Octopus flux and AllinOne battery

I've just had a Givenergy AllinOne and solar panels installed. I was advised to get onto Octopus intelligent flux tariff (we were already on a Octopus normal tarriff). However, it seems you can't do this immediately- first have to get onto Flux - so I signed up to that today and it says 6 week wait for Flux Export. So where does that leave us in the meantime, is it worth it to try and set up timings for battery charging? I'd been looking forward to the "intelligent flux" taking care of everything! Thanks

If you've only just had the panels installed, it may take a little time to get your export meter. You can't get an export tariff until you have that.

Though with an AllInOne I assume you had to do the G99 thing, which means it shouldn't take too long to get the meter. (With a smaller inverter, you don't need permission up-front for the install, but it can then take longer to get approval for the meter. Depends on where you are in the country, though - some DNO are worse than others.

Without export, is flux beneficial ? In my region, E7 is slightly cheaper overnight, and for longer - easier to fully charge AIO ?

Char

Another option to compare.

At this time of the year and in your ‘no export’ current situation, I would look at Octopus Agile combined with Wonder Watt to manage it …. from next week it should be fire & forget for all, currently in beta.

Watcher if you’re not getting anything for export might as well get on “go”

naltsta might as well get on “go”

Depending on whether @Watcher has an EV or not.

In short there are a lot of variables as to what is the best tariff for you. How much your daily load is, whether you have a heat pump or an EV, etc.

The delay in getting onto Flux is that you will need an export meter number allocating. This is a black hole of your Distribution Network Operator who usually have a huge backlog to get through. I had to wait 2 months for mine and I only got it by finding the right people in my DNO to chase.

But the good news is at the moment you won't have a lot of solar generation or potential export to be missing out on. I missed out all of June, July and half of August.

If you have an EV, I'd agree with Go. If you don't, then look seriously at Agile or Tracker but be aware of the potential downsides - 60-65p import peak import rates in early December were a bit painful.

geoffreycoan

Char needs the car!😉 No car, no heat pump for me so Agile is my best option. I switched from Flux on 28/12 …

Fill my batteries over night and mostly coast through the higher cost day atm.

Individual research is key, and I have found you get out what you put in.

Watcher I’ve been on go a couple of times and never had an EV. DM’d then on Twitter and asked to move to go and it was done that day no questions asked

naltsta

Standard Go was worse.

For me, Agile works because I top up my batteries selectively at night but also mid morning/afternoon when the price works.

Watcher I’m on agile too! One of the reasons I’m not on go is the low export rate, but if I wasn’t getting anything for export that wouldn’t matter…

If I was in OP’s situation I’d want to get my AIO to just hit 100% every day. Which is going to involve quite a lot of overnight charging unless it’s super sunny. Don’t think agile has had any half hour slot as low as 9p this year.

December was a bit of a freak month in terms of agile pricing.

There is no one size fits everyone with Octopus, as @Watcher says, you have to do your research

Interesting your experience of Go naltsta , I’ve heard similar from other people

Comparison of tariffs for me, Agile wins as my demand is way above my battery capacity

Tracker December 2022 had been on many days cheaper than Agile of late, but the Tracker dated December 2023 is much more expensive. I assume the 2022 one isn’t available any more

I really don’t rate octopus compare. By far my biggest usage is charging my battery and that can be done at any point in time.

The comparison it gives me will always favour the tariff I’m currently on because I’m doing my charging when it’s cheap on that particular tariff.

On a low usage day on go my average import rate would be about 10p. That average creeps up fast if you end up using the grid at the end of the day before the cheap slot kicks in again and the export rate is poor.

On a low usage day on agile my average import will be the cheapest few slots and for the last couple of weeks that’s been well over 10p. On a high usage day I find my average rate doesn’t rise much.

If I had a bigger battery I reckon I’d be back on go until I move to flux for the summer

Char I was advised to get onto Octopus intelligent flux tariff

Out of interest, who was it that advised this? People on here don't seem to have been terribly impressed by the way Octopus manage the battery - probably more for their benefit than yours. But if you very much want a hands-off experience, it's probably a reasonable choice.

