Can someone explain profiles, night rates, timers?

I'm a new owner of a 2016 e-Golf and I just switched to PG&E's EV Time-Of-Use rate plan. I'm trying to figure out Car-Net's delayed charging feature. What I would like to do:
- Plug the car in every day when I get home.

- Car should be ready by 6:00am, but all charging to be during the TOU off-peak hours 11pm-7am (I'll probably use 11:30p-6:30a to account for clock differences). The weekend off-peak 7pm-3pm the next day.

Away from home, I will only do an immediate charge.

kirby said:

I'm a new owner of a 2016 e-Golf and I just switched to PG&E's EV Time-Of-Use rate plan. I'm trying to figure out Car-Net's delayed charging feature. What I would like to do:
- Plug the car in every day when I get home.

- Car should be ready by 6:00am, but all charging to be during the TOU off-peak hours 11pm-7am (I'll probably use 11:30p-6:30a to account for clock differences). The weekend off-peak 7pm-3pm the next day.

Away from home, I will only do an immediate charge.

Click to expand...

Ask some others on PGE, but my take on it is that EV time of use, they end up gouging you for kwh rates on usage in your home, the rest of the time. Do some searching here in the technical section, also Miimura is very knowledgeable on the subject matter, IMHO.

I don't think the 2016 is any different, but my experience with the 2015 e-Golf is that you just set the departure time to the earlier of when you want to leave, or the end of the low rate window. In your case, set the departure time for 6am. I have not done a lot of experimentation, but it seems the "Off-Peak Power" feature is broken, so just leave it turned off. When you plug in the car, it will see the volts and amps available and calculate when it should wake up and start charging. It's just that simple. Well, except that the app is confusing because of how they split the settings between the schedule and the "Charging Locations". After I got mine set correctly it was truly plug and play and you don't have to touch the app or web site any more.

However, you did not say what charging station you have. If you are using the provided 120V charging cord, you will only be able to recharge about 35 miles of range between 11pm and 6am. If you drive more than that each day, you should get a 240V charging station because the provided one will either start early before the electric price goes down or it will start immediately when you plug in and then not even be fully charged when you want to leave. Any 240V charging solution (16 amps and above) will fully charge the car in the 7 hours you have available between 11pm and 6am.

Thanks both of you for the replies.
For now, I'm using the provided 120V charger on a existing dedicated 15A circuit. Part of my eval before buying the car was whether I could make 120V charging work most of the time. My daily commute roundtrip is 16mi and my wife has free Level 2 charging at her work. So, I figured that was a reasonable worst case.

While mapping that 120V/15A circuit, I discovered a 240V 30A breaker I couldn't account for in the box and eventually tracked it down. I have an unused but live NEMA 10-30 plug in the garage on its own 30A circuit! So now I'm evaluating EVSEs. I'm leaning heavily towards building an OpenEVSE box. I have a question out to OpenEVSE folks whether it is safe to use their device with the 3-wire hot/hot/neutral setup. I haven't looked behind the receptacle to see if there is a proper ground there already.

kirby said:

Thanks both of you for the replies.
For now, I'm using the provided 120V charger on a existing dedicated 15A circuit. Part of my eval before buying the car was whether I could make 120V charging work most of the time. My daily commute roundtrip is 16mi and my wife has free Level 2 charging at her work. So, I figured that was a reasonable worst case.

While mapping that 120V/15A circuit, I discovered a 240V 30A breaker I couldn't account for in the box and eventually tracked it down. I have an unused but live NEMA 10-30 plug in the garage on its own 30A circuit! So now I'm evaluating EVSEs. I'm leaning heavily towards building an OpenEVSE box. I have a question out to OpenEVSE folks whether it is safe to use their device with the 3-wire hot/hot/neutral setup. I haven't looked behind the receptacle to see if there is a proper ground there already.

Click to expand...

A NEMA 10-30 is 240V hot, hot neutral wired. You should be able to run a 24 amp 240V EVSE setting as max on a Open Source EVSE, though it would probably be better to add a margin of error and run 20 amps max. My understanding is you can program that Open Source EVSE to what ever max Amps you want. I know you can also do the same with a Juice Box 40 Pro, but you would have to rewire it for the 10-30 male plug to make it work.

