Intelligent Octopus Flux (IOF)

Anyone on this forum currently on Intelligent Octopus Flux? (I suspect very few, bearing in mind it's "hands-off" nature - you give total control of your system to Octopus.)
I'm after IOF users who would be prepared to look at their Inverter logs. They would need to disable the "Filter Errors" checkbox, and look for log entries with a Message field of "Inverter Timeout", "Inverter Offline", "There was no response from comms. Please try again", or "Request Failed. Please try again".

TIA

Yeah I've got messages like that. They're nothing new for me, scrolling to page 60+ continue to see such errors.

Yes, I run it from early March until sometime in October, for me it's the most profitable as I generate about 3 times what I use.

Last 28 days Bill has been -£120 including standing charge.

And yes I get loads of errors from Octopus requests.

Yea my neighbour and I are both seeing lots of of those too. As TX200 said its quite common however neither of our systems are actually being controlled at all for the last 2 days and the commands that are failing dont relate to the usual charge/discharge functions of IOF so not sure whats going on. Have resorted to some manual tweaking for now till Octopus get going again

Thanks all. Givenergy tech support were no help (online chat yesterday). Their line: well, some messages are getting through ok, so it's nothing to do with us... Whilst with Octopus tech support, once you get the "we've passed it onto the relevant team who will get back to you if they have anything to report", then your enquiry has traversed the event horizon of a black hole. Since November 2023 (when I signed-up to IOF), from the Givenergy logs I have these message stats...
Inverter Offline: 3606
Inverter Timeout: 5938
Read Successfully: 345
Request Failed. Please try again: 106
There was no response from comms. Please try again: 8367
Written Successfully: 12418

And, indeed, I have had no successful IOF control messages since 7pm on the 16th. (Battery been stuck at 20% ever since.)

Don't forget it might be they don't need our batteries at the moment. It's up to them as to when they use them. In return we get the nice export rates!

Although a saving session has been called for this evening, so exporting might be useful (although perhaps octopus have (political) issues with how DFS works !!)

Sure @TX200 , but they might at least charge my battery (from all of that solar we've been seeing), for home use - the excess solar has been going straight out to the grid (inc. during 4pm-7pm).

Yep, I'm seeing lots of these and no effective control from IOF since evening of the 16th April. Inverter update to 210 was 2 weeks ago, battery to 3020 late afternoon on the 17th. Failed responses don't seem to match Giv updates, so I'm thinking Octopus have changed something?

I'm getting the messages, but IOF is also doing it's control.

sorry to bartge in but iam on it to. since updating inverter and battery the other day the battery is not being used at all. its sat at 37% and im now using tHE GRID IN PEAK TIMES! Anyone else having this?

hazlad24 try turning Eco mode off and then on again. Octopus will be controlling the inverter but maybe its got stuck

hazlad24 I went through ALL the settings after updating (not just Eco mode) and set them all to their previous values. Not had any problems since 🙂

My battery has not been used either. I think this is because there is minimal solar production and so there is not much point in charging the battery from the grid because of conversion losses both ways. I thought that with IOF you are using the grid as a big battery. I also presume they don’t need too much peak power. PS in the app under devices shows that Octopus is communicating with the inverter.

Yep, device is listed under the app and is reading correctly. Previously when I've turned eco on it is turned off again within 5 mins by octopus, but that's not happening now. Read ok, write error is what it looks like.

So, since the 16th @ 19:30ish, I have 21 pages (15 events per page) of nothing but "Enable Eco Mode" and "Battery Reserve % Limit" messages - all of which are classified as errors (i.e. you have to switch-off "Filter Errors" in Remote Control History log section to see them.)
So IOF is taking a pretty 'relaxed' approach to our systems currently :-)

I’ve turned predbat on😎

Came to see if anyone else's battery wasn't being controlled by Octopus. Reassuring that it's not just me. Turned ECO mode on and will set it to export in the peak. Like others have said, previously whenever I've toggled ECO on, Octopus has turned it off again with minutes. Currently charging from solar, will give it a boost from the grid if necessary to maximise the export.

On 16th it looks like discharge from battery was switched off and so no charging or discharging from battery has happened for me since then. I guess I trust Octopus Energy to know what they are doing.

Interesting... I enabled Eco Mode this morning, after my previous post. Battery has charged to 91%, so far. I've enabled Eco Mode a couple of times in the past, as a diagnostic tool to see what effect the Octo messaging would have - on both occasions, it was reset by Octo within a few minutes. Not this time! (As a by-the-by, those 2 tests were the only time that an Octo Enable Eco Mode (False) message didn't cause an Inverter error [out of the thousands of failed ones that are in my Givenergy log]).