I think many view Flux and Intelligent Flux as tariffs for the summer, when there is good export. Perhaps less so at this time of year. But as has been noted, what's best for you depends on whether your battery is big enough to entirely cover daytime consumption, or whether you still need to import from the grid during the day.

naltsta really don’t rate octopus compare. By far my biggest usage is charging my battery and that can be done at any point in time.

The comparison it gives me will always favour the tariff I’m currently on because I’m doing my charging when it’s cheap on that particular tariff.

I agree up to a point.

I did my own modelling of consumption and predicting when I would charge the battery to best effect for each of the tariffs and when consumption would be drawn from the grid.

There’s always an overnight off peak and the hours don’t vary that much across tariffs so that part of the comparison is similar. Cosy has an extra cheap period and Flux a more expensive peak (but so does Agile). So I think you can get a fair comparison with the tool as it stands. Not perfect but good enough. I believe the pro version you can shift your load to model different tariff rate profiles

I would avoid all intelligent options as I don't trust them, if you want flux go on a set and forget it standard.

I prefer agile as pretty much every day has been cheaper than flux standard even early afternoon.

Watcher

Form this what month is the ideal switchover from agile to flux. I assume it's around may and then back onto agile in September.

I assume you have the data to check ?

Thanks

zoozaa

I started my solar journey in April on Flux and it worked well until December when I saw many had changed to Agile so I switched. With hindsight probably should’ve been October time? Agile with Wonder Watt is working so well atm I will probably leave changing back to Flux until I get sustained sunshine on ‘my’ roof to make Flux export more profitable.

I will watch WW and this forum and take into account what others are doing and be sheep like as I can’t be bothered doing the solar calculations for myself! Life is too (and getting shorter) short.

Cheers

Watcher I think a number on this forum switched from Flux to Agile in mid September.

I was still crunching numbers and I have a large (14kW) set of arrays so was still generating plenty. Didn't switch until mid October and even then I still had a few 10-20kW daily solar generations but the heat pump was on by then so I was also importing more.

I have seen some nice graphs of rolling average consumption vs generation to decide the switchover point. Be good if any of those were ever in Home Assistant as I can't be bothered to dump it in Excel.

At the moment I haven't thought when I will switch. Half of me thinks I may stay on Agile for the summer. Dunno.

geoffreycoan
That’s interesting, I looked earlier and the Flux export at 17p versus 15p on Agile makes me think it may be down to how low Agile import will be in the summer for me so was thinking along similar lines. WW’s ease of use is getting to be a big decision factor too.

Watcher will be very interesting to see what they do to the various export rates if/when prices drop in the spring.

Char I avoided intelligent flux with my AIO - I didn’t want to put more cycles through the batteries than necessary and rarely have excess for export in the winter (5.2kW array). But in short - you probably need to do the maths on what you use, when you use it, and why - taking into account the opportunity to time-shift demand by charging batteries when cheapest and exporting at the highest prices (if you have excess). And there’s something to be said for keeping it simple…

naltsta I have the same experience. I change tariffs when the clocks change - summer is Agile, winter is Go. As my household load matches AIO capacity, even in winter, and I can charge our PHEV whenever - I can therefore time-shift all of our consumption, all year round.

So I modelled time-shifting to the best Agile rates each day vs the fixed Go window (my car/chargers isn’t “intelligent” compatible) using the historic data. I come off better with Go (with a small amount of fixed lite export) than Agile (import and export) in the winter, and the opposite in the summer (benefiting from the lower import overnight and often midday too, plus higher export rates).

It also makes for a simple life in winter - I can charge the AIO to full each night on Go at 9p/kWh and not worry about having charged too much, as the price differential between charging at that rate and exporting any excess (should we have any due to solar PV production) at 8p/kWh is a tiny differential to pay. Plus it means we have a mostly full battery when we wake up in case we have a power cuts - we get a lot here.

Jellybaby what’s wrong with intelligent?

I have intelligent for my ev and it works fine. Charging my AIO overnight etc.

JasonF Intelligent Flux and Intelligent Go are entirely different tariffs. Octopus have caused some confusion by branding them both "Intelligent", but I think they may be reigning back on that - I recently got an email saying that my tariff was now called "Intelligent Go", but not to worry, because it hadn't changed.

DD ah yeah I just noticed mine is now called “Intelligent Octopus Go”