I am considering an EV, and Octopus intelligent tariff, with low rates for 6 hours overnight when the car is being charged. With this in mind, I wondered if I could set the system so as to not discharge from the battery at certain rimes of the day.
I have very little knowledge regarding how it will work, hence the question. Any advice would be most helpful.
Inverter Model - GIV-HY3.6
Paul
Home assistant is one option
I think that I know the answer to this question. But if you can tell us the purpose of why you don't want the battery to charge then we could suggest a solution. Is it so that it doesn't discharge into the car leaving you with an empty battery at the end of the six hours?
You could perhaps set the battery to charge, but at an extremely slow rate, so that in practise it's drawing very little cheap-rate power. Another interesting question is how (or whether) to stop the battery discharging if Octopus schedule additional car-charging slots outside of the normal 6 hours.
I charge my car on Intelligent and it has no effect on the battery. No point charging the car from the battery when it only costs 7.5p from grid. I have better use for the battery charge. A full 9.5kw doesn’t put much of a dent in 70+kw of car battery anyway.
I've just moved onto Intelligent from Go. I found that even though GivEnergy system recognises we are on Intelligent, my system would only charge from 00:30 - 04:30 even though off-peak is 23:30 - 05:30. Then if I was given slots outside of my off-peak the Giv batteries (on dynamic mode) were discharging into the car, frustrating the point of diverting grid demand away from peak times. The manual stopping of the battery during these additional slots was not a long-term option. Therefore I have managed to make use of Home Assistant software (fortunately I have a 24/7 running PC) and utilised this to stop the battery from discharging during off-peak and when the car is charging. It is relatively straightforward to achieve as a lot of people have made it work already and have tonnes of helpful advice on the internet & YouTube.
I am disappointed that the GivEnergy system seems to repeatedly try and revert my charging to 00:30 - 04:30 irrespective of the method I used to set it to 23:30 - 05:30 (app or portal) also that dynamic mode discharges the battery during off-peak times. I am still awaiting an answer to a question I raised over a week ago.
I did test charge the 9.5 during Intelligent off peak time just to make sure it would work in the winter when/if needed and it was fine. The car charges at the fairly random time Octopus set up. No problems so far. Just set on Eco and no other automation or Home Assistant (whatever that is!). As it’s only been working since April winter will be the big test.
Hi, what is Home Assist?
Hi GrahamShaul, I am looking ahead to the winter months and trying to consider the option, I have solar but have not yet purchased an EV, so EV comes into the consideration.
I would want the car to charge from the grid at the 7.5p, not using from the battery, I would need to save the charge in the battery for the home; late autumn, winter and early spring. I have an 8kW battery but it is never enough in winter.
Hi Simon, that is the reply I needed, I didn't want to run the battery flat and pay higher costs through the day.
As an Octopus Intelligent customer, is the cheap rate for car only or for all electric use during the hours set by Octopus?
PJT it's an Operating System you can install on different devices that should enable you to connect a multitude of smart home devices together into one platform
Hi, what is Home Assist? My laptop is always on 24/7 as daily backups are always done at nighttime.
I think I read somewhere, that Octopus reserve the right to choose the best time for them and the grid for your time slot.
Hi Simon, what did you set on ECO? The Solar system or Octopus?
PJT
It’s set on Eco. Nothing changed. Dynamic and solar on the app. Tariff Intelligent.
PJT Cheap rate seems to be whenever they set it. Sometimes outside of the 11.30-5.30. Sometimes with odd full price bits in the middle but not affecting the car. Currently we don’t use any grid at all apart from the car and occasional jumps due to plugging something in. Junes total house draw from the grid was 2.95kw and car about 190, but we were away for a week so a bit artificial. As I said winter will be the test but I am not anticipating any problems.
PJT As an Octopus Intelligent customer, is the cheap rate for car only or for all electric use during the hours set by Octopus?
It's all house use.
Setting a timed charge of the battery seems the easiest option, and set the percentage you want to be at at the end of the timed charge. If you aim for 50% it'll either empty or charge the battery to be roughly at that point at the end of the timed charge period, when it returns back to eco
Of course if the car starts charging outside of the usual off peak rate (cuz of intelligent octopus) then that might be an issue, it might start draining the house battery
One option, depending on how your house and car charge are wired, is to move the GivEnergy CT clamp from its current location monitoring the grid and get it to just monitor the household usage. That would mean no data about the car's usage in the GE app, but would mean GE can't tell the car is charging and the home battery won't discharge to meet the load.
That might be feasible depending on how your house is wired, e.g. is there a Henley block between the grid meter and the house consumer unit and car charger (e.g. one set of tails for the house, another for the car charger).
It would therefore be a move of the CT clamp from the cable before the Henley block, to after it - putting it on the cable that goes to the house consumer unit.
TX200 Pretty sure that’s how mine is so the car charger is separate
SimonClarke Mine is like that too (which was accidental) and it works well for me. It means I don't have to worry about the GE battery emptying in to the EV but I can force it to happen if I want.
PJT Sorry for the delay, home assist is Home Assistant a program you can use to control smart devices (and your GivEnergy system). I think Cdent has given the link above.
SimonClarke June was an exceptional month, lots of solar light. I have just checked June's figures and was pleasantly surprised.
Junes total house draw from the grid was 1.01kw and £90 credit for exported energy.
PJT June was rubbish here at the start for 9 days according to weather reports. We turned the heating on one day as it was 12c at night and during the day! Nothing over 14c for days and not much sun. Then it got hot and sunny so ended up producing 834 from 6.48 east west array. We don’t discharge the battery (maybe in the future) and this morning it was full at 8am so dishwasher on two lots of washing and export the rest which pays for the car charge. Obviously the winter will be different….
Figures from my SolarEdge panels.
I dont think GE produce a similar graph.
