Intelligent Octopus Go - step-by-step?

We switched to Intelligent Octopus Go yesterday, and like many I (now) read, have woken up to a flat GivEnergy battery but a nicely charged EV. I have seen various discussions about adding some home automation to overcome this issue - I have no idea how/where to apply this, or whether it's still current: does GivEnergy now support this tariff? If it has to be a home automation, would it be possible to see a step-by-step guide? I don't have a clue where this is even applied. Thanks!

GivEnergy battery: 8.5kWh.
PV: 4kW
EV Charger: Zappi + Eddi

Still think moving the ct clamp is the simplest way. Why would I want to charge my car from solar when I can export it for 15p and charge on Intelligent for 7.5p?

SimonClarke which CT clamp and from where to where please?

I am no expert and my stuff was wired like this from the start but you need the ct clamp for the house battery system not to see the car charger so it never drains the house battery to charge the car. Probably easiest to get your installer to move it if you’re not confident or search on here or good old google. My installer forgot to fit the clamp for my iBoost so I fitted it- very easy. There will probably be someone more knowledgeable along soon…
The whole home automation thing just looks way too complicated to achieve simple things to me but some seem to really enjoy it! Rather watch the tv.

SimonClarke can we assume in the first instance that you configured GE battery to charge for the full 6 hour cheap window? Even if it reaches target charge faster, that will inhibit discharge.
But IOG can schedule additional charging outside those hours - initially, you could just check schedule to see if there any extra slots

One other thing - IOG leaves zappi in eco+ mode. If you never want to charge car from GE (solar or battery) theres a param you can set to only charge car when there's a minimum export - can set that very high. Theres a different param if you might want to sometimes boost car from GE battery - I'd need to look it up if you need it

DD I’ve got a Hypervolt and a Tesla so can’t comment on Zappi’s. Hypervolt is just switched on as Octopus talk to the car, which mostly works…9.5 charging for the full 6 hours whether needed or not and I very rarely get any extra time other than to about 7.30am which is a bit useless as I’m not using much then as everything is already full! Just seems much easier to go the ct clamp route if possible

Sorry, replied to the wrong post. Yes, I agree CT clamp positioning is simplest - I've not got my Zappi yet, but that's how I intend getting it installed.

DD yes set-up for the 6 hour charge window, but it would be nice (not in December...) to send any export to the car. Is there a way to tell the battery not to discharge during the off-peak period? That would help quite a bit I think? It'll still discharge during the other IOG sessions that appears though I think? Surely lots of people have set-ups close to this, quite surprised to see issues like this - hope that they are just temporary.

Thanks

(is Discharge 1 Settings the thing to set, 05:30-23:30? Would that set battery discharge during off-peak to 0kW?)

Epatrickt configuring a charge window is sufficient to prevent discharge. For additional cheap slots, most people probably use Home Assistant or some other automation.
You are aware that export is currently 15p whereas IOG charging is 7.5p so there's little incentive in charging from solar.

Epatrickt unfortunately, discharge power is a global setting - can't configure different discharge powers in different slots.
You can configure a pause window - pausing charge, discharge, or both, as required.

Epatrickt

This is what we do which works well for us;

1) set GE battery charge period to 23:30–> 05:30
2) set car off-peak end time to 05:30 in car app
3) set car “ready by” time in Octopus app to 05:30

This works well if you’re generally charging between about 20-80%.

Sometimes you may get earlier slots and if that’s the case you just modify those 3 settings to match the earlier start time.

Try that and see how you get on.

I simply ensure that the Octopus charging windows are matched by the GE app (house battery) charging times.

ie if the last Oct slot is 06:00 - 06:30, I extend the GE charging from 05:30 to 06:30. The cost of supplying the house load for 30 minutes (05:30 - 06:00) is minimal considering the cheap rate 06:00 - 06:30 and the increased export capability later in the day.

