Yes, in the app navigate to Charging Settings, the slide the Charging Control Enabled toggle to off. This will stop Charge HQ from sending any charging commands to your EV or wall charger.
You can also permanently disable Charge HQ by deleting your account.
Yes, you can access it here: https://app.chargehq.net/
Yes. The app is just a display interface, which updates settings stored on our servers. All the control is initiated from our servers, not the app itself.
You will need to use the same login details on each device.
What is happening?
In order to allow the introduction of some new features and improvements, we are making some changes to the way that some settings work. Some users will be impacted by these changes, and may need to make some adjustments to their settings.Impacted users will be given time to make those adjustments before the change occurs.
Who is impacted?
Impacted users are those who:
If you always use solar tracking then you are not impacted, and can stop reading here if you like.
When is it happening?
On 5th September 2023 all users with solar tracking enabled were switched to the new design, since they are not impacted.
Remaining users are still on the old design however they can switch to the new design when they are ready. See instructions below.
At some point in the future all users will be switched to the new design. Impacted users will be notified before this happens.
What is changing?
Currently, if you don't use solar tracking:
Under the new design, if you don't use solar tracking:
What do I need to do?
If you don't use solar tracking you will need to:
When do I need to take these actions?
You can take these actions any time from now, however your existing settings will continue to work as normal for a while.
How do I switch to the new design?
To switch to the new design, upgrade your app to the latest version. Tap the banner on the home screen and follow the prompts. You will be reminded of the changes you may need to make. Once you have switched, it is not possible to switch back to the legacy design.
No, the app is just an interface that lets you see what's happening and change the settings. All of the ongoing control of charging and data collection happens on our servers in the cloud.
You can install the app on as many devices as you wish, and can even have the app open on multiple devices at the same time.
If you uninstall the app from all devices this will NOT disable Charge HQ, because it will keep running on the server. For more information please see How do I stop using Charge HQ?
There are two options with guides for each:
Charge HQ will detect when charging is stopped or started by something else, including:
Once detected it will display the "Charging Control Paused" banner in the app and cease control of charging. This is to prevent Charge HQ from overriding what you are trying to do in the vehicle.
You will received a notification when this happens (in app version 1.8 and higher).
This mode is also triggered when charging is started by the vehicle's charging scheduler AND you haven't enabled the override.
Charge HQ will stay in the "Charging Control Paused" mode until:
One common cause of external control is other 3rd-party apps which have been linked to your Tesla. If any other app sends charging commands to your vehicle, Charge HQ may detect external control. This is to avoid multiple apps "fighting" over charging control, which is not good for the equipment. Apps may include:
If you have used 3rd-party apps in the past and you want to be sure that they are no longer connected to your vehicle, you can change your password on tesla.com. That will invalidate all 3rd-party access, including Charge HQ, so you'll need to reconnect Charge HQ after doing this.
The external control detection may occasionally incorrectly detect external control. If this happens, please feel free to let us know by emailing info@chargehq.net and describing the date & time when it occurred.
If the app is showing a "Vehicle Schedule Disabled" message, this means that:
The Override Vehicle Schedule setting, when enabled, is intended to be used in conjunction with a "Start At" charging schedule on the vehicle. Please see Using Tesla Scheduled Charging for details.
To make this message go away, you can either:
Note: the Override Vehicle Schedule setting does nothing when scheduled charging on the vehicle is disabled, but it may indicate a misconfiguration, hence the warning message.
You can, but since the charger itself cannot be remotely controlled, it can only be used with Charge HQ in combination with Tesla vehicles currently. See our list of other supported smart chargers.
You can, but since the charger itself cannot be remotely controlled, it can only be used with Charge HQ in combination with Tesla vehicles currently. See our list of other supported smart chargers.
We do not currently support control via smart plugs. We may revisit this in future but it's not currently a priority.
An integration with a smart plug would not allow us to vary the charge rate to follow solar production. We could only turn it on or off which limits the accuracy of solar tracking.
If you only need a 10 A charger, and are located in a region where there is a lot of solar generation on the grid, you may consider using our advanced scheduling to restrict charging to the period between 10am and 3pm.
No, as long as you have a Tesla.
If you have a Tesla then Charge HQ will work regardless of the charger you use, including the UMC charging cable that comes with the car.
If you don’t have a Tesla then you’ll need a supported smart charger to use Charge HQ.
See also our article on what speed home EV charger do I need for thoughts on why you might want a wall charger.
OCPP stands for Open Charge Point Protocol. It allows communication between EV chargers and centralised management systems such as Charge HQ. Charge HQ uses OCPP to control wall chargers where it is supported.
