if I start it charging shortly enough before the time it's set to stop then it does stop correctly. The dealer says there's nothing wrong with the car's electronics and the charging unit supplier has not been able to get to check the installation because of Lock-down! Well at least I'm not going anywhere!! Anyone else with the same problem?
 
Hi Neil Arundel!
neil arundel said:
charge overnight to avail of cheap-rate electricity.
Click to expand...

Note to people without this modern convenience: Some jurisdictions have a concept called "Time of Use" billing and it means that, when demand has dropped overnight, for instance, very cheap electricity can be made available to residential users. This is especially true where some large generators cannot conveniently be throttled or shut down, as is the case with Ontario's nuclear power plants. So it's better for everyone if we can charge from 2am to 6am, for instance.

neil arundel said:
I set it up properly (sorry, I'm not very technical) and the display tells me "Waiting to charge at scheduled time" but charge, it does not.
Click to expand...

Neil, what exact car charging system do you have? Does it work well outside of scheduled charging?

neil arundel said:
It does if I go sit in the car after the set time and turn on the power. It then starts charging!!! Defeats the object of setting a time, and very annoying.
Click to expand...

The power to what, exactly? The charger should be powered always, unless I misunderstand.

How is the time on the charging unit set? Does it have an internet connection of some sort? Is the time in the car set fairly close to correctly?

I'm actually not clear on whether you are using a feature of the Kona (onboard) charging system which allows you to charge at a specific time, or if this is a feature of your car charger.

One thing to check is that the Kona is set to accept AC charge. What I mean is that you can tell it to stop charging via AC if the battery is above X% -- so if your recent not-much-driving experiences have the battery sitting at 85%, it won't charge on your home charger at all.

I hope you'll let us all know more about your issues getting some of the inexpensive electricity.

eastpole
 
Hi Eastpole, many thanks for your reply. The car charges perfectly well at public charging points and on the home charger as long as the timer is not used. The home charger is a Standard GIB Garo with a Load Balance meter. The load balancer switches power from the car to the house if it senses that the house requires the power. That, I suspect, could be the problem, but the house doesn't use much electricity, particularly at night, and it doesn't ever switch over once I have managed to get the charging started!

The timing is set in the car. There are two options:- Off-peak only (i.e, timed), and off peak prioritised and the result is the same whichever is selected. So I connect the power lead and the dashboard says " Waiting to charge at scheduled time" but it doesn't charge charge then, or at all unless I sit in the car and switch on the motor. It luckily keeps charging when I switch off again and does stop charging at the cut-off time or when the set capacity is reached. The Garo charger does not have any timing system - it is either on or off.

I usually set it to stop charging at 90% unless I know a long trip is coming up. I don't know if setting "Next departure" makes any difference. I'm sure I have tried with that setting and without, and because I don't drive a lot anyway I can easily make sure there is enough charge for what I want to do. And currently (ha! ha!) the public AC chargers here are free, but this problem is more than a little irritating. I don't know if there is anything else I can tell you, but I very much appreciate the time you have taken to address this oddity.

Neil Arundel
 
"Next departure" does make a difference, and it's tricky to get set right. I still
don't understand it. Basically, I could not make the car wait till off-peak time
unless I *set* a departure for some time afterward, which is stupid. Plain ol'
charging time window should be independent of that. Climate precondition,
sure, you'd want that sensitive to when you're leaving, but in that context it
doesn't matter when you charge as long as it's just off-peak.

_H*
 
True enough! But mine will not charge at or after the required time whether the "Next departure" is set or not. I might try setting the next departure to an hour after I want the battery charging! I'll put the result up when I've done that.
 
I've only 'played' a bit with this as we don't have any cheap times :)

I set next departure to 8 AM, and cheap time to 12:15-6AM. I'm going a bit from memory but the idea, I believe, is that the Kona wants to know a target time to have charging finished.

If it needs more time than cheap-time charging can provide, it will start earlier as the priority is to have the charge done by the time of next trip.

While I can't confirm the 'starting earlier', I do know that charging was done during cheap time.
I can't remember whether charging started at 12:15 or some time later.

Next departure definitely needed. I DO remember that :)
Sorry about bad memory. If it's still a no-go for you I'll run another sample test on mine and make notes.
 
If the Hyundai-supplied EVSE doesn't work with the timer than that is a problem. My EU Kona in NZ is actually an Irish-spec version (because it was closest to NZ spec in the early days) and I've had no trouble, however there have been occasional complaints in forums and FB from others about the timer not working. We never hear back of the resolution so I can only assume operator error. I'm not aware of any software updates pertaining to the timer. I can only suggest double-checking the clock setting and turning off any set departure times. When the time arrives the light surrounding the port should go white and then green.
 
eastpole said:
Hi Neil Arundel!


