Octopus charge pack

Just received an e-mail from Octopus. Any thoughts.

arthurma

That is one of the most useful and informative messages ever!!!

This forum really has gone massively down hill.

I learned loads from reading posts from others on here with far more knowledge than me. Now it seems to be a free-for-all for inane I'll considered jibberish.

Please people, think about what you're posting and how others will understand what you are on about and, more importantly, read the threads and see if it's already covered.

Rant over 😉

https://octopus.energy/help-and-faqs/articles/charge-pack/

Thank you W.I have little tech knowledge so did not know how to put the octopus e-mail on to the forum. I was hoping the heading would get some debate going. It is after all a new topic. Thanks again.

I have been on this for about a week and all is working fine my end. The only thing that I'm unsure is if I plug in my EV when the battery storage is exporting will it go to the car or grid (I plug in around 21:00 to hopefully avoid it going to the car)

It seems that they are expanding to cover Cosy as well.

After four months of war in the Middle East, with 20% of the world’s gas shipments stuck behind a blockade, it wasn’t surprising to see the energy price cap increase from July. But I’ve got some good news for you.

Your Cosy Octopus prices are staying where they are.

You won’t see any change to your smart unit rates on July 1st. Your standing charge is staying put too.

As a smart tariff customer, you regularly shift your energy to quiet times when the majority of the power in the wires is clean, avoiding expensive gas. Because of that smart shifting, we can buy and trade energy tactically to unlock cheaper power to avoid putting your prices up.

Get more bang for your battery with Charge Pack

Launching very soon for Cosy Octopus: those of you with battery storage can now get rewarded even more for supporting Britain’s energy system. Let us intelligently charge your battery and you can earn a minimum of £12 a month. After you add your battery in the Octopus app, you don't need to lift a finger.

AlphaESS, EcoFlow, Enphase, FoxESS, GivEnergy, HanchuESS, Huawei, Sigenergy and SolarEdge batteries are already eligible. Powerwall and many others coming soon — see the full list and find out more on our Charge Pack FAQs.

Ortwin I have been on this for about a week and all is working fine my end.

How much active use of the battery do they make? Do they charge up fully from the grid, then export it back later, or does battery sit idle much of the time ?

Ortwin

Interested to see how that’s going….

Ortwin The only thing that I'm unsure is if I plug in my EV when the battery storage is exporting will it go to the car or grid

I guess it depends who’s doing the exporting. If Octopus have scheduled it, I presume they wouldn’t start charging your car at the same time as they are using your batteries to support the grid(?).

If you have scheduled the export it says it’s supposed to revert “normal Operation” back to you outside the times they are either charging or discharging your batteries.

Go on… plug it in when they’ve commanded an export and let us know what happens !

arthurma Just received an e-mail from Octopus. Any thoughts.

Yep.

1) Will it cock up my evening export?
2) would it be worth it?

The key reason I did not go on Octopus Intelligent Flux instead of the standard Flux tariff is that if Octopus controls your battery on an intelligent tariff they lock you out of controlling it yourself.
No, no, and no.
The Intelligent Flux T&Cs are here: https://octopus.energy/intelligent-flux-faqs/

I am assuming that any 'Intelligent' tariff will do similar. It's not currently clear from the charge pack FAQ.

DD
The batteries sit around 96-100% most of the day. Typically they discharge from around 16:00 to 22:00 sometimes, usually full 3.6Kw rate but has varied at times. Typical battery export is around 12 to 14Kw (I have 2x 9.5Kw batteries on a Gen2 hybrid inverter). They are then fully charged in the off peak period 23:30 - 05:30 period.

Pete UK
I was scheduling exports between 17:15 and 21:15 in the evening before switching to this tariff, now OE do the schedules. It just seems to work the same as being on flux but with an EV. All I can say is it's working for me.

Ortwin The batteries sit around 96-100% most of the day.

Hmm - I need to keep space in battery to avoid clipping. I had heard that on IOF they don't handle clipping terribly well.

Is eco mode on or off during the day? I think I heard that IOF tends to leave it off most of the time.

