New to Agile

I've just switched to Agile as I've finally (after 18 months got my DNO letter) so I've moved off of GO onto Fixed Outgoing and Agile in. (Solar and Battery)

I went into the GivEnergy App and set up the smart tarriff info and its pulling it through correctly. I then set it to
"Standalone Battery - Eco Mode" and switched off timed charge as I'd always forced charged it on the GO rates. Is that correct? Should I use "Solar & Battery"?

Anything else I need to do?

I was going to start looking at PredBat but just wanted to get started with the simple settings in the GivEnergy app first.

Thanks everyone.

I am doing the same and I think it is a yes to ‘solar & battery’ then if we get any sun it will go to your battery rather than having to pay?

If you want simple rather than HA have a look at Wonder Watt.

I will take a look at that, thanks. I've switched it over to "Solar and Battery" and will see what it does as it's meant to be nice and sunny tomorrow

Solar + Battery on Agile will try to forecast how much solar you'll get the next day and charge your battery up enough to meet demand until solar kicks in and charges your battery. Standalone Battery - Eco assumes no solar so will 100% charge your battery and then discharge to meet demand.

If you’re on a tariff with fixed timings you can use the givenergy portal to tell it when to charge.
A step cleverer is to use wonder watt or GivTCP to set the amount you charge to overnight so you don’t over fill your battery. There’s no real reason to get more complicated than that.

Neither of these options are great for agile as the timings aren’t fixed so you need to tweak them every day.
On agile you can use octopus R&D to choose cheap slots to charge or predbat to manage all your charging and discharging to maximise ROI.

naltsta We're beta testing Agile Octopus integration with a small selection of 20+ users or so, and this will likely be available publicly sometime next week.

I am new to agile as well and still experimenting - Givenergy 3.6 inverter and 9.5 kWh battery.
My solar is not producing enough at the moment to charge the battery completely, so I have been running on the battery only Eco Mode, which charges it in the early morning, and then gives it a bit more before 16:00. Last night I switched the smart tariff automation to solar & battery and was shocked to see my battery had no charge when I got up at 07:00. I assumed for some reason it was waiting for the sun to come up.
However, there was no charge because the battery did get charged before 04:00 and then exported its contents to the grid before 07:00. I don't have my G98 yet so do not have an export tariff so I have donated the contents of my battery (a form of Givenergy)! Does the Givenergy Solar & Battery automation also automatically export?
Thanks for any advice
Alan

I don't trust automations myself, I too am on Agile and prefer to do things manually.

apbliv

You might like to have a read of this.

https://community.wonderwatt.com/

If you are prepared to setup/use Home Assistant then there is a great addon called predbat
https://springfall2008.github.io/batpred/what-does-predbat-do/
that will minimise your costs based on variable prices, solar generation, expected use in the house, optimised export etc,

I've been using it for a couple of weeks now and today, with the sun out and a slot with a high export price, I've almost got down to a negative daily cost. After I started using it my net elec costs have reduced by about 1/3. It is a pain to setup but the results speak for themselves.

ajcrewe I did read about Home Assistant and have registered to get one, but I am unsure how long it may take to arrive. There seem to be almost too many ways of controlling the system. I just looked at WonderWatt and it seems to be similar to the Octopus R&D Labs. Predbat looks like it could be closer to what I would ultimately want. Thanks for the nudge.

apbliv You don't need to buy their hardware to get home assistant running, a raspberry pi works quite happily. I now have a high spec Pi 4 (with 8MB memory and an external SSD drive) but then I'm doing a lot of automation now. I started with a Pi 4 4MB memory and a 32MB SD card, and this worked fine for a couple of years; I just upgraded recently as I was starting to get nervous about the lifespan of the SD card when the system was running more critical automations.

ajcrewe Something like this? https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-5-starter-kit
What is the hardware from Octopus like? There doesn't seem to be much information that I can find. Pointers much appreciated.

apbliv HA doesn't have a production build for the Pi 5 yet, not if you want it to work simply anyway.

apbliv HA is not yet reliable on a PI 5 so I would avoid that. The Pi 4 seems to have more than enough power to cope anyway. Not sure what you mean by octopus hardware. I have an octopus mini (the little pink box) but I don't think HA talks to it. I'm pretty sure HA just uses your API key to talk to your octopus account.

ajcrewe I'm pretty sure HA just uses your API key to talk to your octopus account.

If you install Bottlecap Dave's Octopus integration in HA then you configure your Octopus API key into the integration and then HA will have entities and sensors for your account consumption, rates, etc.

If you have an Octopus Mini then this (more up to date data) is available as part of the same integration

Thanks for the various comments. I have made some progress.

I found out that HA will install on a Synology NAS, so I got some more RAM for my DS723+ and installed HA in a Virtual Machine. I have also managed to get the AppDaemon-Predbat combined install sorted too. The Predbat install video guides at https://springfall2008.github.io/batpred/install/ were pretty tough to follow (quite a bit of going down the wrong rabbit hole not edited out of the videos, and some bits done really quickly), so I am not sure if I have everything set properly. Am now working my way through the Predbat documentation...