See the Wall Charger Support Register for a current list. Note: if you have a Tesla you can use Charge HQ with any wall charger.
Currently no. We may consider adding this feature in future but note that the speed it reacts will be limited by the data feeds which are typically in minutes, vs local systems which can react at the second level.
We currently only provide control over EV charging. In the next 1-2 years though we expect to remain focussed on building the best EV charging product we can.
It's a common request and it might be something we consider adding support for at some point in future.
To our knowledge, none of the smart meter providers offer an API with near realtime access (1-5 minute maximum delay) to the metering data. In Australia, most are delayed by 24 hours and data is provided at 15 minute intervals.
Some smart meters provide a local data interface via Zigbee and we would be open to integrating with this if we find some good hardware which makes this data accessible via an API with frequent updates.
No, Charge HQ will work with any retailer.
That said, Charge HQ currently has an integration with Amber Electric. If you are an Amber customer then Charge HQ can obtain and react to your current electricity price.
Integrations with other retailers may be added in future.
New features are first rolled out to the web version of the app. You can access this via a browser on your mobile or desktop device at: https://app.chargehq.net/
Note: Whilst Charge HQ will work if being used both by the mobile and web apps, you may notice inconsistent behaviours on the mobile app when using new features in the web app.
Using Charge HQ may result in your vehicle charging when you don’t want it to, or failing to charge when you do want it to. We try hard to avoid these kinds of bugs but you should be prepared for them to happen occasionally, especially during the beta development phase.
Charge HQ works with any electricity retailer both in Australia and internationally. In Australia WATTever provides some great resources to help you choose the best electricity retailer for you.
If you are using a price source (eg Amber or AEMO spot price) and set a Do Not Charge Price limit, you may notice that solar charging is stopped when the price limit is exceeded. This may be unexpected, as you might consider solar energy to be free and that the price limit should only apply to grid imports.
However, when you consume your own solar you are forgoing the feed-in credit that you would have earned if that excess solar was fed into the grid. Thus the "price" of your own solar is actually the feed-in price at the time. For example, if the wholesale price spiked to $5 / kWh, you would effectively be paying $5 / kWh to charge your EV.
When charging from solar, Charge HQ will stop charging when the feed-in price exceeds the Do Not Charge Price.
When charging from the grid, Charge HQ will stop charging when the import price exceeds the Do Not Charge Price.
If you are charging from a mix of solar and grid using Solar+Grid mode, Charge HQ will use the import price if less than 1 kW of solar is available for charging, otherwise it will use the feed-in price.
We will never sell or provide your personal information to a third party, unless required by law.
We may share anonymised and aggregated data (eg average charging profiles) to third parties or to the public if it’s consistent with our objective to support the transition to renewable energy.
Please see the privacy policy for details.
Nope. We hate ads too.
Yes. Advanced integration features allow you to choose whether to prioritise home battery vs EV charging from solar.
No. You only need one of the two to be supported to use Charge HQ. See the Solar Data Support Register for more details.
The choice of battery impacts Charge HQ by how frequently it provides data updates. Those which update more frequently allow Charge HQ to work slightly more efficiently. See our page comparing the monitoring data update frequencies for the different solar inverters and batteries.
You'll find a full list of supported batteries in the Home Battery System Support Register.
If your EV is charging from the grid overnight, and the battery has charge, it will be used. This is a common occurrence with EV chargers. There's a detailed explanation of why this happens and some workarounds in our article on EV Charging and Home Battery Interaction.
No, although the solar tracking works better with a consumption meter.
If your solar system has a consumption meter, you can see your household consumption and grid imports and exports. Without a consumption meter, you can only see solar generation.
If a consumption meter is present Charge HQ can divert the excess solar to EV charging. For example, if you turn on your oven, Charge HQ will reduce the EV charging power to avoid importing from the grid.
Without a consumption meter Charge HQ can simply adjust the EV charging power to match the solar generation. So if you turn on your oven, Charge HQ won't know and won't reduce the EV charging power. The settings do allow reserving a certain amount of solar power for household consumption.
You can read more about grid consumption meters in our article on Grid vs Solar vs Home Battery & EV monitoring.
Some electricity tariffs provide a high feed in tariff (payment for exports) for the first X kWh (e.g. 10 kWH) then default to a lower price for any additional exports.
Charge HQ cannot automatically allow for a fixed quantity of exports before using any excess for EV charging. We only actively monitor solar exports whilst an EV is available to be charged, at all other times we don't actively track solar generation or exports. We do this to reduce the load and cost incurred by all parties to provide the online services.