Ortwin good to hear, that's the kind of pattern I'm hoping for. I've got an AIO so less storage than you but a 6kW inverter. It's not an easy job trying to schedule the right amount to export. Predbat has never played nice with Intelligent Go slots for me so I keep tweaking HA automations.
I have solar but it's one of the early FIT installs so only 1.8kW peak.
If this can take all the daily management away from me I think that's a huge win.
I completed the form yesterday, so fingers crossed!

Well my system dumped 6.6Kw from my batteries between 09:30 and 12:30 this morning. It is now exporting solar and charging up the batteries at 250W, which means I'm loosing export. I will see how it goes and then contact OE CS to ask for an explanation.

Ortwin IIRC 250W is the sort of power I see if setting charging power to 0 (to inhibit charging).

Anyone got live experience of this?
I assume they'll discharge during peak hours (17.00 - 19.00)? What happens if I want to boost the immersion heater during these hours? Is the discharge knocked back so that the domestic call overrides the Octopus call for power?

At the moment I fill up my battery during the cheap period then export most of my solar during the day at 12p, generating a margin. I also use Axle Energy to participate in irregular exports at £1 Kw - limited by the output capacity of my battery. I think Charge Pack cannot coexist with Axle? The FAQ suggest that whilst I would have my battery charged at the cheap rate my exports would generate the difference between my day rate and export rate - I don't understand what this means in practice. The guaranteed £12 month seems good on the surface as long as I don't lose on the current export credit. Could someone participating in this scheme help my understanding? Thanks

Despite what others say, I think the T&Cs don't allow both simultaneously.
I use it very similarly to you. I've signed up so will post update. 17.15 and the battery is full with the panels exporting 3+ kW. No sign of any Octopus call for power.
The Timed charge, Timed Export and Eco settings have been disabled allowing Octopus to control it. Interesting to see what happens tonight.

SunnysideAl It's not an easy job trying to schedule the right amount to export

After a lot of thought and experimentation I created a HA automation to do exactly what I think you want to achieve here; regarding setting a variable export start time manually every day: ie I wanted an HA automation to automatically export all the battery content that’s left at the end of the day down to 4% by exactly 23:30 (or as close to 4% as possible), just before overnight charging happens. (Unfortunately extra Octopus slots will mess up any manual or automatic export can’t get around that - I just plug in as close to 23:30 as possible to reduce this annoyance, hence reducing wasted export energy).

Feel free to copy it. I can’t vouch for the yaml spacing; and you’ll likely have to get your chosen chatbot of choice to check the YAML format. Also there is no implied warranty. Best bet would be to run it through chat gpt with your own inverter numbers and get it to spit the corrected YAML back at you.

GivEnergy Adaptive Export Start Control (Complete Setup Guide)

Here is a guide that I created that explains how to build a fully dynamic export start time system in Home Assistant for a GivEnergy inverter using GivTCP.

The goal is simple:
• Pick a target battery end SOC (e.g. 4%).
• Pick an export finish time (e.g. 23:30).
• Home Assistant continuously calculates the latest safe start time.
• The inverter discharge schedule is automatically updated.
• Once export begins, the start time is locked so it cannot move.

This allows you to maximise self-consumption during the day while still ensuring the battery is empty (or at your chosen reserve) by the end of the export window and not before (ie so you’ll never pull any peak price electricity from the grid before your overnight battery charge starts at 23:30)

⸻

How it works:

Every 5 minutes the Home Assistant automation does this: (I’ve set it to only write to the inverters after 18:30 up until the export starts (so as to reduce unnecessary inverter writes)

Step 1 - Reads battery SOC.
Example:
Battery SOC = 78%

Step 2 - Calculates usable SOC.
78 - 4 = 74%

Step 3 - Calculates export duration.
Assuming the battery loses 21% SOC per hour when exporting (you’ll need to work out the exact % value yourself for your system. Mine happens to be 20₂₁% for a G3 Hybrid 5.0)
74 ÷ 21 = 3.52 hours

Step 4 - Counts backwards from the finish time.
23:30 - 3.52h = 19:59

Step 5 - Writes into the inverters “discharge start time slot 1” :
19:59

Step 6 - When the current time reaches the calculated start time:
Current time >= Start time
the system locks.

