EV charger octopus compatibility

Day 2 of my new GivEnergy EV charger and investigating the outer edges of what I can do with it! A user manual would have been useful. Does anyone know if there are any plans to make it compatible with Intelligent Octopus ? It has the tech to do so, so is it just a question of integration and Octopus sign off?

The histogram energy flow charts doesn't give the ability to split our EV charging from home use? Have I missed something or is this not possible (OK only in isolation in the EV tab)?

It would also be super useful if I could set a maximum charge for the RF ID tag - we have a self catering property and I could then reload it like a token for people coming to stay who need to charge their vehicles?

Glad to have finally got it - hoping to halve the charging time compared to the 3 pin plug method in use for the last 9 months while I waited.

I think OCPP 1.6J compliance may have something to do with the last question - would be good o know if there are recommended 3rd party software providers who could host the EV charger for this eventuality

PeterH Does anyone know if there are any plans to make it compatible with Intelligent Octopus ? It has the tech to do so, so is it just a question of integration and Octopus sign off?

I am waiting for my GE charge point to be installed - hopefully next week. When I was at the Solar & Storage show last month I asked how long the IO Go integration would take. Response was that the IO Flux integration had taken about 6 months to work through, so probably Feb or March next year depending on when they started the process.

I have had this car charger for 4 weeks and its integrated with Octopus Intell Go. I worked thro the EV integration and just selected a generic car charger. Once the car was integrated and the test charge was complete I was switched to Intel Go.
Octopus controls when the car charges, and the charger just has to recognise the car is plugged in. The issue I have had is the Car charger has gone offline randomly. Its connected via an ethernet to our router. Currently investigating !

John Mac I assume you are using a car integration, rather than evse integration.

DD Yes

John Mac , PeterH , do you mind posting a few screenshots of the mobile app interface? Just curious how the EV charger apps look like and what sort of data can we look at

dragos.balaban Sorry been offline for a few days. I will take photos tomorrow.

dragos.balaban When I try to post the photos it just appears as a link. Any suggestions on how to post the actual photos?

John Mac Did you happen to uncover any solutions to the charger randomly dropping offline? I'm having similar issues with my newly installed charger (albeit over WiFi but the signal is more than strong enough).

Seems like the charger connects after a power cycle then drops offline after 2-3 hours.

Quite concerning if the charger drops even over ethernet 😬

AdamM I have progressed to the stage where I can reliably charge the car. I tried Wifi and it did not make any difference as I had to cycle the charger before I plugged in. I have been in touch with support and they are looking at this issue of the ethernet and Wifi communications. apparently we are not alone in seeing this behaviour. When the can is connected I can still interogate the charger on the cloud, but the app only shows the car is connected.
In summary, the charger state doesnt seem to interfere with charging just knowing the state that it is in. As soon as I hear anything I will post it.

AdamM Also had issues initially with it dropping out over wifi, and one night it just didnt charge as a result. I'm using a new EE WiFi 6 router with one of their new extenders, I moved the extender and haven't had issues since, albeit the signal was perfectly strong anyway. One thing we did have to do when setting the EV up was ensure that the 5g signal was disabled on the router, so that the EV connected on 2.4 Ghz. Once this connection was established, 5g was turned back on again. I have left the charger on a scheduled 10.30pm start since then so I can check that it does really start. No issues in the last week, but not reached 100% confidence yet as quite often i'll call up the EV tab, and it will say 'not connected', and then a couple of seconds later, say it has 'connected' - almost as if it was only me going into the app that prompted it to do so...

John Mac Thanks! I'll give that a go once everything settles down (wifi drop out, charging the car from the battery, not the grid in off peak hours, weird power flows on the regular chart). I didnt realise that I could connect to Octopus Intelligent Go already - as the GivEnergy EV isn't listed. Is the variable tariff the same as the Agile Octopus variable tariff or a higher variable rate?

PeterH it's not yet compatible with IO. Read the earlier post again and you'll see that the charger is set to Generic and Octopus is controlling the car. That may work for you, depends on the car's compatibility.

PeterH

John Mac

Great info thank you both! Hopefully a firmware update can resolve it.

Re 5ghz, I had it setup on a specific 2.4ghz "IoT" network and it still seems to be struggling. Is there an "official" way to powercycle it rather than just flicking the fuse on and off? (Edit - Based on the app instructions, flicking the fuse is the official way...)

Tried today to start it using the RFID tags instead since it's still offline and not even that worked 🙁 Just a constant flashing green "ready to charge" light that doesn't seem to mean anything. Edit - Turns out, the tags weren't added to the charger yet. Was able to get it connected to WiFi and add the tags and they're now working perfectly. Hopefully the connection stays up this time as well!

Might have to be a call to the installers unfortunately.

OK, got it ref Octopus Go! My car although new is not compatible (XC60 hybrid) so i use a scheduled charge. Previously this was controlled by the car into a 3 pin plug, now I've turned that off and have been using the GivEnergy scheduled charge function on the GivEnergy EV box. This is what didn't happen one night and I put it down to a glitch (above). Last two nights it didn't work either - bit annoying. I waited last night to watch if it started, and when it didn't I tried to manually set it going "start charging" - but the whole of that "charging" screen was greyed out. I clicked on the spanner in the top right corner and "restart charger" a couple of times and it sprang to life and started to charge, albeit the screen is greyed out, even this morning - same on phone, ipad, although web app is showing all functions? I have added my tags to the tag screen, and am wondering if these may be overriding the "schedule" i.e. you have to tag in, for the schedule to be able to be used? Like i said at the start, a user manual might have been useful - somebody will have thought through this logic. Will try this out and report back!