Note to people without this modern convenience: Some jurisdictions have a concept called "Time of Use" billing and it means that, when demand has dropped overnight, for instance, very cheap electricity can be made available to residential users. This is especially true where some large generators cannot conveniently be throttled or shut down, as is the case with Ontario's nuclear power plants. So it's better for everyone if we can charge from 2am to 6am, for instance.



Neil, what exact car charging system do you have? Does it work well outside of scheduled charging?



The power to what, exactly? The charger should be powered always, unless I misunderstand.

How is the time on the charging unit set? Does it have an internet connection of some sort? Is the time in the car set fairly close to correctly?

I'm actually not clear on whether you are using a feature of the Kona (onboard) charging system which allows you to charge at a specific time, or if this is a feature of your car charger.

One thing to check is that the Kona is set to accept AC charge. What I mean is that you can tell it to stop charging via AC if the battery is above X% -- so if your recent not-much-driving experiences have the battery sitting at 85%, it won't charge on your home charger at all.

I hope you'll let us all know more about your issues getting some of the inexpensive electricity.

eastpole
Click to expand...
Amazing success!! Last night the car finally charged to schedule. All I did was set the "Next Departure" to the early hours of the morning and to my surprise the timer worked. The only other thing I did was to unplug the dashcam. This runs off the cigarette lighter which is off unless the motor is running so shouldn't make any difference.

So now I have a fully charged battery and nowhere to go. This means I can't check whether this was a one off success or the final solution to the problem. Looking forward to the lifting of restrictions and will report back in due course.

My thanks to all who have responded.
 
hobbit said:
" Basically, I could not make the car wait till off-peak time
unless I *set* a departure for some time afterward, which is stupid. Plain ol'
charging time window should be independent of that.
Click to expand...

That is quite confounding. Thanks for mentioning that quirk, Hobbit -- it looks like you helped Neil and me too. We should send a note to the UI people at Kona. Regardless of when I end up leaving for work or chores, I want to take advantage of my low-rate electricity.

eastpole
 
neil arundel said:
So now I have a fully charged battery and nowhere to go. This means I can't check whether this was a one off success or the final solution to the problem. Looking forward to the lifting of restrictions and will report back in due course.
Click to expand...

I think I charge my car maybe once a month these days, and even that isn't a full charge. I could get by with the granny cable, really.

Where I am, there is no benefit to charging at night - the rates are the same day or night. That being said, it is relatively cheap - 10 cents/kWh.
 
Hey Neil, what more did you learn since you last posted here?

I have had a Kona (in Ireland), since day 1 2019 and have always had this issue. I also have a Garo charger with load balancing meter. My only solution which works 100% of the time regardless of the scheduled next departure is to do the following steps:
  1. Turn off car and plug in charger. Dash says it's waiting for scheduled time to charge (I have the off-peak hours set from 12am to 8am). Garo flashes green to tell you it knows it's plugged in to the car.
  2. Turn on car, change off-peak hours from 12am to some time before the current time to "trigger" a charge. e.g. if it's currently 5.30pm, change off-peak hours to 5pm to 8am.
  3. Car starts charging.
  4. Change off-peak hours back to 12am to 8am.
  5. Car stops charging, and turn off car.
I looked into this a lot in early 2019 and tried every single combination I could otherwise to try and figure out if it was the cars fault or the chargers. Garo told me it wasn't anything to do with them. I never did look into it since but have just had a google and this came up so I'm sure you can imagine although this takes me about 30 seconds it's actually pretty annoying :D. I suspect the two times you posted here with success, you inadvertently did the steps I mentioned there and "toggled" the charge on and off which set it correctly for that night.
 
Have you compared the behaviour with using the supplied portable EVSE? The portable unit responds to the J1772 protocol without requiring that initial steps be completed in sequence, or even at all. If the car wants to charge it will allow it directly once it completes its own self-check.

The setting "off-peak only" or "off-peak preferred" could also be involved. There was a theory put forth some time time back that if "off-peak only" was selected, charging would only start if the deficit (from current SoC to the set charge limit) could be satisfied in the time allocated. I haven't seen that as being true myself.

If the setting is for "off-peak preferred" it will start immediately if the deficit can't be cleared within the off-peak period. I'm unsure what the effect of departure time is on this but it does require setting even if climate conditioning is not set.
 
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