No further writes are sent to the inverter.
⸻

What you need to create:

Helper 1 - Export Lock

Settings → Devices & Services → Helpers

Create:
input_boolean:
export_has_started_today:
name: Export Has Started Today
icon: mdi:lock-clock

Purpose:
• Prevents start time changing after export begins.

Helper 2 - Calculated Start Time

input_datetime:
evening_export_start:
name: Evening Export Start
has_date: false
has_time: true

Purpose:
• Stores the dynamically calculated start time.

Helper 3 - Last Write Time

input_text:
last_written_export_time:
name: Last Written Export Time
max: 10

Purpose:
• Shows when Home Assistant last updated the inverter.

Template Sensors

Add to configuration.yaml

template:

• sensor:

  • name: Time To Export Start
    unique_id: time_to_export_start
    state: >
    {% set start = today_at(states('input_datetime.evening_export_start')) %}

    {% set diff =
    ((as_timestamp(start) - as_timestamp(now())) / 60)
    | int(0) %}
    {% if diff <= 0 %}
    Exporting
    {% else %}
    {% set h = diff // 60 %}
    {% set m = diff % 60 %}
    {{ h }}h {{ m }}m
    {% endif %}

    • name: Export Status
      unique_id: export_status
      state: >
      {% if is_state('input_boolean.export_has_started_today','on') %}
      Locked
      {% else %}
      Calculating
      {% endif %}

(Use the checker to ensure the config yaml doesn’t break HA startup first and then) Restart Home Assistant.

Daily Reset Automation

The export write lock must be cleared each day. (I do this at 00:05 - but anytime
In the morning should work just fine)

Create:

alias: Reset Export Start Lock
trigger:

• platform: time
  at: "00:05:00"
  action:
• service: input_boolean.turn_off
  target:
  entity_id: input_boolean.export_has_started_today
  mode: single

⸻

Main Automation

Replace: <INSERT YOUR INVERTER ID HERE>
with your own GivTCP entity names.
For a single inverter:

alias: GivEnergy Adaptive Export Start Control
trigger:

• platform: time_pattern
  minutes: "/5"
  condition: []
  action:

• choose:

  • conditions:
    • condition: template
      value_template: >
      {{ export_started
      and not is_state('input_boolean.export_has_started_today','on') }}
      sequence:
      • service: input_boolean.turn_on
        target:
        entity_id: input_boolean.export_has_started_today

• service: input_datetime.set_datetime
  target:
  entity_id: input_datetime.evening_export_start
  data:
  time: "{{ calculated_time }}"

• choose:

  • conditions:

    • condition: template
      value_template: >
      {{ allow_write_time
      and not is_state(
      'input_boolean.export_has_started_today','on') }}
      sequence:

      • service: select.select_option
        target:
        entity_id:
        select.<INSERT YOUR INVERTER ID HERE>_discharge_start_time_slot_1
        data:
        option: "{{ calculated_time }}"

      • service: input_text.set_value
        target:
        entity_id:
        input_text.last_written_export_time
        data:
        value: >
        {{ now().strftime('%H:%M') }}
        mode: queued
        max: 2
        variables:
        current_soc: >
        {{ states('sensor.battery_soc') | float(0) }}
        target_soc: 4
        discharge_rate: 21
        hours_needed: >
        {% set rate = discharge_rate | float(0) %}
        {% set soc = current_soc | float(0) %}
        {% set diff = soc - target_soc %}
        {% set result =
        (diff / rate) if rate > 0 else 0 %}
        {{ [result,0] | max }}
        start_timestamp: >
        {{
        as_timestamp(today_at("23:30:00"))

    • (hours_needed * 3600)
      }}
      calculated_time: >
      {{ start_timestamp | timestamp_custom('%H:%M:00') }}
      now_ts: >
      {{ as_timestamp(now()) }}
      start_ts: >
      {{ start_timestamp | float(0) }}
      allow_write_time: >
      {{ now().hour > 18
      or (now().hour == 18 and now().minute >= 30) }}
      export_started: >
      {{ now_ts >= start_ts }}

Dual-Inverter Version
For two GivEnergy inverters, add a second write action:

• service: select.select_option
  target:
  entity_id:
  select.<INSERT YOUR FIRST INVERTER ID HERE>_discharge_start_time_slot_1
  data:
  option: "{{ calculated_time }}"

• service: select.select_option
  target:
  entity_id:
  select.<INSERT YOUR SECOND INVERTER ID HERE>_discharge_start_time_slot_1
  data:
  option: "{{ calculated_time }}"

Everything else remains unchanged.