Rogerbu

That’s a pretty good alternative. If you have the same number of peak and off peak slot's after 05:30 till your last off peak slot it’s net zero and a win because you’ve got less time to run on house batteries and also more to export later or less time on peak if you’re run out of battery in the evenings.

In my case I’d have to modify the cars off peak end time as well. I’ll try this out if I need more than a 20–>80% charge.

Are you setting an off peak start time in the car or off peak end time? Or nothing?

Pete UK I just let Intelligent Octopus Go control the car with the Octopus 'devices' set for car to be ready by 08:30.
Works for me, I never a flat house battery and sometimes get the cheap rate extened to 08:30. I then have to nag SWMBO to start the washing machine early.

Rogerbu
That's pretty-much what I have done I think: the car is on its most promiscuous (!) setting, that is, it will take charge whenever it's available, so it's fully under the control of Octopus while at home. The battery has been set not to discharge at all during the std 23:30-05:30 off-peak such that it can then charge during this time.

A couple of observations though - yesterday for example, the car was plugged in with about 10% charge left at about 17:30 and Octopus immediately went into action to charge the car. It stopped at something like 23:30 with only about 50% charge (car is set to 100%) and it didn't continue until this morning when I physically disconnected and re-connected. Straight away Octopus sent another off-peak msg and started to charge the car. Why would this be? Seems odd.

A little off-topic - I can't find anything that tells me whether the off-peak once announced to my phone is set regardless of the car's connected state or charge state - does it continue at off-peak regardless? If so, it would be good to charge the battery during this period too on an ad-hoc basis.

(would be much nicer if GiveEnergy + Octopus + MyEnergi did the step to complete the inter-comms but this feels like quite a step forward anyway).

Am I right in assuming that If I have a charge setting from Octopus of say 22:00 to 09:00 for example ( because it suits them and I'm happy for my "Ready time" at to be 09:00 ), that all my electricity is at 7.5p between these hours? I.e. I can happily set my AC3 to charge my batteries between these times, knowing I'm getting it at 7.5p ?

Roberto yes, if your car needs 11 hours to charge, all house usage will be at 7.5p
Note however that there's a fair-use clause in the T&c - I think they reserve the right to charge you full price if you use more than 6 hours per day. But probably only invoke it if you abuse the system.

DD Thanks. I have asked Octopus the same question, but being holiday time....Your answer is what I expected as I can't see how they would know I'm charging my 9.5Kwh batteries rather than my car.

Roberto they should know whether they're charging your car. They won't know whether they are also charging your house battery.
If you unplug your car your during the charging window (outside the off-peak hours), they'll probably charge full price.

Roberto only if your car is actively charging in that 30-minute period.

stevelewis I can see that. The problem there, is that whilst they have selected some half hour slots, that is not the same as actually charging my car in those slots. So, I think I'll leave the AV3 charging between 22:30 and 05:30 for now.

Roberto Is it a car-based or chargepoint-based integration you are using ? I don't yet have IOG, but I don't understand why the car wouldn't be charging in the times they have scheduled. (I understand that if the car charges for any part of a 30-min slot, the whole 30-min slot is priced at cheap-rate.)
I guess one reason might be if there's a comms failure when Octopus ask for charging to commence.

Car based. They select more slots than they need and pick the ones that suit them the best.

Roberto Oh... that's interesting.
Can you clarify what you mean by "select" and "pick" here. I assume select means the charging schedule they display in the app when you plug in or tell it how much charge to add? But then they don't actually use all those slots. (I wonder if they try to use them, but can't get through to the car ?)
How do you find out how much they've actually charged you for a given timeslot? In the app, when reviewing usage, you can ask it to display either kWh or price, though I'm not convinced the price is always correct. (For me on Go, it shows the 00:30 to 01:00 slot as being the day rate rather than the cheap rate.)

Have you looked at the API to see the schedule ? AFAIK it's not available via the regular API, and you have to look at the graphql (?) api ?