If you would like to charge your EV from solar but still maximise the use of premium feed in tariffs with Charge HQ, you can try:
First, check our register of supported solar data sources to confirm that we definitely don't support your solar inverter, energy monitor or home battery. Please also review our guidance on development prioritisation and timeframes.
If you're based in Australia, you can install a Solar Analytics Classic energy monitor or a Wattwatchers energy monitor as a workaround.
For users outside Australia we currently don't have any alternatives but plan to support more energy meters in future.
If it doesn't look like Charge HQ will be adding support for your inverter, battery or energy monitor soon, you may also consider installing a wall charger that supports solar charging.
Charge HQ uses a live data feed from one of the solar inverter, home battery or an energy monitor. This data feed is accessed over the internet and provides time series data on how much solar is being produced and in many cases how much is being exported. Charge HQ constantly monitors this data feed then communicates with the EV or wall charger over the internet, instructing it to charge at a rate matching the excess solar energy that is available. You can read more about the minimum hardware requirements, or how the charging control system works.
In most cases, yes. Please see the Multiple Inverters article for more details:
See here for the list of supported inverters.
The choice of solar inverter impacts Charge HQ by how frequently it provides data updates. Those which update more frequently work slightly more efficiently. See our page comparing the monitoring data update frequencies for the different solar inverters. Home batteries can often provide the solar generation data also so keep this in mind.
We are constantly onboarding new solar inverters. The order in which they're added is roughly based on how common the inverter is and how many requests we get for support. We expect there will be a small number of inverters which we cannot integrate with for technical or commercial reasons.
Our Solar Data Support Register provides guidance on integrations we're currently working on or plan to in future. More details on timing can be found via the development prioritisation & timeframes page.
The best way to let us know that you want us to support your inverter is via the Feature Request form.
If you have connected Charge HQ to your solar system and the power flow diagram (shown above) is not visible, this means that your solar system does not include a consumption meter, otherwise known as a grid import/export meter.
Please see this page for more information.
If you have solar tracking enabled, Charge HQ will automatically start and stop charging based on available solar generation.
In order to start charging, available solar generation needs to exceed the minimum required by the car or wall charger. Some common values are:
The amount of solar required to enable charging will also be impacted by any Advanced Solar Tracking settings you have.
The diagnostics menu on the app home screen may provided further guidance as to why charging is enabled or disabled.
Yes - with some limitations.
You can start or stop charging using the Tesla app (or the vehicle's screen) at any time, including when the vehicle is at home.
When you do this, Charge HQ may detect external control and will not control the charging again until:
Whenever solar charging or scheduled charging is active, the charging power (amps) is controlled by Charge HQ. If you change the amps using the Tesla app, Charge HQ will change them back.
Charge HQ will not control the amps after external control has been detected.
To avoid confusion we recommend using Charge HQ in preference to the Tesla app for controlling charging at home.
Whenever the vehicle is away from home Charge HQ will not send any charging commands. You should use the Tesla app (or the vehicle) to control charging away from home.
We don't currently have formal support for this but it is on the roadmap.
For now you may be able to use Charge HQ across two sites as follows:
Charge HQ should only attempt to control charging whilst the car is at the site matching the solar inverter.
The Charge HQ app on your phone will only stay logged in to a single account, so you may want to login to the web app in the browser on your phone to control the second location.
To create a second account you may like to use a sub-address (e.g. joe.smith+chargehq@gmail.com).
We haven't tested this configuration but if you do and it works for you please let us know.
Yes, although if the other service sends any charging commands then undesirable and confusing behaviour will almost certainly result.
The developer of Charge HQ also uses TeslaFi without any trouble.
Yes. Charge HQ won't interfere with Tesla EV preconditioning. Energy used for pre-conditioning will be drawn from the charger when the vehicle is plugged in.
Energy used for preconditioning will be reported in the charging stats and appear as charging energy.
Battery heating occurs naturally when your EV charges. If you want to make use of battery preheating it is best to also try and schedule any grid charging to occur prior to your departure time.
Yes, Charge HQ will work with all Tesla Models, including S, X, 3 and Y. More details.
Charge HQ connects to the Tesla API, which is the same API used by the official Tesla app. This API allows visibility and control over a Tesla vehicle. There are many other third-party apps which use the same method, including Teslascope and TeslaFi.
Tesla does not support or endorse third-party access to its API.
Charge HQ controls charging on Tesla vehicles by communicating directly with the vehicle (not the wall charger). There are two steps to enable this communication.