⸻

Dashboard Card
The dashboard provides:

Item Purpose
Time till export Countdown
Export start time Calculated start
Start time locked Indicates export has begun
Battery time remaining Estimated runtime
Status Calculating or Locked
Last written Last inverter update

Your existing card YAML already works and can be copied directly once the helper and sensor names match those shown above.

⸻

Values you may want to customise(?)

1)Export Finish Time
Currently: 23:30

Change here:
start_timestamp: >
{{
as_timestamp(today_at("23:30:00"))
- (hours_needed * 3600)
}}

2)Target SOC
Currently: 4%

3)Discharge Rate
Currently: 21% This represents: SOC lost per hour whilst exporting at the max rate during export. And should be measured from your own system.

System Typical Value
9.5 kWh battery: 18–25%
AIO: 15–22%
Larger battery banks Lower value
The more accurately this value reflects reality, the more accurately the start time will be calculated. Some watching and experimenting may be required.

Many thanks. This is a fanatic piece of work and maximises the Export capacity - just what I was looking for before Charge Pack was launched. If it doesn't work out I'll try out your HA automation and refine via Grok.
FWIW 18.28 and I've been exporting for about an hour. 3.5 kW from battery and 2 kW from Solar. The timed immersion export starts at 19.30. Interesting to see what happens.

mikes01666

No problem.

I think if Octopus schedule an export, you’ll still have your house load satisfied first, as it would be if you set a “timed export yourself”.

On another note; if Octopus credit you for your “standard rate” minus your export rate. That would seem to imply that you’d get 30p-12p = 18p / kW.

But maybe they wouldn’t fully discharge your batteries every night? I guess they’ll be a bit conservative at first. Then maybe later a bit more aggressive? 🤷🏼‍♂️

Pete UK I'm assuming it's an extra 18p, so that the total matched your import rate. This way, you don't lose out if you have to import later, if the battery runs out.

Ok seems that exporting is done for the evening.
Approx 10 kW discharged between 17.30 and 19.30. A combination of Solar and battery. Battery ended up at 52%
A couple of grid imports and now (22.00) we seem to be running off battery.
I've emailed them and asked what credit I could expect for the 10 kW export.
Battery currently at 32%. If I was controlling it would be 10 - 15% so some losses there.
Waiting to see what happens overnight. Expecting 100% in the morning.

Pete UK cheers for that. It's the intelligent car charging slots that always muck things up. I want to just plug the car when I get home and let it do it's thing.

That's me just gone live on charge pack, let's see what it does!

78p import and 37p export on Agile tonight - supposedly wholesale + costs tariff (stop laughing at the back).

Quite the discrepancy if you look at what you're going to get paid on "Charge Pack" tonight. Plus they get balancing payments for each of you signed up.

£12/month guaranteed seems to be a bit of a low-ball offer.

Obviously rates are high now because the French nukes are having to shut down due to high cooling water temps but I still think £12/month for handing over control is too low.

YMMV.

Vestas
I'm actually seeing it as getting money and my battery management being taken care of alongside my EV charging (which I'm really happy with).
I hope after initial paranoia I can forget about it and let it do it's own thing without having to maintain HA automations.
Over the longer term I'm certain that Agile can't get close in cost to Intelligent Go for my situation. (Battery, small solar array, EV)
Over the short term, sure, there will be occasions where something else will be better.
I just signed up to a saving session tonight and I'm going to sit back and watch with interest.

SunnysideAl I want to just plug the car when I get home and let it do it's thing.

Yeah - I hear ya. My sentiments exactly.

