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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
NOTE: if this happens repeatedly, you may be experiencing the Tesla random start issue.
This mode is also triggered when charging is started by the vehicle's charging scheduler, eg if you enable scheduled charging on the vehicle rather than in Charge HQ. See this page for more.
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, for example TeslaFi, Tessie etc. 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.
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.
NOTE: if this happens repeatedly, you may be experiencing the Tesla random start issue. Please read that page before reporting issues.
Yes, you can access it here: https://app.chargehq.net/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 are still working on possible business models and pricing options. We are determined to make Charge HQ good value for money, both in terms of the benefits it provides and in comparison to other products that do similar things.
In future we plan to enable Charge HQ users to optionally participate in programs which provide incentives for providing grid support, for example avoiding charging during peak periods or when a power station fails. The value from these programs should reduce or eliminate the costs of Charge HQ to the end user.
There are still some major features to add and other work to complete before coming out of beta, so the product will remain free to use for now.
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.
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.
Nope. We hate ads too.
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.
Yes. Advanced integration features allow you to choose whether to prioritise home battery vs EV charging from solar.
You'll find a full list of supported batteries in the Home Battery System Support Register.
No. You only need one of the two to be supported to use Charge HQ. See the Solar Data Support Register for more details.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
See here for the list of supported inverters.
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.
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.
If you enable scheduled charging on the vehicle itself (not from Charge HQ), the behaviour on plug-in is different.
At home, if you have a scheduled charge configured on the vehicle itself, this tells the vehicle not to charge until the scheduled time when you plug in the charger. When you plug the vehicle in less than 18 hours before the scheduled start time, it will not start charging.
If Charge HQ wants to charge the vehicle at the time you plug in, it may take a couple of minutes for Charge HQ to detect that the vehicle is plugged in and start the charging.
Charge HQ can co-exist with the vehicle schedule in two ways:
This option will cause Charge HQ to stop charging when it detects that charging has been started by the vehicle schedule. See this page for details and instructions. This option is useful when you don't actually want to charge overnight, but want to prevent charging from starting every time the vehicle is plugged in.
By default, Charge HQ will detect that charging has been started by the vehicle schedule and will allow it to complete. When this occurs, you will see a "Charging Control Paused" message on the home screen. This is the default behaviour of Charge HQ and no setup is required, other than enabling schedule charging on the vehicle. See this page for more information.
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, Charge HQ will work with all Tesla Models, including S, X, 3 and Y. More details.
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 - 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 will detect external control and will not control the charging again until:
When the vehicle is at home the charging power (amps) is controlled by Charge HQ. If you change the amps using the Tesla app Charge HQ will change them back, unless:
To avoid confusion we recommend using Charge HQ in preference to the Tesla app for controlling the 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.
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.
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.
Support for multiple Tesla vehicles is currently somewhat limited. It works as follows:
We are planning to improve features for those with multiple vehicles.
Yes, non-Tesla EV's can be used with any of the currently supported smart wall chargers.
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!
