Export not showing in Octopus

We are on Octopus Flux but the readings from our export on the Givenergy site does not tally with Octopus reading.

Here is the 23rd August result on Givenergy and then Octopus.

We have been charging between 0200 and 0400. We try to export between 1600 and 1900 but not for the whole amount of time. We are still struggling whether to stick with using the portal to set times or set them on the Android app but end up tweaking both. Still can't get our heads around this system. There must be an easier way of getting the best out of our system, Generation 3.

Lynn Think you'll find they're just a few days behind with updating their website. If you have an in home display, that may more accurately reflect what you've used on 23rd, and those will be the figures Octopus use on your bill.

Couple of things happening here:

• there is often delays getting the export data from the DNO into the Octopus system. Usually a day and a half delay, sometimes more.
• the GivEnergy inverter sends the portal a snapshot of the inverter data every 5 minutes. The portal then assumes that this is a flat figure for the entire 5 minutes. Clouds will go overhead, sun will come out, you put the kettle on, etc, all of which affect the accuracy of the portal data

If you change the inverter settings with the GivEnergy android app then it sends the commands to the inverter via the portal so it shouldn’t matter where you make the changes.

By the way its probably not worth charging the battery overnight on Octopus Flux as the nighttime import rate is so close to the day time export rate that after conversion losses are included you are actually losing money slightly with an overnight charge. Do charge if the next day solar forecast isn’t enough to fill the batteries and you’ll need the battery for the Flux peak, but otherwise just let the battery fill from solar and export the rest when its full.

There is a known on-going issue with Octopus not updating online records over the last few days. I have read a report saying that @agilephil on X/Twitter has said that it will be resolved after the Bank Holiday.

Thank you for your replies. Reassuring. We have only just started charging overnight as weather has been rubbish! Am I right in thinking that Intelligent Flux is the one to use in the winter? We don't have an EV so only need electricity for the home use.

Lynn Depends on you battery size and usage. Most people say that IOF is not the best in winter, but only best in summer as the export rate is higher. If you have an EV or heat pump then there are better tariffs available, or if you like lots of involvement in your system the Agile would be a good one with using HA or WonderWatt.
If none of these are applicable to you and you want the easy life, then staying on Flux is not the worst decision as you get 3 hours of low rate charge overnight, but obviously you need to draw as little as possible between 4-7pm when rates are high, so you need to make sure you have enough left in your battery.
You pays your money and makes your choice!

Oh thanks for that. I really want as little involvement as possible! Have had to keep tweaking to try and get best use. Really thought that Intelligent Flux was for winter. Ok will stay on Flux and see how it goes. No EV nor heatpump but getting balance right for evenings has been tricky. We usually eat at 7pm but have now had to put the cooking until after 7pm which is a bit annoying but not the end of the world.
Thanks again.

Lynn I just had a look in the Octopus app and my own export for the 23rd August is missing. Must be a problem their end as PianSom says. The 22nd is there OK, might be worth you comparing the data for the 22nd or 21st?

Intelligent Octopus Flux is great as a ‘fire and forget’ tariff in that Octopus totally manage the battery charging for you and you get a good export rate, but in winter where you are likely to be generating much less solar its probably not going to be a good option.

If your battery is big enough to support your home demand for the day then Economy 7 might be worthwhile. Agile and Tracker are worth a look as well, but for Agile you will need some way to automate your battery charging in cheap periods.

e.g. for my region (East Anglia):
Flux 14p night, 23p day, 32p peak
Intelligent Octopus Flux 21p day, 28p peak
Economy 7 28.5p day, 11p night

Lynn if you're not tied to Octopus, eon next drive is an option: was previously an EV tariff, but now also for home batteries. Something like 7p overnight for at least 6 hours, and a good export rate (if battery is big enough to have something left at the end of the day).

I tend to keep an eye on https://www.octopriceuk.app/missingData to see what is happening with my consumption and export. As you can see, it's all gone horribly wrong the last few days.

(Can you spot when I had a battery calibration done? 🙂 )

Lynn Intelligent Octopus Flux is not a bad tariff to be on if you stay on it all year as the money you make in the summer compensates for winter usage. In fact, as Geoff said, if you want a set and forget system then IOF is a great tariff as you use the grid as a virtual battery. The biggest problem I see is that you give up virtually complete control of your system to Octopus and they use your system to best effect for them. Depends whether you feel comfortable with big business looking after your investment, or whether you want to retain that control of the money you spent!

PianSom I beat you! 161 missing data records. Similar pattern though, lots of import from the 20th and 21st missing, 22nd a few gaps, almost all of the 23rd and 24th missing. Export its missing all bar the first hour on the 23rd and all of the 24th

Giving back to the start of the year no other missing data at all.