Only other option would be to set the car target SOC to what it’s currently at, plug it in and then after you’ve finished exporting set a new target SOC from the comfort of your arm chair as close to 23:30 as you can. Only drawback is that it means likely forgetting half the time 😂

Good luck with “charge pack”. It’ll be interesting to see how it all works out. Keep us updated.

This was my battery activity yesterday
And today

Mine charged to 100% overnight without problem. Discharged between 18.00 and 20.00 today. Charge floor is about 25 % which is a bit of a waste.
No surprises so far. Interesting to see how much Octopus credits me with.

mikes01666 Interesting to see how much Octopus credits me with.

This is a problem in that it's not very transparent what you will earn.

Keep us updated as interested but not yet convinced...

M_J my take is that for day to day control it's only your usual export rate, I'm not expecting anything extra unless they notify me that it's a special session.

SunnysideAl I thought you got paid basically your import rate for energy discharged from battery. (Ie usual export rate plus compensation equal to the difference between import and export prices)

DD this part of the FAQ makes me think not. It suggests to me that there are sessions where you will get a bonus, but day to day control pays the normal export rate.
Would love to be wrong but that is what I thought.

They seem to be setting my battery to idle during the day, so it's not covering the house load and it's drawn from the grid during the peak period.
I replied to my sign up email and got a CS agent who clearly doesn't know anything about Charge Pack and has told me to check for firmware updates and asked me to check with Givenergy as to why my system is idling during the daytime.
That one has been replied to, fingers crossed, but it's not the best of starts.

SunnysideAl when I tried it, it seemed to set my battery to behave as if I was on Flux, so it did the same, happily imported from the grid during peak with a 100% battery at idle.

Their latest email says:

Just as a heads-up, it might take a few days for our battery schedule to settle in. Please give it around 4 days to set up fully before you reach out with any questions about the battery's activity.

But for now I've disconnected.

Ben_Collier I'll leave it to give them data/behaviour to investigate as long as my follow up email to them actually gets to someone who can help!

One person that was on the charge pack beta got kicked off when they asked octopus customer services a question.

They said you have to be on IOF import and export, you can't be on IOG (despite the whole point of the charge pack beta/trial)

So good luck to anyone contacting Octopus CS!
Might be a good idea to be explicit about the circumstances when contacting octopus, e.g. explicitly state you are on IOG and Charge Pack (and whatever export tariffs)

TX200 I was definitely explicit about Charge Pack, and made a point of replying to the email that asked me to reply if I had any questions or feedback, but it clearly went straight into the general CS queue.
I know it's brand new, but not the best service to have replies go to people that know nothing about the product.
I did notice in the app when I clicked on FAQ from the battery settings page it links to the Intelligent Flux help page, feels just a wee bit rushed out.
We know they can control the battery because of Intelligent Flux, I'll give them a chance (and feedback) to get the control algorithms correct because this does seem like a great option for me. Predbat doesn't handle Intelligent Go slots and it would be nice to get the cheapness but not the home assistant paranoia or paying for some other service to control it.

SunnysideAl Predbat doesn't handle Intelligent Go slots

Untrue - if set up correctly it works perfectly well.

c2ushe2 I'm open to suggestions, but I've spent a lot of time trying different configurations and when I have slots "pulled" last minute by Octopus predbat hasn't kept up and has kept charging the battery at peak rate.
I discussed with the predbat online crew when it launched, gave them the scenarios, and was basically told it wouldn't be possible.
If predbat misses the change by Octopus at the beginning of a half hour period it treats the 30 minutes as cheap, and 3 kWh at peak wipes out a huge amount of the benefit.
YMMV but there are definitely scenarios where it fails.

I got the sign up email today having filled in the interest form earlier in the week. The email was explicit about how the service would overrule any existing schedules that you have set up, which didn’t seem to be covered in the initial information. I’ve decided not to continue the sign up at this time, since I’m not sure who octopus are optimising for, them or me. So I’ll stick with my own automations throughout the summer and maybe sign up when I have far less excess solar and the £12 per month is more likely to outweigh my normal exports.

