Had an email today to tell me that I hadn't used the smart charging in a while and I should enable it. As a gift for doing so they will give us free EV charging Monday night.
Is this a veiled warning that they are looking to cut-off intelligent go users who don't use the smarts? It honestly has never worked properly with my car (Passat GTE). I still charge the car every night so not completely misusing the setup. I'm can't be the only one in this boat?
I had a similar email a few months ago. I explained that my model 3 wasn't charging despite following their instructions several times. No emails from them since.
MarkyG82 I still charge the car every night so not completely misusing the setup.
I am now on IOG, but was previously on Go, and did feel a bit resentful of those who qualified for IOG but didn't actually smart-charge - didn't seem fair that they got the better prices, but didn't do anything different from me.
I’ve had a fair amount of stress using IOG - carrying on charging for too long when plugged in, sometimes not stopping at all, or even worse just not charging at all! Lots of emails and calls and also a fair amount of compensation. Currently it’s working ok, still sometimes taking too long to stop, so I am using it as designed. Very rarely get extra time and even when I do it often changes three or four times before actually starting. Now getting a heat pump and not changing the tariff so we’ll see how that goes….
Further to the above... I still don't understand why IOG gets access to standard export rates, but Go only gets half the rate. What does export have to do with smart charging?
DD
It’s a good question. The only advantages to Octopus that I can think of for offering such a benefit are (1) that it allows them to harvest detailed data from EV owners about their transport energy usage. And (2) to allow them to shape demand, to the extent that smart charging is enabled. I suspect the second is the more valuable (as evidenced by the email), but have I missed anything?
I can usually get a slot as soon as I plug in normally. I think because I only have a granny charger, and they can see the state of charge it automatically happens.
The new octopus app hasn’t been great though and I find I have to toggle the smart charge button for it to update and give me a slot.
Not sure what they are doing but hopefully it will continue! At the moment they are paying me to run my house and car. Don’t know what the heat pump will do to that….
Hook I can usually get a slot as soon as I plug in normally.
I think it may depend on the model of the car (for car integrations). On an EV forum, I see various complaints about how the car starts charging immediately, and it can take quite a while before Octopus notice and stop the charge. They're presumably relying on the car API to report that it has been plugged in.
(I use the Zappi integration, and that doesn't seem to suffer from this problem, though I have pretty much disabled solar charging - without doing that, it might have charged while there was any export happening.)
Waiting on Hypervolt to get their V2 to connect with Octopus just in case it’s better than Tesla. Not holding my breath though
SimonClarke In the same boat with a V2. I will move off car API when I can. Just too flaky.
browellm how do find the quality of materials in the V2? Mine used to be white way back in December 21 but is now the colour of butter! Not covered by their warranty. Same goes for the plug holder which remains black for about three months then goes grey. This they did replace. Same happened again so I sprayed it black about 18 months ago still black. Not impressed. Then they keep sending me emails to buy the new wonderful V3 - not going to happen
I'm on IOG (since Jan this year) & we plug our car on every 2-3 days (Kona 64kWh & Zappi). The car is set to charge from 11.30pm to 5.30am (7p/kWh cheap rate) & to 80% capacity. I have not programmed any other parameters within the Octopus Account pages or Zappi App. Not sure I've seen the car charge at anytime outside of those parameters in all the time we've been on OIG.
We had a visit from an Octopus engineer today (or subbed out company) to physically read our meters. I thought this was a bit weird since we have smart meters so why would they need reading by a human. Then I remembered seeing something about a meter issue on one of our Octopus account pages so maybe this was to double check their remote readings with the actual meter readings? Or, to double check why I keep requesting cash back from our overpaid account - due to lots of export kWhrs from solar!
Well I'll be jigged. I just got the e-mail below 1 hour ago from Octopus. Not sure I fully understand why recharging on bank holiday Monday night is any different to normal but what the heck I'll give it a go. That's assuming that they can communicate with my Zappi because as mentioned in the above post, I've never seen the car recharge outside the times I've set in the car itself.
"Hi Colin,
As we dive head-first into the (gulp) last Bank Holiday before Christmas, we’re all in need of a little recharge. That’s why…
We’re giving you 50% off Intelligent charging on Monday night.
When you charge up after your Bank Holiday adventures this weekend, it could be even cheaper than usual.
Here’s what you need to do to get the Bank Holiday Recharge:
Plug in on the night of Monday 26th August
Keep the car unplugged on Tuesday 27th August night
Do this, and we’ll make any Intelligent-scheduled EV charging on Monday night 50% off. (That’s just EV charging, so you can skip the tumble dryer marathon!)
Within two weeks, we’ll work out what you used during the Bank Holiday Recharge and credit your Octopus account 50% back!
If for any reason we can’t get your readings from Monday, we’ll credit you the average across your fellow Intelligent drivers.