Unfortunately, Clipper Creek makes a lot of different amperage units, which don't work at all so far with car-net and off peak hours timing of recharging on the Car-Net app.

kirby said:

Thanks both of you for the replies.
For now, I'm using the provided 120V charger on a existing dedicated 15A circuit. Part of my eval before buying the car was whether I could make 120V charging work most of the time. My daily commute roundtrip is 16mi and my wife has free Level 2 charging at her work. So, I figured that was a reasonable worst case.

While mapping that 120V/15A circuit, I discovered a 240V 30A breaker I couldn't account for in the box and eventually tracked it down. I have an unused but live NEMA 10-30 plug in the garage on its own 30A circuit! So now I'm evaluating EVSEs. I'm leaning heavily towards building an OpenEVSE box. I have a question out to OpenEVSE folks whether it is safe to use their device with the 3-wire hot/hot/neutral setup. I haven't looked behind the receptacle to see if there is a proper ground there already.

Click to expand...

You should really see if there is a proper ground. If there is, you should change it to a 14-30 socket. An EVSE really needs a proper ground.

An update to all this (in case anyone is searching for openEVSE and e-Golfs)

The junction box with the existing 10-30 receptacle had a ground wire in the box, just not wired to the 10-30 So, I changed the receptacle to a 14-30, built the OpenEVSE 50A kit with a 14-50 plug, and bought a set 14-50 adapters (14-30, 5-15). One of the reasons I like the OpenEVSE unit is its size, I plan on taking it with me for far visits where I can't make the round trip without charging but have access to a plug at a friends place. I went with the 50A and 14-50 on the openEVSE unit for a bit of future proofing. The first thing I did was change the current limit on the openEVSE to 24A,

I'm happy to report the openEVSE unit works with the 2016 SEL delayed charging. I haven't tried the charge timer on the EVSE yet.

kirby said:

An update to all this (in case anyone is searching for openEVSE and e-Golfs)

The junction box with the existing 10-30 receptacle had a ground wire in the box, just not wired to the 10-30 So, I changed the receptacle to a 14-30, built the OpenEVSE 50A kit with a 14-50 plug, and bought a set 14-50 adapters (14-30, 5-15). One of the reasons I like the OpenEVSE unit is its size, I plan on taking it with me for far visits where I can't make the round trip without charging but have access to a plug at a friends place. I went with the 50A and 14-50 on the openEVSE unit for a bit of future proofing. The first thing I did was change the current limit on the openEVSE to 24A,

I'm happy to report the openEVSE unit works with the 2016 SEL delayed charging. I haven't tried the charge timer on the EVSE yet.

Click to expand...

Glad you had a good outcome and limited the EVSE to 24A. When you really do plug in to a 50A circuit, you could set it higher and let the car take all 30 amps that it can. I would not hold my breath for the EVSE timer working with the e-Golf.

carnet interface is just terrible.

and maybe im stupid and cant figure it out.

Using Juicebox40

Im in SD area. Using TOU2 - 19 cents/hour super off-peak
set night rate timer to begin at midnight and end at 0500.

Set departure time at 0800.

Plugged in and quick flashing green light and amber lit delayed charge button. Looking good.

Woke and checked car @ 0700 and it's still charging w 45 min to go.
????

Will try again tonight.
Changed departure time to 0600.
Everything else remaining the same.

will report back tomorrow

What does min battery mean?

Cclcal said:

carnet interface is just terrible.

and maybe im stupid and cant figure it out.

Using Juicebox40

Im in SD area. Using TOU2 - 19 cents/hour super off-peak
set night rate timer to begin at midnight and end at 0500.

Set departure time at 0800.

Plugged in and quick flashing green light and amber lit delayed charge button. Looking good.

Woke and checked car @ 0700 and it's still charging w 45 min to go.
????

Will try again tonight.
Changed departure time to 0600.
Everything else remaining the same.

will report back tomorrow

What does min battery mean?