SunnysideAl yeah... I spent some time trying to get my own script to respond correctly to IOG slots. Problem is you don't want to have to poll constantly to see if anything has changed - ideally Octopus would implement the GraphQL feature where you could subscribe to have changes pushed, rather than having to poll.
In the end I gave up and instead watch for the Zappi actually charging.

dcsh so far, other than the daytime glitch I've experienced I'd say it's working more or less like I had it anyway.
Charge up cheap overnight, discharging at times that suit them, but the difference is it doesn't seem to empty as low as I was, but the £12 will likely make up for that.
I've not plugged the car on to see what it does during the Intelligent Go slots, it won't matter much in the summer but in the winter I'm looking for top up charges.

DD sounds similar to mine, I set a charge during the current 30 minutes if it truly is charging during a verified slot.

TX200 So good luck to anyone contacting Octopus CS!

We get about £400/year compo off them because of billing errors - for the last 3 years. £20 last month and we're going to the ombudsman (again) because their much vaunted Kraken crap is incapable of pulling our data from DCC. This time I want a ruling that every time they screw up they pay £50 (or whatever the standing charge is). I see no reason why I should pay a service charge for repeated gross incompetence.

The most egregious example was them adjusting the export rate to something like 14.98p to get things to balance. That's just fraud, no other word for it.

Octopus CS are crap.

Vestas Kraken crap is incapable of pulling our data from DCC.

How can you prove something like this?

Vestas export rate to something like 14.98p

I've seen that too

Robgy You use another data processor like Glow. If they can pull the data without omissions (and they can) then its down to Octopus.

Robgy Then you should report it as fraud. We did and I can tell you it put a rocket under their arses!

I've been on Charge Pack for about 5 days and have screenshot the Battery % graph to show some idea of how they are controlling the battery (AIO 1 and Gateway)





The first two days are me controlling things manually with 23.30 - 05,30 Charge Slots and Forced Export in the evening to run the battery down before 23.30
From the third day on it's Octopus controlling the battery. (all my charge slots and Eco mode On have been overwritten.) The battery charges to 95 - 100% overnight and then pauses at about 09.00 as there's plenty of Solar around. I like the idea of the battery pause as the battery in not bouncing around at high charge % for much of the day.
Between 17.00 and 20.00 (it varies) the battery if discharged down to about 40% and then runs the house until 23.30.
I also tried the Octopus app to charge car to 100% by 8.00 and it worked as expected.
I'm on IOG. 30p peak, 12p export and 6.9p off peak. Using HA but no PredBat.
Tried talking to Octopus as I think they could run the battery down a little more during the day (30% rather than 40%). They have no idea what Charge Pack is. I've asked CS on numerous occasions whether the Giv Premium app would be paid for and what credit could be expected for the 17.00 - 20.00 export (somewhere in the region of 10 kW when you add in the Solar). They have no idea and suggested an email. I've emailed and had no response as yet.
Overall very pleased with it on the basis of a few days if they can sort out the Export payments. It seems gentler on the battery. It seems to mirror what I had to do manually with no input from me. No idea how it will handle the winter with no Solar around

mikes01666 it certainly opened up premium Givenergy for me.
The pausing during the day is a problem for me, I've only got a small amount of solar and it's been dull the last couple of days so I keep drawing from the grid. Cost me about 60p peak rate yesterday. Until they respond to my email about it I'm setting Eco manually through HA and it runs for a while until they reset it.

SunnysideAl I've heard they pay it for Flux but not on Go. Are you on Go?

mikes01666 I'm on Intelligent Go and the premium in the app was active immediately after I enabled the battery in the Octopus app.

SunnysideAl Can't find
it in the app! Battery certainly enabled. Do you have a screenshot?

mikes01666 there was nothing in the Octopus app, but the Givenergy app had everything enabled.

Are you sure this isn't the free 30 day intro offer for Giv Premium?

mikes01666 well, it wasn't available before I signed up to Charge Pack, and I didn't agree to anything else, so I would be surprised if they did that without informing me.

Vestas Are you comparing Octopus data with data direct from a Hildebrand Glow IHD (with CAD), or is Hildebrand/Glow getting data from the DCC (in which case, as you say, if Glow can do it, why can't Octopus?).

T-M They get the data from DCC.