Tesla allows apps like Charge HQ to communicate with their vehicles via an official Third Party App access mechanism.
Access is enabled by logging in to your Tesla account, and granting access to Charge HQ. This happens at a Tesla user account level.
When you grant access, Charge HQ gains visibility of any Vehicles, Powerwalls, or Tesla solar systems connected to your Tesla user account.
The access grant mechanism includes granular control over what information we can see and what we can control.
All information collection and charging control happens via this access grant. If you have multiple Tesla accounts (E.g. multiple drivers, each with their own login):
The Third Party App access grant mechanism creates a secure token which is used by Charge HQ to authenticate with your Tesla account (via a standard oauth access grant). We never have access to your Tesla user account password.
When you enable Third Party App access, you will be asked to select what Charge HQ should have access to. These access scopes are:
Profile Information: Allow access to your profile information, including data such as your contact information, profile picture, and referral information
Vehicle Information: Allow access to your vehicle information, including data such as your vehicle's live data, location, eligible upgrades, nearby superchargers, ownership, and service scheduling data
Vehicle Commands: Allow access to your vehicle commands, including commands such as add/remove driver, access Live Camera, unlock, wake up, remote start, and schedule software updates
Vehicle Charging Management: Allow access to your vehicle charging management, including data such as your vehicle charging history, billed amount, charging location, commands to schedule, and start/stop charging
Energy Product Information: Allow access to your energy product information for Powerwall and solar, including data such as energy flow history, saving forecast, tariff rates, grid import, calendar, site status, time of use, and ownership
Energy Product Commands: Allow access to your energy product commands for Powerwall and solar, including commands such as updates to storm mode and off-grid charging reserve
Note:
The Third Party App access grant gives Charge HQ the ability to communicate with Tesla on your behalf, with access to the vehicles and energy products linked to your account.
In order for your vehicle to accept commands from Tesla for our third party app, you must install a virtual key onto your vehicle via a pairing process.
This step can only be completed by the vehicle owner. The owner can be a different Tesla user account than is used for Step 1 - Third Party App access. Installation of the virtual key only requires that the owner has access to the Tesla web portal and in some cases their email account. The owner does not need to be near the vehicle, or have a Charge HQ account.
Charge HQ hosts a public key at http://tesla.chargehq.net. This address is registered with Tesla as part of our Third Party App. When each vehicle is paired, the virtual key (being a public key) is downloaded from this address onto the vehicle itself.
Once Charge HQ’s virtual key is installed on a given vehicle, any user with access to the vehicle that has completed Step 1 (Third Party App access grant) will be able to use Charge HQ with it.
The virtual key will remain on the vehicle until it is removed. This can be done via using the vehicle’s touchscreen. As an owner, if you wish to prevent an authorised driver from using Charge HQ with the vehicle, you need to remove the Charge HQ virtual key.
UPDATE 2023-11-29
A fix is now available for those vehicles which will not accept commands from Charge HQ:
You must use the webapp to perform the reconnection. Once this is done, you can use the mobile app as normal.
This fix is a work-in-progress and is only recommended for those vehicles which will not accept commands from Charge HQ using the old API.
UPDATE 2023-11-24
Tesla have announced that the old API will stop working on vehicles as follows:
We are working full-time on this migration.
Vehicles on which the old API has stopped working will display an error on the Charge HQ home page. We should have a solution for these vehicles next week. Stay tuned for updates.
UPDATE 2023-11-21
We are making progress on integrating to the new API.
Tesla have advised that different plans with different rate limits will be made available, possibly announced by the end of 2023. When these plans are announced we will comment on how the rate limits will impact Charge HQ.
A small number of vehicles (around 0.5%) are now rejecting commands from Charge HQ via the unofficial API. These vehicles can not be used with Charge HQ currently. See this status event for details.
UPDATE 2023-10-25
Current status:
ORIGINAL POST
Charge HQ like all other third party Tesla apps, has been using the unofficial Tesla API. This is the same API that was built to support the Tesla mobile app but was never designed for third party use.
In October 2023, Tesla announced they would be introducing an official third party API with a view to sunsetting use of the unofficial API at some point in future. This is an exciting development which indicates a long term commitment to working with third parties such as Charge HQ via API based services.
The new API offers significant improvements in security and may enable further feature development not currently possible. The new API also includes some changes to messaging rate limits - the details of this are yet to be determined.
Charge HQ is actively working on a transition. Updates will be posted on this FAQ, our Facebook group and via product updates as we progress.