Why are we doing this?
Monday and Tuesday night are a big opportunity to demonstrate the power of Intelligent drivers – we unlock mega-cheap prices for Intelligent drivers by charging your cars flexibly to support the grid. By avoiding busy times and making the most of renewables, we can nab cheaper wholesale prices and get compensation through grid balancing schemes.
We then pass on these savings to you with some of the UK’s cheapest EV charging rates.
Whether you decide to switch on on Monday night or not, we hope you have a lovely, switched-off Bank Holiday Weekend.
Love and power,
Peter Miller
Head of Customer Experience
Octopus Energy"
CGoode Not sure I've seen the car charge at anytime outside of those parameters in all the time we've been on OIG.
Oh.. I regularly get charging as late as 11am at the weekend. But if you ask for the car to be ready by 5:30 am, all your smart charging would be during the standard cheap hours.
Well I'll be jigged. I just got the e-mail below 1 hour ago from Octopus. Not sure I fully understand why recharging on bank holiday Monday night is any different to normal but what the heck I'll give it a go. That's assuming that they can communicate with my Zappi because as mentioned in the above post, I've never seen the car recharge outside the times I've set in the car itself.
Just got the same. If you're on IOG, you shouldn't really be configuring the charging timer on your car. If you've gone for the zappi integration, you should have the car configured to accept charge any time, and the Zappi chooses when to deliver power; if it's a car integration, then you'd leave the Zappi configured to always deliver power, and Octopus use the car's API turn on and off charging.
When you run the Octopus app and select 'Devices' at the bottom, what you do see ? I get a box with 'Myenergi Zappi smart EV' and the configured ready-time (11am) and how much charge to add (10%).
With the charger integration, Octopus may not know how full the car is, and so it's how much charge to add, rather than what level to charge up to. Whereas with the car integration, you can select a target SoC.
They have specified iog intelligent charging but not the time period applying to Monday night.
I also note it’s not whole house charging. Only EV charging. I’ll give it a miss.
Just plug your car in, let IOG do its thing and it’s 50% off. Couldn’t be easier really, not really worth complaining about.
DD Humm. On the Octopus App, Devices I see my Zappi & 08.00, 80% & unplugged ATM.
Early on I had problems with the Zappi draining the house batteries when charging the car so I have set my batteries to pause discharge between 11.30pm & 5.30am when I normally charge the car, batteries & run any other time delayed appliances. This stops the car & anything else draining the batteries overnight & ensures I start the day with a 100% charge in the house batteries to last me through the day &/ or export back to the grid.
So, if I abdicate car charging control to Octopus to charge the car at anytime they choose, & outside of my paused battery times, will the car drain the batteries? I think it will, unless Octopus logic prevents this from happening somehow.
CGoode move your ct clamp so the inverter doesn’t see the car charger?
CGoode if you have access to the octopus API, I think there is an attribute in it which says if there is a bonus off peak slot (e.g. when octopus decide to turn a peak into off peak for car charging).
If you can read that, then perhaps you could put the inverter into pause discharge mode or similar. Then when the attribute/sensor changes back, put the inverter into eco mode again.
Home assistant is the common way of doing such automation but not the only choice.
The other option is get your wiring changed so that the car charger and inverter are on different meter tails or at least consumer units. Have the inverter CT clamp monitor the import / export from the house (ignoring the car charger) and have the car charger CT clamp monitoring at the meter, so it can see the export from house if you want to use the export for charging the car.
SimonClarke Can't do that without a major re-wire.
TX200 I had CT clamp issues when the system was first installed. I got the installer back who sorted it out but the way it's currently wired up they is no way around the problem. So for now, force pausing the battery from discharging during the cheap tariff period is my "no cost" solution.
So I had the same email, as I always charge every night, but with the smarts off.
My setup isnt terribly simple, thats why I disabled smarts.
If I used IOG, my solar would discharge if the slot was outside the 23:30-05:30.
Also, I have one EV and one PHEV, and its mainly always the PHEV that is plugged in at night, as my EV I charge at work. Ive been using simple Zappi boosts within the period to charge the PHEV.
After getting the email however, I dont want to risk getting booted off for not using smart charging, so this is now how Ive done it.
I removed my car integration, and re-set up IOG to my Zappi.
Removed all schedules from both Car and Zappi, and leave in ECO+.
Ive defaulted IOG to add 30% charge (This gives just over 3 hours, enough to charge the PHEV that only charges at 3.7) and to be ready for 05:30.
So that allows me to use Smart Charging for both my Kuga PHEV, and Tesla EV.
To deal with the battery drain issue, Ive created 2 Home Assistant automations:
One to start force charging my GivEnergy solar batteries when the IO slot starts.
One to cancel force charging my batteries.
Just to be clear, the force charge does not override your charge schedule in the inverter.