My Problem is that when I plug my car into my zappi charger, octopus do a charge schedule that is some times outside the normal 11:30 To 5:30 and at these outside times the zappi charger takes 2.6Kw per hour from my house battery
There does not appear to be any setting that can stop this on my givenergy inverter. I have been in touch with Givenergy but they cannot help at this time....Tooooo busy they say............Disappointed

SteveAndLiz

Trade off is to tell Octopus app that you need the car by 5:30 then it wont try and tack on extra - shouldn't be a problem unless you need that extra. I have mine set like that for my car no issues so far.

SteveAndLiz I'm waiting for a zappi install. AFAIK the simplest fix is to arrange the wiring such that the givenergy CT doesn't see the zappi as a load, and therefore has no reason to discharge to cover it.
Failing that, you'd need an external software agent to get hold of the charging scheduling, and either charge the battery at the same time, or just suspend discharge. I think one of the HA integrations can do it.

I guess it's something that GivEnergy smart tariff support might implement, but they probably have enough on their plate just trying to keep their existing firmware working. Possibly something you might expect the Octopus R&D server to make available, but I've not yet really explored that. (And doesn't sound like it's entirely reliable anyway ..?)

Hi DD how do you set CT as have a spare one

SteveAndLiz It's not about adding an additional CT. Normally, the GE CT clamp goes around the cables as they leave the smartmeter (or isolation switch, if you have one), so that they measure the entire load to the house. It a typical install, where there's separate mini-CU for solar and zappi, there will then be a Henley Block to split the supply to feed three ways.

What you want to arrange is that the supply to the zappi is taken first, then you have a cable which carries only the power to the house and the inverter; that's where you ideally want the GE CT clamp. That way, any power from grid to zappi is not measured by the GE CT clamp.

I think there's a trick where you can feed the supply to the zappi back through the CT clamp, in addition to the main supply tail, so that the currents partially cancel. I've not looked to see if the GE CT clamp is wide enough for that in practise.

My Giv system was installed by the same team that added my Zappi. Id not bother with a Zappi now. There is no point paying 15p to charge my EV when i can do it for 7.5p a unit. So now ill export all my excess solar, charging my batteries only at 7.5p.
The only way i get to to work for me now is to set batteries to charge to 100% , especially so when chaging the EV. And making sure that my EV charge stops well before 05.30, so that my home battery gets to 100%.

Roberto

Seems like there are at least 4 solutions;

A)
1) set GE battery charge period to 23:30–> 05:30
2) set car off-peak end time to 05:30 in car app
3) set car “ready by” time in Octopus app to 05:30

When you plug in, you’ll get the pop-up with the slots. If you get an IOG slot before 23:30 (which I’ve had a couple of 23:00–>23:30 slots recently when the car is less than ₃₀%). if you’re between 23:00 and 23:30 stop the car charging and modify 1) above to start charging GE batteries at 23:00. Then the car and batteries will both charge and the battery won’t discharge into the car.

Alternately just ignore it and accept that a couple of times a month you might pay a max of £1.09, or your battery will be drained before it starts charging again at 23:30.
It will solve your problem.

B)
Or what Rogerbu suggested (which I’ve tried recently as well and works.

C)
Moving the CT clamp. However, there may be a time in the future where rates aren’t the same and you want to charge the car (a bit/ a lot) from excess solar during the day in summer or store solar in the early evening instead and you’ll have to move the CT clamp again. No big deal but something to think about.

D)
Use automation such as Home Assistant or one of the others.

Pete UK When you plug in, you’ll get the pop-up with the slots. If you get an IOG slot before 23:30 ...

If your power use in the evening is quite small, you could have a simple automation which reduces max discharge power to, say, 500W, at 10pm, then puts it back up again at 23:30 or 05:30. Then even if the car does start charging early, it won't draw much from the battery anyway. (Don't need full-blown HA for trivial things like that.)

Just came across https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_uk3D2qCWE which uses a HA. Rather than accessing the charging schedule via API, it uses a CT clamp to monitor the power consumption by the chargepoint, and when it detects that the car is charging, it charges the home battery too.
(Note that currently, the Ohme IOG integration doesn't make the charging schedule available, so you'd have to use this method. Though I've heard that Octopus will be taking it over, so that may change.)