How does this work if we use Predbat? Will PB try and overwrite things or can they co-exist like it can with Axle?

Been using for nearly a week. First problem!
Weekend export. Saturday during export battery reached 35%. On Sunday it was 55%. During the weekdays it's about 20-25%.
Clearly this is not maximising the discharge capability of the battery. When I control it manually I set a discharge floor of 10%.
So obviously it's reducing the £ return.
A long call with Octopus CS this morning who have limited information and kept referring to it as sessions (it's not). I agreed with them to keep it going for a few more weeks to see if more information about how they calculate export amount and credit emerges.
Last month they paid me over £71 for export so if Charge Pack cant improve on this then I'll simply return to me controlling the system.

Guybrush-Threepwood AFAIK it's fully battery managment - you hand over full control of your battery to Octopus.

Just had an email form Givenergy cancelling my subscription as Octopus now pay this as part of the Charge Pack!!!

It was me who got kicked out of the battery pack by CS who don't know about the trial, even though my battery was still being controlled by OE. I just went back in the app and rejoined. The other night I plugged in my EV (22:50) and got my overnight slots only to find my battery exporting at the same time as my EV was charging. Another letter to CS.
This was yesterday's battery cycling

I used the Octopus app to schedule the EV charging (Smart Charge I think). Called for 100% by 8 am the following day. Worked without problem or conflicts.

Ortwin This was yesterday's battery cycling

It would be useful to also see solar or grid activity - that picture looks fine if there was enough solar during the day to power consumption, but quite different if it was a dull day and you were importing from grid all day.
Was it in eco mode most of the day?

Here is the power graph for the 29th

Anyone else on this? Two weekends and the battery hasn't gone below 50%. Seems very wasteful. Still no indication of what the credit will be.

I replied to their initial email showing intrest in charge pack, but have heard nothing since. I am on IOG. Anyway, hav signed up for axle now

I think I'm the only one in the UK on it! Phoned Customer Service and they know nothing beyond what's on the website.

I've raised the fact that they keep putting the battery into idle and having the house draw from the grid, took a while but apparently it's been passed to the relevant team.
I reckon the £12 they're going to pay will just about level up my losses. Hoping they can get the hang of it so I'll stick with it until they get back to me.

OE will hide behind this being a "beta product" the same as IOG

I've tried it.
It all seemed to "work", but it's a bit rubbish for me.
I'm on the old FIT payments, and haven't updated to SEG. So I haven't seen any payments / credit. This means it's costing me more.
It doesn't discharge the battery below 20%, so you can power your home in the evening, but my energy usage is a lot earlier than that. So I ended up importing more.
I've disconnected it now.

NSR2 interesting that you even got to sign up, the requirements in the FAQ say you need to be on their outgoing tariff.

NSR2 I'm on the old FIT payments, and haven't updated to SEG.

You are aware that you're not entitled to FIT payments once you have a smart meter, and all FIT payments can be reclaimed by the govt if you don't move off FIT?

Not a situation I'd want to be in.

Vestas And where does that little gem come from? I’m on the 2012 FiT tariff and up and till last Oct had the old style meter. Smart meter installed, still on the FiT tariff and paid 50% for deemed export. When my system batteries are full and PV is still producing and being exported, I don’t get paid for the export period.

Vestas not true in the least. FIT from 2011, I opted out of the export payment part so I get paid but still keep the generation payment. All you lose out on is the deemed 50% export

In actual Charge Pack news, I received an email reply from Octopus yesterday letting me know that Octopus are fine-tuning the algorithm, and sure enough the last 2 days my battery has behaved a lot more like I would want it to. Charged by 05:30, left in eco until evening export, and actually exporting down to 20% overnight to start the charge cycle again.
Also, got reward for my first session of £3.49, and had a second session last night.
The session last night coincided with the savings session, predbat signed up to that automatically, it will be interesting if that continues.

SunnysideAl

Ah awesome, may get back on it!

arthurma It seemed obvious to me what you meant.

This looks similar to Axle. And when they say "extra clean electricity on the grid..." does that always coincide with your current cheapest import time. Although they do say if they charge your battery outside of those times you will get compensated plus a bonus. And they say £12/m. Trying to steal Axle customers ?