One naive question - in Monitor mode I presumably just see what it predicts etc and I need to switch to one of the other modes to let Predbat take control. Am I right? I don't have export set up yet, I am not sure which mode to change to. Is Charge and Discharge local to me or would discharge also export power?

apbliv Yes you need to change to one of the other modes for Predbat to take control.
There is a 'Read Only mode' switch that will allow you to see what Predbat's plan is without acting when Predbat is in one of the control modes. I think Monitor just shows predictions of Load, PV generation and expected battery level so it's useful to use the read only mode to see when Predbat plans to charge/discharge/etc. This enables you to tweak your settings - especially wrt to load and PV Prediction without having Predbat in control.
Control Charge and Discharge will export power (depending on your parameters). You can set switch.predbat_set_discharge_freeze_only to true to stop the battery from exporting whilst you wait for your export to be set up.
Control Charge will just control when the battery charges from the grid - the rest of the time will be like being in ECO mode subject to any SoC limits you've set. Probably the setting you want for now.

Thank you SJB. I took the plunge last night and set Predbat running on "Charge" because I could see that the Agile rates were going to be still low this afternoon (Sun 28 Jan), which would allow me to charge the battery manually if necessary. No need for that. Predbat has picked out the low-rate 30-minute periods and charged the battery accordingly. I will keep an eye on what is happening, though,
You mentioned setting "switch.predbat_set_discharge_freeze_only" to True. I haven't been able to find that toggle in the list of things on my HA Dashboard. It it something that would be set in a yaml file or similar?
Thanks again for your help.

apbliv Check that you have an updated Predbat dashboard. The yaml code for the latest suggested dashboard should be in your config folder called - predbat_dashboard.yaml. Copy and paste this into your existing dashboad and this will include all the current sensors/switches/entities etc.

I am also on Agile and currently on the original 50% deemed export for my panel generation so have no incentive to export. I have predbat set to Control Charge and Discharge but not set the freeze_only setting as predbat picks up the 0p export rate setting from Octopus and hence sees no value in discharging.

Ivan Thanks for the tip. I have updated my dashboard and it does have some new things, but no sign of the missing freeze command. A search for "freeze" in the yaml finds nothing. I don't think this matters for me as predbat is working and not exporting.
I have a 0p export rate from Octopus too. I will experiment more when my export contract gets sorted, though it will be a while before my panels produce enough to export.

apbliv It is one of the expert mode settings so you need to turn on 'Expert Mode' then it should appear in the dashboard.

Thanbks @SJB you're correct, Monitor mode in Predbat only does a prediction for the current solar and battery charge/discharge settings. If you want to see what Predbat plans but don't execute it, set mode to 'Charge' or 'Charge and Discharge' and 'read only' to True then it will plan but not execute anything.

I have made this a bit clearer in the next documentation update I will push through.

In the 'customisation' guide it does highlight what settings are 'expert' mode. There's quite a lot got moved there by Trefor to simplify things for new users.

Ivan I am also on Agile and currently on the original 50% deemed export for my panel generation so have no incentive to export.

I have a 4kW FIT array and was on deemed export as well. Obviously depends on the size of your array, what you are being paid for deemed export, etc, but may be worth you double checking whether its worth staying on deemed export.
I gave up my FIT deemed export in August last year, and from mid August to end of 2023 I earnt £333 from export. Flux from August to October then Agile after that.
My deemed export was about £100 a year so made sense to move. You can move back if you want to later on (I had this confirmed by OfGen and Eon my FIT supplier)

geoffreycoan Thanks. I also have a 4kW array and generate around 4000kWh per year, FIT rate for the deemed 50% is currently 5.14p/kWh so I'm earning a similar £100/year. I think it is worth me switching to a metered export, thinking about the fixed 15p rate as I'm probably going to stay on Agile throughout the year as I will not be a big exporter.

Switching will also enable me to take part in the Saving Sessions - I know I could do so with Axle (and perhaps others) but I don't like the idea of handing over control of my battery to others! I originally felt the same way about Predbat but have discovered (as others have said) it is far better than me at optimising the battery's performance!

apbliv I did read about Home Assistant and have registered to get one, but I am unsure how long it may take to arrive.

I just ordered a Home Assistant Green from EverythingSmart with 2 day shipping: https://shop.everythingsmart.io/products/home-assistant-green

Ivan Good point about being able to take more benefits from the saving sessions if you have an export MPAN.

It took about 8 weeks to get my export setup, it could have been shorter but for some reason Octopus were not replying (or passing on to me) queries that the DNO were making about my MCS approval. I got the system unblocked by speaking direct to the DNO, resolving the issue, then telling Octopus what the MPAN was.
The process stopped until I had ceased my FIT deemed export payments. Was straight forward to do, was given a new FIT agreement letter to sign, then once processed by my FIT supplier, Octopus could see it on the FIT database and went ahead and finished my Flux export setup.

Octopus now have
https://octopus.energy/smart/greener-days/
which is looking ahead a few days for renewable generation. Might be a predictor for agile prices ..?

DD Thanks, I'll keep an eye on that. There's Octopus Price predictor on twitter that messages in the morning his prediction (usually accurate) of the range of high and low prices overnight.

Tomorrow and today are showing on the Octopus Greener day chart as 100% and we've a power up event (free electricity) this evening. Hope for one tomorrow as well then !

DD It's available in the Octopus API now should that be of use: here
I use it on my own site but I believe BottlecapDave has it on his to-do list at some point for his Octopus HA integration.