DD same approach with a CT here: https://www.github.com/salewis38/palm
There's now also an Ohme integration for HA in work at https://github.com/dan-r/HomeAssistant-Ohme

sorry to drag up this old topic, but how are users notified of extra charge slots outside of the 7.5p nightly rate? Does the car need to be plugged in to trigger that?

My plan was to use the nightly window to charge battery and car. But hesitant to plug in the car in the day if it will trigger charging it from battery during the day (when I need that stored energy for the house).

I guess my Q is, although its intelligent, can you manage the extra slots manually somehow?

pacemaker My understanding is that, currently, the Ohme integration does things differently from all the other integrations. Though I have heard that, soon, it will be unified.

With Ohme, you use the Ohme app to do all the scheduling. When you plug in, the Ohme app tells you the schedule. I'm not aware that you can get hold of it otherwise.

For the other integrations (car-based, or Wallbox or Zappi) you do the scheduling via the Octopus app, and the schedule is available through the GraphQL API. Again, the initial schedule is calculated when Octopus detects that the car is plugged in (which may take a little time with the car integrations).

AFAIK, you can't manage the slots manually. (Some people game the system by plugging in and asking for the car to be ready at short notice. I think this may work with Ohme, but not with Octopus. Possibly why Octopus want to take control of the Ohme integration ?)

It really does depend on your setup

I have a dumb charger I made smart via shelly integration, and my car is the one that is controlled by octopus.

I don't need to have extra cheap electric outside that period (why I have the battery) so I just program shelly to use go period to charge only, and tell octopus in app that I want car to be charged by 05:30.

This means I can leave the car plugged in all day and not worry about it pulling from battery no matter what Octopus try and do.

DreadorUK Hmm - do you use the shelly to turn off the charger while it might be charging ? I have heard that cars really do not like having the power pulled while charging - better to negotiate via the control cables to stop charging.

I don't need to have extra cheap electric outside that period (why I have the battery) ...

The purpose of charging outside the usual overnight period is supposed to be for Octopus's benefit, not yours, in case they want to mop up extra wind power - that's why they're offering you such a good price.

DD

Thats a some say question, some say it does others say it doesn't.

BMS at the end of the day resides in the CAR, the charger is not really a charger its just a power source so giving it 5 seconds notice isn't going to do much for BMS.

It's only simulated power cut at end of the day and we have those all the time where I live so Id be stuffed if it broke the car.

DreadorUK what's a "shelly" - I effectively want to do exactly as you have it set up, just plug it in and only charge in the cheap window, when I can also set my battery charge on so as not to drain battery into car.

pacemaker It's a family of wifi-enabled smart switches.
https://www.shelly.com/en

DD I see so when they mentioned

DreadorUK I have a dumb charger I made smart via shelly integration

Just a smart plug connected to the granny charger (standard 3 pin) ?

pacemaker

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shelly-Schaltaktor-Doppelpack-Switch-Actuator/dp/B084H3H3NT/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Shelly%2B1&qid=1705080203&sr=8-1&th=1

I have the old Chargemaster polar unit I fitted it to

Wired mine up to the key switch as that was simplest approach and I power from external PSU I didn't want to mess with fitting from a feed from the chargers circuit board

I also flashed the firmware of the shelly so it works with homekit

DD Sorry, replied to the wrong post. Yes, I agree CT clamp positioning is simplest - I've not got my Zappi yet, but that's how I intend getting it installed.

Good news is that I now have my zappi. Unfortunately, while I asked the installer to split the tails in such a way that there was a suitable cable to put the GE CT clamp, he declined (refused) - claimed he had to do it by the book in order to sign it off, and I could rewire it afterwards however I wanted it. Insisted that the zappi was smart enough to not charge from the battery, so perhaps he simply didn't understand the problem. (Or didn't realise I had a hybrid inverter ..?)