Click to expand...

The result you got is the expected one. It was trying to finish charging at 08:00 and it looks like it was going to finish at 07:45. Not bad in my book. You should really set the departure time to the end of your low electric rate window.

Min Battery means that if your car has a battery level less than that setting, it will immediately charge to that set level, then stop and go to sleep until it's time to charge up to your Max Battery level by the Departure time.

i understand so i did change my departure time to 0600.
But in my climate&battery profile I had set the charging to begin at midnight and end at 0500.
Technically it should charge for 1hr 30 min sometime between midnight and 0500.
Not start at 0615 and end at 0745.

So I changed my dep time to 0500, kept profile the same, begin midnight and end at 0500.
It's 1130 and I plugged car in, car immediately begins to charge. Slow glowing green light. Regardless of amber lit delay charge button.
I pushed the buttons, stopped charging but cant remove handle, had to push unlock button to get handle to release.

Went to carnet to turn off charging. Green charging light off, unable to remove handle again. terrible.
Unplugged handle, plug back in, now yellow light is on. So is the amber delay charge button.

Has to be much simpler way.

another complaint, takes forever to "save" when i make any changes.

i will continue to mess w it.

Cclcal said:

i understand so i did change my departure time to 0600.
But in my climate&battery profile I had set the charging to begin at midnight and end at 0500.
Technically it should charge for 1hr 30 min sometime between midnight and 0500.
Not start at 0615 and end at 0745.

So I changed my dep time to 0500, kept profile the same, begin midnight and end at 0500.
It's 1130 and I plugged car in, car immediately begins to charge. Slow glowing green light. Regardless of amber lit delay charge button.
I pushed the buttons, stopped charging but cant remove handle, had to push unlock button to get handle to release.

Went to carnet to turn off charging. Green charging light off, unable to remove handle again. terrible.
Unplugged handle, plug back in, now yellow light is on. So is the amber delay charge button.

Has to be much simpler way.

another complaint, takes forever to "save" when i make any changes.

i will continue to mess w it.

Click to expand...

That's because you are using the cellular network to transfer info.
If you do it in the car it's very fast.

And since you have an 'unlock' button you must have a 2016 SEL?

forbin404 said:

Cclcal said:

i understand so i did change my departure time to 0600.
But in my climate&battery profile I had set the charging to begin at midnight and end at 0500.
Technically it should charge for 1hr 30 min sometime between midnight and 0500.
Not start at 0615 and end at 0745.

So I changed my dep time to 0500, kept profile the same, begin midnight and end at 0500.
It's 1130 and I plugged car in, car immediately begins to charge. Slow glowing green light. Regardless of amber lit delay charge button.
I pushed the buttons, stopped charging but cant remove handle, had to push unlock button to get handle to release.

Went to carnet to turn off charging. Green charging light off, unable to remove handle again. terrible.
Unplugged handle, plug back in, now yellow light is on. So is the amber delay charge button.

Has to be much simpler way.

another complaint, takes forever to "save" when i make any changes.

i will continue to mess w it.

Click to expand...

That's because you are using the cellular network to transfer info.
If you do it in the car it's very fast.

And since you have an 'unlock' button you must have a 2016 SEL?

Click to expand...

15 Limited edition.
I didnt know I could set delay charging from the car.

Cclcal said:

15 Limited edition.
I didnt know I could set delay charging from the car.

Click to expand...

The 2015 USA Model e-Golf is the only one that cannot set the schedules in the car. Your only choice is through CarNet app or web site. 2016 model year cars in USA can do the settings in-car. Europe and other markets had the settings in the car from the start. It is mind boggling why VW USA did this to the 2015's.

miimura said:

Cclcal said:

15 Limited edition.
I didnt know I could set delay charging from the car.

Click to expand...

The 2015 USA Model e-Golf is the only one that cannot set the schedules in the car. Your only choice is through CarNet app or web site. 2016 model year cars in USA can do the settings in-car. Europe and other markets had the settings in the car from the start. It is mind boggling why VW USA did this to the 2015's.

Click to expand...

thanks for the info.