On sunny days it's probably okay to be in eco if Octopus automation is broken.

Just watch out you don't cycle the battery off peak, e.g. fill it up and empty it during the same off peak period - as due to the round trip losses it isn't worth it (better to run from grid).

Likewise try not to charge during the peak (I think everyone knows that one though!).

I went for a low and slow charge yesterday like what octopus do. So eco paused, 600W charge 11am-3pm.

Thanks TX200

Another IOF user here having the same issues! My problems started on Wed, which (coincidently ??), was the day the 3020 battery firmware upgrade was installed. Yesterday I regenerated my Givenergy API and reinstalled my battery as a device on the Octopus site and it immediately reconnected with no Inverter fail errors. It programmed correctly the 16.00 to 19.00 export and reset Eco to off. It also did a further export from 19.30 to 20.00.

But! Overnight all the Inverter fail errors have returned so I am back again to manual control. We await developments…….

I don't think it's inverter software issues. We'd still see items in the portal log if it was the inverter at fault

My guess is a problem at the octopus end.

Or they just don't want our batteries this weekend - the odd day or two without instructions isn't unusual. An entire bank holiday weekend, perhaps more unusual.

I agree it seems to be octopus end.

Has anyone heard from Octopus re this widespread fault?

Seems to be working again now.

Agreed. Someone has turned off ECO and it wasn't me! The folk at Octopus must have found the issue and fixed it. Looking at the log, there was a change this morning at 1032 that is shown as being done by API.

It (IOF) is, indeed, finally up & running again. I'd naively hoped that, with the OE IOF Support team having spent time on the system, they might have fixed the "Enable Eco Mode" / "Battery Reserve % Limit" messaging issue. Sadly, they haven't.

Not on IOF. But a Quick Look at those sorts of errors in my logs and it looks like “inverter timeout”, “there was no response from coms” etc usually occur around firmware updates and/or battery calibration events. A very few occur outside of these. Although I have’s done a count.

Maxwell That may well be the case for some. For me, it's been a constant thing since November 2023 (when I first signed-on to IOF).
Interestingly, something changed around May/June 2024 (I note that there was an Inverter Firmware upgrade around that time...), when "Enable Eco Mode" messages became more frequent (and has remained so, ever since)

Sorry i know this has probably been discussed a million times but in terms of octopus and summer is intelligent the best option making/saving money

[unknown] on YouTube, tim&Kat's green walk channel has a video with spreadsheet. His conclusion is that generation exceeds consumption by 1.4 times, IOF is best. But I think he makes too many assumptions about how Octopus will use your system.

My IOF seems to be back to normal but still getting the same errors. has anyone heard from octopus about this?

Leeshore has anyone heard from octopus about this?

It got mentioned on an Octopus forum, and once they were made aware of the issue, they fixed something at their end. That was a couple of days ago IIRC (presumably after the long weekend).

[unknown]

If you don't have an EV (so no Go or intelligent go options), then the ration is closed to 1.0* rather that 1.4* !!

I was on COSY over the winter and switched back a bit lat as I thought it was about 1.4* too, buy COSY to IOF is 1.0* (or even 0.95*)

I got this from Octopus earlier today.

"I wanted to inform you that there was a system-wide outage with our Intelligent Octopus Flux system that affected the control of GivEnergy batteries. I'm pleased to let you know that this issue has been rectified, and you should now see the charging and discharging of your battery functioning as intended moving forward. If you have any further questions, then feel free to reach out. We're here to help."

MitchOfMK Blimey! You're honoured (I didn't get one).

jonhd neither did I🙄

wrighar If you don't have an EV (so no Go or intelligent go options), then the ration is closed to 1.0* rather that 1.4* !!

There's always Eon Next Drive...

Is IOF playing up again?
The battery didn't receive any octopus commands to charge last night, but if I manually set it to Eco, it's being reset to Eco (paused) mode.

godfreym it doesn't always charge overnight.

Sometimes it'll do it in the day, depends on cost of electricity overnight (octopus's cost) and cost during the day/likely solar.

Agile rates are around zero cost this afternoon so we can expect a charge then I suspect. I had a brief charge from 06.30 to 07.00 this morning……

Correction…. Mine is now charging from 07.00 to 12.00 at full rate to 100%. Hopefully working like a well oiled machine which I can forget about!