PianSom
Ooh, thanks for the link 210 missing for me 🤔

geoffreycoan just had a look in the Octopus app and my own export for the 23rd August is missing. Must be a problem their end as PianSom says. The 22nd is there OK, might be worth you comparing the data for the 22nd or 21st?

Same here.. possibly something to do with the Bank Holiday weekend.... the import values are there

Wow! I'm not the only one. Hopefully they will sort it out this weekend. 22nd and 2rd not there.
We are probably tied in with Octopus. We have 2 batteries but will look at other rates. So thank you for the information.
Inverter Model
GIV-HY3.6
Software Version
D0.307-A0.307
Battery Type
Lithium-ion
Battery Capacity
204 Ah | 10.44 kWh | (2 Packs)
We use about 3300kwh per year so unsure whether to stay on Flux. Doesn't sound sensible to hand control over to Octopus!
Just gone into Software on inverter in portal and says to upgrade firmware. Help! Do I do that? Is anything likely to go wrong?

PianSom Some of the missing import data may be because of the Octopus API isn't coping with zero import values at the moment, but the last two days is something else.

Look forward to it all being sorted on Tuesday 🙂 or not ...

PianSom As long as they are getting all the info their end I don't care when they sort it, my bil gets generated on the 1st of the month and im not paying standard rate lol

Lynn We have 2 batteries but will look at other rates. …
Battery Capacity
204 Ah | 10.44 kWh | (2 Packs)
We use about 3300kwh per year so unsure whether to stay on Flux.

So you’ve got 2x 5.2kWh batteries which are 80% depth of discharge, so really are 4.2kWh usable, or 8.4kWh for the two. Due to the way the batteries work (see other threads), when one battery fills up or empties the other stops charging/discharging so you can’t realistically use the entire 8.4kWh, and there is a 4% lower reserve limit, so lets say you have 7kWh actually usable.

The question then is whether 7kWh is enough for your daily usage.

3300kWh is quite low (wish mine was that low). Approximate daily consumption is 3300/365 = 9kWh, and add say 20% for winter when you have the lights on more, gives about 10.8kWh daily consumption which is more than your usable battery capacity. Some of your consumption will be overnight in the cheap rate, but unless you can (and want to) shift the washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher etc to overnight, then that’s not going to swing the numbers much.

Based on the above you can do some calculations of what it would cost you to charge overnight, how much of the day/peak rate would be covered by your batteries, and how much day rate import you would have on different tariffs. Having a bit of day rate import isn’t the end of the world, you just want to minimise it with the batteries.
Any solar generation you get on top is a bonus but there will be days in winter where you generate nothing or very little, so might be best to ignore that for now.

Just gone into Software on inverter in portal and says to upgrade firmware. Help! Do I do that? Is anything likely to go wrong?
You can upgrade the software by clicking the upgrade button in the portal. It should warn you if a battery recalibration is required, so for Flux, don’t kickoff the install just before the peak rate as a calibration will fully discharge and the recharge the battery.
Generally its best to be on the newest firmware, but do look on the forum for others feedback of different firmware versions. As ever, mixed experiences.
Also, suggest you don’t do the upgrade on a Friday or the weekend (or bank holiday) in case it goes wrong and you want to talk to GivEnergy support

geoffreycoan there is a 4% lower reserve limit, so lets say you have 7kWh actually usable.

I've noticed this on my AIO - it's 13.5 kWh (which I thought was the available capacity) but there is a 4% minimum discharge - what does this actually mean? I thought the 13.5 was 100% discharge, so what is the 4% representing?

CW The AIO is actually 15.9kWh internally, of which 13.5 is usable. This is what GivEnergy say when its “100% depth of discharge”, the battery is bigger than you’re told it is so they can quote you “100% usable” space of the smaller figure.
Same with the 9.5kWh battery, its actual space is I think 11kWh but you get 100% of the smaller usable space.
On the 5.2 battery (which came first) they didn’t do this, they quoted the 100% capacity figure and then only 80% usable, so hence my calculation above to reduce the battery down to 4.2.

But you asked about the 4% reserve. So despite all this above, and that when the battery reads empty, it’s not actually empty, GivEnergy won’t let you draw the last 4% out of the battery. This is the battery reserve figure (you can increase it if you want, e.g. if you want to hold more charge back for EPS mode), but it’s generally inaccessible.

Occasionally I have seen my 9.5 battery reduce down to 3% and then usually start charging itself back up again and record a low voltage error in the log.

So yes, your AIO is 100% but it’s 100% of a smaller figure than the actual battery capacity, and even then you can only at best access 96% of it. But I guess 96% depth of discharge doesn’t sound as good.

