Scheduling charging for your Tesla is a great idea to both save money, get the optimum charge or have your car charged when you are set to go.
There are lots of different options and needs when it comes to charging though, so let’s see which ones suit you.
Whether you have a Model Y, Model 3 or Model S or Model X, these options should be similar.
Tesla owners also cover the Tesla App which recently got a scheduled departure feature too! (As of 2021.36 according to this)
Table of Contents
Types of Scheduling On Teslas
The first thing to be aware of is the difference in the two types of scheduled charging available:
- Schedule Charge
- Scheduled Departure
Both can be used to schedule charging, but they have different uses and limitations.
Important: Only one of the two schedule options can be used at once. So, if one is not accessible it is because the other is still turned on.
Tesla Scheduled Charging
The simplest one to understand is use Scheduled Charging. This is basically a start time for charging, rather than a departure time.
So, you can plug your car into the charger and set the start time for charging. That is it.
The charging will then commence at that time.
What if you want a scheduled end time?
There is no specific schedule end time setting, so if you want to set one, you are likely going to have to do some math!
This is a common problem because off-peak will usually have a start and end time.
The trick is to set the battery charge limit (in %) to stop the car from charging. This means you have to calculate how much charge (%) you want to add (or will get in total) during your off-peak.
Note: Tesla recommends NOT charging more than 90% unless you are going on a long trip. 100% charge will deteriorate the battery if used regularly (such are Lithium batteries, even in phones)
To start with you will need to know the following to do the calculation (all steps are below that)
- How many hours off-peak you have
- How much charge you get per hour (kWh) from your charger (7 kW is common at home)
- How many kW your battery has in total
An example Tesla Model Y with 75kWh
Tesla battery limits can be moved in 10% increments, so we want to know what each 10% is.
If you have 75kWh battery – 10% is 7.5kWh.
6 hours of off-peak at 7kWh gives us -> 6 hours x 7 kW = 42 kWh
To get the % for your limit – 42 / 7.5 x 100 = 56%
So, you can safely add 50% to your current state to stay within your off-peak.
If your battery size or charger power is different (which is likely) then just replace the numbers above where appropriate
Setting The Charge Limit
Once you know the charge limit, you can set that quite simply in the charging settings
- Press Set Limit
- Slide arrow below battery to your %
Tesla Scheduled Departure
The idea behind scheduled departure is two-fold.
First, to ensure you have enough charge for your upcoming drive.
Second, use Preconditioning to set the interior temperature of the car and pre-warm the battery just before you leave (this setting is optional). This is especially useful in cold temperatures.
Scheduled Departure then back-calculates when it needs to start charging in order to fulfill those requirements for your departure time.
However, you can also throw off-peak limits into the equation…
Off-Peak Charging
Tesla allows you to set the end time of off-peak charging so that your car does not continue to charge when that period ends. This is great for saving energy costs of course.
The problem with this is that it does not set the start time of the off-peak, so you have to manually start this or set up the whole Scheduled Departure when it is already off-peak.
