Optimal GivEnergy Settings for Octopus Flux

New tis solar PV, storage, import and export tariffs. Just looking for an introductory guide to making Octopus Flux and GivEnergy work together. Signposts to relevant info very welcome!
Thanks

slothboy what do you want to get out of it?

Do you have solar? If so, would it fully charge your battery in the day? Just use Eco mode if so, or set a timed charge between 2am and 5am if not.

Do you want to export at peak times? This will be a manual setting as timed export doesn't reset to Eco mode once it's finished. Some people set alarms for this to remind them. Some people use the Octopus R&D labs, but I've not tried this yet.

Most basic - leave it on Eco mode al the time.

Save a few pence each day - timed charge 2-5am and leave it on Eco mode

Everything past this was save you only small amounts and depends on your usage patterns, size of you battery etc so there is no simple solution.

Using grid electricity 2-5am is cheaper than using your own solar so it still pays to run your dishwasher at 2am etc if possible.

naltsta
Only difficulty is making wife get up at 2am to do dishwasher ...............Only joking

naltsta How is it cheaper than your own solar?

netty

The idea being that paying 20p to run your dishwasher off peak and selling 1kwh generated to the grid at 22p is in theory better than just using the solar. It all depends on the losses and whether you are then using that off peak energy to charge the battery or use directly and realistically if you are charging 1kwh into your battery, its probably costing you 22p or 23p because of the losses involved. It's likely a net zero.

Regardless, the differences are so small that the downside of not force charging at 2am are that if it ends up being a crappy day, you will have to import more energy at 35p or even 47p during the day. If it turns out it is a good day then you imported 10.5kwh or so to fill your 9.5kwh battery for £2.10 and then sold all your generation back to the grid anyway for 22p or maybe 35p per unit later in the day. One of our systems (4kwp) generated 22.4 kwh today, that could have been sold for the better part of £5 even while topping up the battery.

Octopus have quite deliberately set the tariff up like this to encourage people to force charge when green/nuclear energy is cheap and often abundant in the middle of the night, and export much or all of their PV to the grid during the day.

When my fixed tariff end in July, I'm sure I'll end up on Flux. And yes, it is clearly designed so that you start your day with a full battery. The 3 hours of cheapest top-up may only just fill a 9.5Kwr battery in the winter. I can see Flux being a great tariff in summer, not sure about winter though

Tracker (not Agile) has consistently been the best so far in 2023. Ave daily rate 1 Jan to 31Mar was 23.55p inc vat
Worth considering getting on waiting list as there are no penalties if you change your mind.

I have switched from Agile Outgoing to Fixed Outgoing (15p) as that will be much easier to manage and probably more beneficial anyway as my summer exports are often at low daily rates from mid morning to mid afternoon - even if I send as much as possible to batteries it exceed inverter & battery limits.

Roberto I can see Flux being a great tariff in summer, not sure about winter though

For anyone without an EV the other options are probably only agile or eco 7, but eco 7 I don't think is an instant switch like all the other tariffs.

For us I know that most days our bill would be one charge of the battery at off peak, minus whatever PV we generated. In Jan our 6kwp still made 207kwh which while not great is not nothing. Assuming £2.59 a day to put 10.5kwh into a 9.5 battery and pay the standing charge, that's £80.29 for the month, minus £45 if we exported all the PV at 22p.

You might get a cheaper import on agile but I'm not sure on the difference to know if the reduced export numbers would make a difference.

It all does depend on how much you use though.

my understanding of current options:

I have
8kw solar panels
3 x 8.2kw Batteries
5kw Hybrid Gen1 Invertor

Zappi charger to be added (planning required due to nonsense listed building rules)

Octopus Tracker import
Octopus Standard Fixed export

As others have said, depends on what you have and what you want.

I use the off peak 2am-5am hours to charge up the Givenergy battery, put some juice in the PHV and run the dishwasher (it has a delayed start option so no need to get up at 2am). After 5am, the battery keeps the house going until the sun comes up and solar kicks in to run the house and top up the battery. Excess solar gets a decent export rate (more than outgoing octopus which is what i was on).

If it's a dull day and battery SOC is a bit low approaching peak 4pm-7pm, I use the quick button on the Givenergy app to boost charge the battery (remembering to turn it off before 4pm) so battery + whatever solar there is will coast through peak hours. After that, battery keeps house going until it either runs out or 2am comes round again...

I have 4kW array, 3.6kW hybrid inverter and 8.2kWh battery. Average consumption 20 units a bay.

alan_johnston

If you set a timed charge from 2am to 4pm, I think solar will still take over and charge it if available, then you don't have to worry about turning off the "fast charge". It will however mean sucking from the grid to maintain your charge the entire time solar is unavailable, so that could be in the 5am-7/8am window.

pacemaker
Or use Octo R&D scheduler. My settings below

SteveCook Been meaning to ask, what does your bill look like now?

Well 2 days ago was sunny in N Yorkshire and with 11kWhr going to Solar iBoost+ that was say £3 of energy I did not have to import by either gas or elec.
On top of that I imported £2.50 and exported £9.97
I have 27 panels though

bill related - is there any way to see a calendar month (not a bill month) of import/export £££ value on octopus? Everywhere I look on their site its just kWh values

SteveCook Monday was good here too over in the butt of the country. 48.2kw generated exported 25.799kwh the rest went into the house/car resulted in a bill of -£5.835. Pretty happy with flux so far. Total bill for the last 7 days including standing charge is -£5.30. I am going to look again at exporting from the battery during peak, but only at weekends I think. This week I have discharged my givenergy battery into my car so my grid use has only been 1 - 5kw each day so far. Depending on how much sun we get this Summer I am pretty confident flux will generate me enough credit to get through the winter. Will switch back to Intelligent early September ish.

pacemaker Octopus did have a kWh or £ view in the app but since moving to Flux, the £ option is no longer there. I now download the smart meter data from my Octopus login then upload into a spreadsheet that crunches the numbers and tells me what is what.

alan_johnston

I'm just using the Smart Tariff data from GE dashboard. It updates whenever the Octopus API has my meter reading for the previous day. Seems accurate, just doesn't include the standing charge. The only downside of the GE data view is that it won't store historical price changes if the tariff shifts, it only shows the £££ for the tariff as it is "today".

To get around that, I am just checking in every day and logging the data (kWh and £££) in a spreadsheet.

alan_johnston I purchased the app “octopus watch” and have been very happy with the stats I get from that.