Thank you for all these posts. I am feeling so demoralised. We weren't advised that 2 batteries would be worse than 1 of about 9.5.
Will do the update at a later date to avoid problems you mentioned.

geoffreycoan So yes, your AIO is 100% but it’s 100% of a smaller figure than the actual battery capacity, and even then you can only at best access 96% of it. But I guess 96% depth of discharge doesn’t sound as good.

Thanks for the info - so even 100% DOD is not strictly accurate - my 13.5 kWh is actually 12.96 kWh!

Lynn Hi, I had the same problem with missing readings starting on 23rd August - with no readings at all through to 26th. I wrote to them and submitted readings. On the afternoon of 26th Fridays electricity readings appeared, for the 23rd but nothing for gas. By the evening I had Saturdays readings for elec but none for gas. This morning I had all readings up to Sunday 25th for gas and electric. They are catching up, but oh so slowly.

My Octopus Export and Import readings have stopped again i.e. nothing in their app or on IHD and Octopus mini status light is green instead of white for the last couple of days. Same situation as the last Bank Holiday weekend. I haven’t changed anything. Are others experiencing similar?

SteveClubley I did experience a delay after the weekend, but it seems upto date now

SteveClubley No problems at my end. Nothing showing on IHD and green light on mini suggest a problem with connectivity back to the smart meter. Might be worth phoning Octopus.

Although I have steady readings over the last 7 days, I still have some missing import data for Fri 23rd August – Thu 29th August. According to https://www.octopriceuk.app/missingData, I have 90 slots missing. In reality, this is probably no big deal as these are predominately during the day when my panels were generating and I was exporting excess solar.
All my exporting is accounted for.

At one stage, I had over 300 slots missing going back to 20th August but nothing has improved from my 90 slots missing for several days.
As Karen has stated, this catch up is so slow ...... 🐢

Rob

Strangely, Octoprice has loads of data showing as missing on import from 19th -28th Aug, but my Octopus app is showing all the days with the right usage, and I've had a bill too for that period.

TimHutchings As well as Octopriceuk, I use Octopus Watch which shows missing data at the same times as Octopriceuk.
If I download my import data from the Octopus portal, the same slots are missing.
From Octopus Watch, I was importing at these times and likely import would have been 0 kWh (or tiny).

My bill comes through on 8th/9th of the month so I will soon see what materialises.

Rob

first time on the forum and just noticed some having issues with missing export (IOF)
I thought I was one of only a few with this export issue,
My discussions with Ocyopus about this go back to last January when I realised days of export had started missing, then we progressed to months of missing export.
I have just started receiving the payments for the seven months of missing export after involving the Energy Ombudsman
Some of the Octopus staff struggled to understand the anquish of paying for my total energy consumption plus the imported power, filling the 13.5kWh battery that they had used during peak time and disregarding the exported power from my 20 panels
It was interesting!
Cully

Cully I admire your persistence and well done.
I tried to get onto IOF last autumn but the onboarding process didn't work for me.
I have found that Octopus X support is very good. It is staffed by knowledgable folk. For me, they passed on my issues to others in Octopus who might be able to help. It saves the prospective torment of a phone call to a support member who doesn't know the answer. Pot luck!

After 3 months, I gave up and in January went onto Agile with fixed 15p export. This has worked excellently for me. I am well in profit for the year so far and hope to make it to the end of the year in profit.
But I was also a victim of data not showing up including a lot of Agile plunge prices. It looks like I was lucky for this to be sorted for my next bill or I might have finished up in the same pickle as you found yourself.

Octopriceuk is a certainly a good site for checking from time to time.

Rob

The biggest issue I had with Octopus was the call centre staff claiming to understand my problem but being reluctant to progress the issue to the correct department, just stating that "it's being dealt with"
I did, overtime, speak to most of the their departments, billing, metering, software, complaints, senior staff etc. but eventually I told them my next course of action was Energy Ombudsman and writing a reveiw on trustpilot.
The interesting facts that came out of the Ombudsman involvment was that the Inteligent Flux tariff was new to the market and Octopus are still resolving issues. Octopus also said my smart meter manufacturer (Kaifa MA120) had done a firmware update that had effected export data only being retreived by Octopus but it's hard to imagine that situation given that there are 76 Million of these meters in use across Europe, can you imagine the complaints generated from that?
I don't know whether the probem has been resolved yet as I have had money credited to my account but no statement and the Ombudsman told Octopus to manually imput the credits in if they cannot resolve it within the month
Cully

Cully Inteligent Flux tariff was new to the market and Octopus are still resolving issues

They tried the same with us regarding Agile. They lost that argument as its been available for 6 years and claiming something is "in beta" isn't a get out of jail free card, although Octopus seemed to think it was.