Charging your vehicle at home can be quite taxing on your electrical installation. With Smart charging - Schedules, Smappee automatically works out the best moments to charge your EV, based on your electricity tariffs and your solar forecast, so your car is ready on time without you having to think about it.

• A schedule must be programmed in the Smappee app, via the Smart charging – Schedules (and surplus) menu. See how to activate it.
• Your electricity tariffs must be entered in the app, so the algorithm can optimise for cost. See how to set up your tariffs.
• A stable solar forecast is needed for fully optimal results. Your monitor can take up to 30 days to build a correct estimate, schedules may not be fully optimised during this ramp-up period.

When you first select Schedules, your car will start charging immediately, at full speed. This is completely normal: the algorithm needs up to about a minute to map out the schedule. Once it has:

• Charging will pause, or slow down, exactly as needed to meet your schedule.
• Your requested range (in km) is converted to energy using a fixed factor of 0.2 kWh/km, a good estimate for most EVs, though it can vary a bit with weather and driving style.

The optimal charging windows are calculated from a combination of: forecasted solar production and consumption, your electricity tariffs, and live consumption/production. This schedule is continuously re-adjusted in real time. The algorithm always favours solar surplus first, then the cheapest available grid tariff, but the requested energy is always guaranteed: your EV will never be left empty, even if that means charging past your set end time or during a more expensive tariff period.

Smart charging is somewhat less accurate during the first few days after installation, while the system is still learning your energy usage patterns.

Schedules and surplus combines Schedules with Solar charging, in two phases within the same charging session:

1. Schedule phase: the charger first recharges your vehicle based on your programmed schedule, exactly as described above (same requirements, same behaviour).
2. Surplus phase: once your requested range/energy has been delivered, the charger switches over and continues charging only on solar surplus, with the same Grid support and dynamic phase switching logic described in the Solar charging article.

Before anything else, check the charging session status in the Dashboard or app. Only a Paused (or reduced-speed) status is explained by the logic on this page, other statuses point to something unrelated.