So I'm now in the same position. Haven't yet been able to switch to IOG, so for now, it does have the benefit that, if I'm charging from solar, it will fill any temporary lulls from battery rather than grid. [Zappi does seem slow to stop charging when the sun goes behind a cloud, but I guess that's intentional.]

But once I get onto IOG, I'm going to want to export solar rather than charge the car. And choose a workaround for the extra-slots thing.

I think the HA plugin 'batpred' has got support for IOG extra slots, by querying the Octopus servers. I don't have HA installed, but I hope to be able to extract the relevant code into a standlone script. Or maybe I can use the Zappi API to discover whether the car is charging. (May as well take any extra slots going, rather than trying to game things to avoid them.)

DD the slots are only valid if the car is actively charging. You may be able to get this data from the Zappi.
If you're interested in standalone scripts, take a look at my code at www.github.com/salewis38/palm. It polls a Shelly energy monitor every minute to check the car charge status and can charge/pause/discharge the house battery as required. It also does solar forecasting for setting overnight SoC and a few other things.

stevelewis Yes, an energy monitor is another way to go - avoids more cloud depenencies.

pacemaker Shelly does do a smart 3-pin wifi plug/socket, but most of their modules are actually tiny units using wired connections. They also have devices that can slot into a consumer-unit type din rail.

DD was looking at Shelly PM Mini Gen3, wondering if you can wire it into the socket itself for monitoring, as it goes upto 16A and the Tesla charger I want to monitor is 13A. Bit out of my realm of comfort though...

pacemaker Yes, looks plausible - it looks like it's not doing any switching, just monitoring the power flowing through it. I use a shelly for low-power switching. A concern is with how tiny the screw terminals are (even though the device itself is rated at 16A). But I've not seen this particular unit, so can't comment.

Oh - except that if the socket is on a ring, you'd need to rewire it a bit so that you only measure the current going out of the socket, rather than going along the ring. And you may struggle to get both of the wires for the ring into one terminal of the shelly, so you'd have to use a wago to join all the wires together. Might be a squeeze to get everything in there if the backbox isn't very deep.

pacemaker the Shelly EM is the best approach for high current / sustained loads. It uses a current transformer.

stevelewis but doesn't that need a single conductor to go round - easy for meter tails and the like, much less convenient here.

DD yes, you'd have to find a suitable point in the circuit.

stevelewis
DD

could I put it around the Tesla granny charger cable itself?

pacemaker the Tesla charger I want to monitor is 13A

BTW you really don't want to be drawing 13A - even though they're called 13A sockets, that's only for brief periods (kettle, say). For sustained use, they're only rated at 10A. There are some chargers on the market that are switchable and can go up to 13A, but really shouldn't be using that setting.

I believe that within the Tesla itself you can configure the charging power - going down to 8A probably makes things a lot safer. [Resistance losses go like the square of current, so almost halved by going down 10 to 8.]

DD thanks yeah I'll take a look at that.

I just want to solve the "if charger is drawing sustained power, start charging GE battery", which sounds possible with Shelly EM and some scripting. So as to catch the "out of window" extra half hours they might provide on IOG

pacemaker No, because the outer cable encloses both live and neutral together, and the currents will cancel, so the net current through that cable is 0. The clamp needs to go around either just the live, or just the neutral.

DD the problem as you say above is, there isn't a suitable place for the clamp that's going to monitor the power consumption purely from the charger. Both GE battery stuff and charger will all be on the garage CU (as well as boiler, immersion), where the plug circuit comes out of as well as the GE equip. Meaning, putting it on the main CU to garage cable won't do much good as there will be too much other noise.

I just want to auto detect when the charger is pulling juice to turn on GE battery charging at same time, without spending £1000 on an actual charger 🙂

pacemaker you should need to fit the CT in the socket that you use for the granny charger. The Shelly uses WiFi so the module itself won't work in a metal enclosure (and should be protected by a suitable fuse). Whilst it's not a particularly difficult task, you may feel that you lack the skills for this type of job.