Charge HQ does not have access to your Tesla username or password. You login directly to tesla.com and Charge HQ obtains a “token” which grants access to the API. Charge HQ stores this token. You can revoke this token at any time by changing your password on tesla.com.
We take security seriously and apply standard best-practices to system security. The tokens are stored in an encrypted format.
Of course, there are still risks. There is a slim possibility that an attacker could obtain the access tokens (although it would be very difficult to do so) and start sending commands to the vehicle, until the token was revoked. All third-party services which use the Tesla API involve this risk.
In September 2023, Tesla announced that they would be upgrading the service that Charge HQ uses to connect to Tesla Vehicles, Powerwall's and Solar systems.
A staged shutdown of the existing service started in November 2023 and will be finalised by the end of December 2023.
All Charge HQ users must update their accounts to work with the new service.
The process must be completed by each account holder, we cannot perform the update for you.
Charging control (solar, scheduling and price) will stop working on accounts that are not updated in December 2023.
The process should not take more than 10 minutes to complete and requires the following actions:
Note: All other Charge HQ settings and configuration will be preserved through this process and will not require updating.
When connected to a wall charger, Tesla EVs will occasionally use power directly from the wall charger for vehicle air conditioning and battery pack temperature control (heating / cooling). Whilst it may result in energy consumption from the grid, it has the benefit of reducing cycles of the EV battery.
As this power consumption is not used for charging the battery, Charge HQ has no control over it. It may occur outside of periods of scheduled charging or solar charging.
Note also, this energy consumption cannot be distinguished from EV charging in the data provided by Tesla and will appear in the Charge HQ charging stats.
By default, all EVs want to charge when they detect a charging cable has been connected. This works well when you plug in to a fast charger away from home.
When you plug a Tesla in, it will start charging immediately even if Charge HQ does not want to charge, eg if there is not enough solar (unless scheduled charging is enabled on the vehicle, see below).
With Charge HQ, the schedules and charging preferences all live on our cloud service, we then monitor your Tesla and send charging instructions as required.
To avoid too much communication with your car, we only monitor it every minute or so when it's at home. This means when you first plug in it might take us a minute or so to detect it and send the right charging command such as start, stop or set the charge rate to match the available solar.
If you like, you can speed this process up by opening the Charge HQ app after plugging in your vehicle. Opening the app (or switching screens in the app) causes Charge HQ to communicate with the vehicle immediately.
You can prevent the vehicle from starting charging immediately by enabling the vehicle's charge schedule.
For more information and instructions, see Tesla scheduled charging.
No. Third-party apps such as Charge HQ generally do not prevent Tesla vehicles from entering the low-power sleep mode.
In the past, third-party apps such as Charge HQ could prevent the vehicle from falling asleep, however software changes from Tesla around Dec 2021 appear to have eliminated this issue. It is possible that some older vehicles may still suffer from this issue, especially Model S & X, which is why Charge HQ still has logic to allow vehicles to go to sleep.
This TeslaFi article contains more details on the sleep situation with older vehicles.
Sleep Logic Explained
When the vehicle is parked, Charge HQ continues polling it for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, if the vehicle is still parked and not charging, Charge HQ stops polling for 15 minutes to allow the vehicle to fall asleep. During this time, the vehicle is displayed as "attempting sleep" on the home screen, and the vehicle state will not update.
You can cancel the sleep attempt by tapping the help icon next to the "attempting sleep" text on the home screen. This will cause Charge HQ to resume polling.
This logic is enabled for all vehicles and can not be disabled.
Yes, non-Tesla EV's can be used with any of the currently supported smart wall chargers.
There is currently no official support for using Charge HQ with more than one EV, but it is planned for future versions of the service.
In the interim, there are some unsupported configurations you can try which may work for you.
As far as we know, starting and stopping or varying the charging power does not harm a vehicle's battery. There are many solar charging products on the market which perform a similar function.
We are aware of rare cases where frequent stopping and starting of charging has lead to premature failure of the contactors (switches) in the charger (not the car). Charge HQ has several delay mechanisms to limit the frequency of stopping and starting eg on partly cloudy days. Please see Reducing Contactor Wear for more information.
All features of Charge HQ were provided free to members of the beta program in exchange for the valuable feedback and real world charging experience they provided that helped us develop the app.
Inevitably we needed a source of revenue to support a sustainable business. You can read about why we've chosen the subscription model.
Many of the basic features remain free to use, with solar charging now requires a subscription. A 60 day free trial is provided to confirm that the service will work for you.
We believe, for most users the savings on their energy bill will exceed the cost of the subscription. Meaning Charge HQ effectively continues to be free!
