Switching providers to Octopus Flux Tariff

Hi folks

In need of some advice on setting up a little bit of automation for charging battery system.

Will be switching to the octopus flux tariff. Our fixed rate deal ends on 29th Sept, and we've had enough of eon and their incompetence. (they screwed up our move last year and still can't get the address right 12 months later, and are still screwing over the buyers of the old property by failing to transfer over the FiT from the panels there, they' had to get solicitors and ofgem involved)

The flux tariff is as follows.

Import	Export

Day rate 31.1p / kWh 20.1p / kWh
Flux rate (02:00 - 05:00) 18.66p / kWh 7.66p / kWh
Peak rate (16:00 - 19:00) 43.53p / kWh 32.53p / kWh
Standing charge 60.18p / day

So what I'm thinking of doing... is run things like dishwasher/washing machine over night during off peak (flux rate), charge the battery up fully, to start being used to power the house from 5am onwards, which will cover low use hrs from 5-8am (few hundred watts/hr at most) and during the shorter days cover most of the morning (5.2kwh battery). Have as much solar as possible used on the house and keeping the battery topped up. But then making sure that the battery is fully charged before the 4pm peak rate kicks in. We know the battery will last for those 3hrs, even if we do a little bit of cooking. Last Jan/Feb a fully charged battery would last from 4pm to almost 9pm depending on cooking.

Looking at the export rates, our best month so far this year was May when we exported 260kwh, which on this day rate would be worth £52 vs the measly £8-9 it's worth from Eon.

We've exported 1006kwh to the grid so far this year (Feb-Sept) which would have been worth £201.. and that's not even counting anything we'd export during the longer days when solar is covering the whole house until 7-8pm and battery until 2-3am.

So how do I go about setting this up. I have access to the web portal in my browser, and the mobile app. I've already got it set to discharge to house only, so we've not sending any battery to the grid, and the house & battery is the priority for solar before anything is exported.

Thanks

Anomnomnomaly Unfortunately you won’t be able to do the ‘double charge up’ automatically from the current Givenergy app or portal, they only support a single timed period. You could setup the overnight period in the app and use alarms on your mobile phone to remind you to do the second charge manually.

If you want to do this all automatically you’ll need to use something separate like Octopus R&D, Wonderwatt, Palm or Home Assistant. I personally use Home Assistant running on a tiny PC that I bought for the purpose.

Flux is great, I’ve been very pleased with it so far this summer. It did take me ages to get my export setup but I’ve been making good money exporting 667kW since mid-August. At the moment my solar panels are providing enough energy to charge the batteries every day and export the excess to the grid, but I know I will need to change as the days get shorter.

Depending on how much electricity you use in the morning and how much your solar panels generate, it may be worth not fully charging the battery overnight as the day rate export is very similar to the flux rate import by the time power losses are considered. There’s no real benefit in my view of over filling the batteries and starting export earlier in the day.

There’s plenty of other forum posts on people setting up these automation tools. I can share my own about setting up Home Assistant if you go that route

geoffreycoan

I have a home server that's running 24/7 on windows 10... Could probably setup some kind of software for home automation. I assume there's a givenergy api to connect to. It's far more powerful than it needs to be for a simple mediaserver. I'm actually unclocking and undervolting a ryzen 7 3800X down to 3ghz and almost 50% lower voltages simply because it's an overkill system for what it's used for. But it was retasked from my old gaming system when I rebuilt that a few yrs ago.

I'll look into the software side of things

You can run Home Assistant in a virtual machine, its pretty darned easy to do.

Anomnomnomaly yeah as Jelly baby said, home assistant and Batpred are a great combo. It's very set and forget.

I was wondering if I should go with the OctopusGo tarrif now that it's being upped to 8p for export, and switch to the flux next summer.

Heading into Autumn and Winter might not be the best value deal for the reduced generation. I'll be wanting to use up every scrap of solar I can.

Anomnomnomaly Have a look at the ‘speak to the geek’ videos. He covers setting up HA and GivTCP in a virtual server.

I run my Home Assistant in Virtual box under windows 10. Works great.

if you have Facebook there is a dedicated group for GivEnergy GivTCP.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/615579009972782
Here you will find lots of likeminded people, many using Agile and intelligent automations (Me included)

TheDragon (GivEnergy)
haha. cue the list of people offering there link next..

positor1

Doh, missed that on the end, was sending an email and thats my signature for personal emai. LOL

I am not sure that Flux is the best tariff over winter when export will be minimal. Seems better in the spring/summer range.

Gone to Octopus Go myself, charge battery up for cheap, day rate is same as SVR £0.30~ when battery runs flat, but off-peak guarantees you some cheap import + battery charged ready to go at 100% first thing in the morning.

LordHippos That was my thinking... Looking back at the generation data I've got for part of Jan and Feb and we rarely got a fully charged battery and in 5 weeks sent about 6kwh to the grid. But we did still cover about 70% of the daylight electricity use.

I can set the dishwasher to delay for 3-6-9hrs and the washing machine for anywhere between 30-90 mins and then 2-24hrs.

Set those up to run between 12:30-4:30 and charge the battery... it can power the house from 4:30 to late morning until hopefully solar covers the house around 10am as days get shorter.

Do any main cooking during the day rather than evening and I know that a fully charged 5.2kwh battery will see us through from 4pm to about 9pm based on avg use the end of last winter.

We're home most days as I WFH and my mum who now lives with me isn't able to get out a great deal... and less in winter as her arthritis makes it harder for her to walk on the colder, wetter days.

Anomnomnomaly

Hello , how do I …

So how do I go about setting this up. I have access to the web portal in my browser, and the mobile app. I've already got it set to discharge to house only, so we've not sending any battery to the grid, and the house & battery is the priority for solar before anything is exported.

Is there a help guide with this please ?

Thank you

Gary

https://kb.givenergy.cloud/article.php?id=7&oid=2

SteveCook
Thank you 👍