I was worried it would cancel the charge during the 6 hours...but it doesnt thankfully.
Start automation below:
alias: IO SLOT START
description: ""
trigger:
Easy enough to create an OFF one from that.
Sounds like a lot of work rather than unclipping the ct clamp….
SimonClarke Sounds like a lot of work rather than unclipping the ct clamp….
That only works if there's an exposed tail that includes house and inverter supply without the chargepoint. When mine was first installed, there was a single Henley block that split incomer three ways, sohad to get that rewired before there was somewhere to move the CT clamp to.
CGoode So, if I abdicate car charging control to Octopus to charge the car at anytime they choose, & outside of my paused battery times, will the car drain the batteries?
Yes, potentially. Some just ask for the car to be ready by 5:30, which means smart-charging always uses standard cheap slots. For a while my compromise was to ask for car to be ready by 7am, but use simple API calls to limit max discharge power to about 300W until then. This is enough to cover overnight base load after 530 (battery charged from grid until then), but if the car did charge later, it would come from grid rather than battery.
I've since had the CT clamp moved, so don't have to worry about that. (It has changed to a different problem - how to avoid forced-export while car is charging.)
I have python scripts to retrieve IOG charging schedule and tweak inverter parameters that you're welcome to share if they're any use. (Bit simpler than setting up HA.)
DD After 18 months of using them I've only just got the hang of the GE Portal & App. HA & any other external control software is way beyond my pay grade. Just want an easy life without too many complications so I think I'll stick with what I've got under the premise of "if it ain't broke don't fix it".
I use home assistant, when it sees my car is charging it pauses the battery. As I only charge when IOG tells it to it doesn’t matter if the house pulls from the grid as it’s cheap anyway.
SimonClarke Ha, mines exactly as you described.
I hope they do manage to get the V2 compatible with IOG by Christmas as I'm looking to ditch the Tesla for a Polestar 4.
Amazing how many people take the piss with this tariff and think that it's 'just fine' though. Human nature I suppose.
browellm I won’t hold my breath waiting on Hypervolt. Pretty sure they would rather you buy a V3! Not sure how long you’ll have to wait for Polestar to do the over the air update that puts the rear window back either….Took a M3 Performance out the other day, very nice but my accountant said no. She said the one we’ve got is quick enough- LR - and she’s getting whiplash already. And then said I’m getting too old!
browellm how is it taking the piss? One of the main features of the tariff is the cheap overnight slot. I'm using that for my charging needs.
I have 3 issues with the intelligent bit:
1) the slots never get applied correctly and by the time octopus systems realise, I have nearly charged the battery so get charged at full rate.
2) the house battery gets unwanted discharge. Clearly there are ways round this but we shouldn't have to go down the route of custom control systems to prevent it.
3) octopus thinks my car can charge at full EV rate whereas it can only take 3.6kw. As a result the slot octopus gives it is too short for a full charge.
I have spoken to octopus about 1 and 3 and still not had it fixed after being on intelligent for nearly a year.
2 I can fix by changing the charger to a givenergy charge point or by using home assistant (use this already for other house stuff). The charge point is a large expense and I need to work on my home network to get the home assistant stuff working. But that only solves one issue.
To those that have replied, thanks. I didn't expect such an in depth chat. It's good to see others getting similar emails. I've reactivated the smart charging to keep octopus happy but will deactivate it again when we get into the working week as it's unusable for me.
Main thing I see is that the charge schedule changes a lot so I couldn’t rely on it for anything other than the car. Usually plug in early evening and it’s set to finish for 8am. Don’t have to worry about draining the battery as we have the ct clamp in the right place. With the current tariff structure why would you want to use solar to charge the EV when you can get paid 15p to export it?
Ours has gone wrong several times but Octopus have always overcompensated so not to bothered.
MarkyG82 One of the main features of the tariff is the cheap overnight slot. I'm using that for my charging needs.
Octopus go also offers a cheap overnight slot. The main feature of IOG is that, in exchange for smart charging, you get a longer/cheaper overnight and better export.
DD but when it doesn't work correctly despite discussing the problems with octopus what am I supposed to do? The car is currently set to be charged by intelligent. This doesn't help us with the other car but that's another story. A new charge point would help with this and maybe some man maths is needed to justify the change.
How much would I save by having cheap slots outside the overnight period alongside PV and house battery?
MarkyG82 How much would I save by having cheap slots outside the overnight period alongside PV and house battery?
Probably nothing. (They can be a bit of a hindrance with a battery system.) Octopus probably does benefit from them, which is why they're part of the improved offering.
JasonF I intend to do something similar. I will probably force charge my home battery when the car is charging. I normally only charge the car via IOG
MarkyG82 If it's unusable for you, you are on the wrong tariff and should swap to Go.