Simplest would be a 3-pin plug/socket that can do power monitoring, but is also accessible through open protocols. (I found a cheap power-monitoring energizer socket in b&m I think it was, but it's proprietary protocol - works with Google home, Amazon ITTTT but not Home Assistant.

Does the givenergy one do power monitoring?

I'd be happier running that at 8A rather than 10, but since you are on IOG that might be considered to be gaming the system to get extra hours.

Possibly other ways to do it: my 3-pin charger has an LED when it"s running - could use a sensor to detect that, for example

Or you can use the Octopus API to get the the schedule, though someone (perhaps you) said that they didn't actually use all the scheduled slots?

Can your tesla send a message when it starts/stops charging?

DD Does the givenergy one do power monitoring?

it does, and it looks like their API can get the current power using their smart-device/{smartDevice_uuid}/data API. Not sure how realtime it is, probably 15mins like everything else?

But that is one way I guess... just if the delay/refresh is 15m it's not exactly ideal for checking if the power is sustained or just a point in time. (be nice to ping it over a few mins and see if its sustained)

DD Oh - except that if the socket is on a ring, you'd need to rewire it a bit so that you only measure the current going out of the socket, rather than going along the ring.

One option might be to add in a spur. Which is basically just an extension lead, but rather than plugging it into the 3-pin outlet on the front, it's wired in to the screw terminals at the back, and so a much more robust connection. And you can use cable rather than flex.

That way, you can have the socket closer to the car, and you have a single conductor in which to directly measure power. Either the mini gen3 or the shelly em could be deployed here without too much trouble.

DD One option might be to add in a spur. Which is basically just an extension lead, but rather than plugging it into the 3-pin outlet on the front, it's wired in to the screw terminals at the back, and so a much more robust connection. And you can use cable rather than flex.

So effectively a new single plug outlet that is spurred into the existing socket?

pacemaker yes. The 3-pin plug/socket are the weak link, plus any fuseholders, so spur is better than extension lead, and wired monitor better than using an extra smart socket

pacemaker a note in another thread says that GE smart plugs are not intended for prolonged high load such as EV charging.

My installer came back yesterday to rewire the Zappi so that it does not take from my Giv home battery. So far so good. It looks like the Zappi is wired into a block before the Giv and its battery. So it can pull from the grid rather than 3Kw from by home battery. So far it does what I want.

Most reply appears deleted, so here it is again...

My installer came back yesterday to rewire the Zappi so that it does not take from my Giv home battery. So far so good. It looks like the Zappi is wired into a block before the Giv and its battery. So it can pull from the grid rather than 3Kw from by home battery. So far it does what I want

No need to mess with CT clamps really. I have my battery charge period set to 11:30-5:30, I have the car set to finish charging by 5:30. When the car is charging so is the battery so the battery doesn’t empty. If the battery finishes charging but the car is still charging, because it’s in that window the battery does not drain. This works 99% of the time unless I’ve been on a long journey and need a longer window. In this case home assistant looks to see when my car is at home and charging, if it’s outside of the cheap window then it just pauses the battery because the energy is cheap for the whole house anyway.

If you have predbat it will automatically pause the battery when it sees io charge the car.

JasonF I have my battery charge period set to 11:30-5:30, I have the car set to finish charging by 5:30.

Trouble is, you're not really giving Octopus free reign over the charging schedule, which is kind of the point of the tariff. I can't remember if I've already said: my compromise is to ask for the car to be ready by 7am (when I wake), and drop max discharge overnight to be enough to run the house base load (250W or so) - if the car does charge after 5:30, it won't be able to take much from the battery. (And if I do notice beforehand that charging is going to be late, I adjust the GE charge window. I'll get it automated eventually.)

DD yeah I guess it depends on your schedule. I have the charge set to finish by 5:30. This still gives octopus free rein to charge it prior to the 11:30 cheap start slot, if it does home assistant pauses the battery.