MarkyG82 I have 3 issues with the intelligent bit:
1) the slots never get applied correctly and by the time octopus systems realise, I have nearly charged the battery so get charged at full rate.
2) the house battery gets unwanted discharge. Clearly there are ways round this but we shouldn't have to go down the route of custom control systems to prevent it.
3) octopus thinks my car can charge at full EV rate whereas it can only take 3.6kw. As a result the slot octopus gives it is too short for a full charge.
I don't think 2 is Octopus' problem: you've choosen to sign up to a tariff with bonus (ie random) charging slots.
But yes, if Octopus claim compatibility with your car, 1 and 3 are on them. Which integration do you use?
On 3, they certainly can cope with 3.6kW cars - mine is one such. For 1, I have heard that some people just pause charging as soon as they plug in, rather than waiting for car API to inform octopus of the event, then Octopus to tell the car to stop.
This doesn't help us with the other car
I assume you've already tried with other car as the smart one, if it's compatible.
DD
Our charge point isn't compatible so that steers me to the cars (pun!). The EV is a Hyundai ioniq which wasn't compatible at the time. Granted I haven't checked in a while but I have done on a few occasions. The final car is my Passat GTE which works as an octopus device. This is where I get confused as in theory it works fine. But then when it comes to an actual charge, the cars battery is so small that by the time octopus have stopped the first bit it's half full. Then it either fails to charge or doesn't charge. On the occasion that it doesn't do the "little" charge when first plugged in, the slot it gives is only an hour. It takes about 2½ to fully charge.
I've spoken to octopus a few times and they insist it's set up correctly and I should just keep trying.
I'm trying to balance my usage with experimental charges to get it working. I don't want to try day after day to make it work as it costs me time and money when it continues to fail.
If I can get 1 and 3 sorted then I'll sort 2. Until then I'm not bothering. I'll keep trying now and then.
I'd never used the IO featre till last week when I noticed I could start charging at 21:15, will likely now just plug the car in when we need and let it do its thing.
I can always turn it off/on via the App for the car anyway if it started at a peak rate.
MarkyG82 Our charge point isn't compatible
Have you configured any kind of charger in Octopus? I wonder if you were to just tell it you used a granny-charger, it might accept that the charging rate is limited ?
MarkyG82 I also had one of these emails over the weekend offering a free charge on Monday night. I had turned off smart charging as I have previously had a couple of instances where the car hadn't charged correctly. I also read it as a veiled threat. I did re-enable smart charging, and the car was fully charged this morning.
I think in order for IO to work it needs to see a draw of 7.4kW from grid ? So, If I'm discharging my batteries or producing PV, when I plug my car in, it cant see this 7.4kW, so doesn't schedule a charge overnight, just lets the car charge. So, I need to make sure my car pulls the 7.4kW from grid.
I'm not sure how last nights "deal" can just be applied to the EV being charged ? I also stuck 18 units into my battery as well as 18 units into my EV. As always with Octopus, I will need to carefully check my bill
Roberto I think in order for IO to work it needs to see a draw of 7.4kW from grid ?
I don't think it's that.... I think they just need the car's API to tell them that it has been plugged in - the charging is a bit of a side effect, and you can immediately pause it using the car's app or whatever.
(I have Zappi integration rather than car-based, and that can inform Octopus when I've plugged in without having to actually start charging.)
DD this is what we are hoping the Hypervolt charger will do supposedly about Christmas time but from previous experience I won’t hold my breath. In the past switching charging off before it has made a schedule has caused problems but not often. Octopus have often said something else is controlling charging but there is nothing. I’ve just accepted that working with my Tesla is just a bit unreliable but usually ok
DD ok. Makes sence if Octopus can see my car is charging via the API rather than my grid import. Some times octopus sees my car charging almost instantly, other times it can take 15 mins before it stops the charge and provides the overnight schedules.
Roberto There was one model of car (Kia ?) where Octopus were polling the API regularly to ask if it was plugged in, and it turned out that this caused the 12V battery to drain rapidly.
DD Kia EVs are notorious for draining the 12V battery for a huge variety of reasons, so I'd take that with a pinch of salt were I you.
12v batteries in many EVs are a sore point. The ones in my BMW i3 are known for failing at an inconvenient time. And of course a replacement is not a DIY job, having to be coded to the car.
Roberto And of course a replacement is not a DIY job, having to be coded to the car.
really..? Hadn't heard that one. Is that specific to BMW ?
Apparently you can use an app called bimmerlink to do it ?
https://www.mybmwi3.com/threads/12v-battery-step-by-step-and-preventing-errors.17838/
https://bimmerlink.app/
I've read that the i3 12v battery can be replaced without coding and will work -- certainly in the short term. The 'coding' basically tells the car that it's a new battery and to treat it as such. Quite what that means I'm unsure.
SimonP hopefully a while before I have to worry about replacing the 12v battery. I'm sure there are work around..