But, no double dipping. So, no Axle and charge pack or GE premium smart schedular. And does this include those with their own local schedules set up in HA or similar ?

Maxwell Charge Pack takes full control, so no HA or anything else.

Has anyone on charge pack had a bill ? Does Octopus save/earn much over self management ?

DD not a bill, but keeping an eye on the Octopus app. It's charging the battery to 100% before 05:30, my solar tops it up and exports excess all day, then Octopus discharge down to approx 20% before the next charge cycle.
Other than the fact that I would probably take it a bit lower than the 20% it's behaving how I would like it to without any intervention from me. I am looking for that, I would like to just leave it and forget about it.
If I include the £12 from sessions I'll have a negative bill overall for July, which is pretty good given my Solar is only 1.7kW. (Early FIT install)
I was away for 2 weeks, so house load has been lower than normal.

Similar here but battery is only charged to about 90% overnight.
However at weekends it's barely used at all. There's very little discharge in the evenings.
Awaiting my first bill to see if it's worth continuing.
Octopus have said that if I'm out of pocket they will consider reimbursing the difference as they have many months of data.

@"mikes01666"#p95941not so good, this is last week showing percent SoC

Oatmeal2 Axle provide this to me currently and I was weighing up Octopus and no Givenergy app vs continuing - this sounds best of both worlds. I was also trying to export my battery balance every evening after 20.00 which Axle allows me to control but it appears that Octopus would control this too. Have I understood things correctly?

SunnysideAl That's a very uniform charge/ discharge cycle. No solar coming in?
My theory is that their predicting tomorrow's solar production and adjusting the battery discharge level to allow some solar top up in the mornings.

My 2 questions are:
How do Octopus know if I will be using a lot of energy next day (tumble driers,ovens, etc) that I would have run off the batteries that had been charged for free from solar?

and

What are the implications of charging /discharging fully 365 days a year. Is the life expectancy of the batteries brought into question. ie 10 years becomes 7?

Thanks

So far Octopus is correctly charging overnight at the cheap rate, discharging to cover home use when the PV isn't enough, and then discharging mainly during peak times (1600-1900) and occasionally late evenings for whatever reason.

Still no idea what they will pay me but so far I see no downsides, only upsides. I can't say if this is better than Predbat at managing charge/discharge, but the apparently buffed export rate on Charge Pack would mean that, even if it was 80-90% as efficient, it's still better financially to be on Charge Pack. It hasn't cost me anything and I'm due to get a better export rate for the battery export, so it's all gravy.

I'm also quite content with letting a 3rd party manage the battery at this point. I spent a good few years manually monitoring and/or using HA automations, but now I'm kind of bored of that? This is a New Thing that I can get excited about again 🙂

scrchngwsl the apparently buffed export rate

That seems to be one of the open questions: is it all battery export or only during "sessions" ?

Us early adopters will be getting our first bill in the next few days to be able to assess whether it's worthwhile.
I agree that it's fit and forget and relieves you of constant monitoring and switching export on or off.

DD their FAQ absolutely reads that it's your normal rates except during an actual announced session.

mikes01666 I have solar, albeit an old small array (1.7kW inverter)
By mid/late morning the battery is full and the export starts.

SunnysideAl Normal export rates apply.
I can't see the point of announcing sessions as they control the battery anyway.
£12 minimum per month.
Looking forward to my first bill!

I just had the following email from Axle,

To our members

We're introducing short notice events, a new type of event we'll occasionally call when the grid needs support at shorter notice than usual. You'll typically get at least 2 hours' warning before one starts.

They work just like your regular events: your battery is dispatched to support the grid, and you still earn £1/kWh for the energy you provide. The only difference is a bit less advance notice.

Participation is completely optional, and you’re opted out by default.

To take part, simply go to your account settings, switch on short-notice events and you'll be opted-in to all future short-notice events.

I started with Axle 10th June and have had 9 events so far, 4 in June and 5 so far this month. In fact this week 3 days on the trot. Earnings so far in total £79.97 including £27.65 this week as a comparison to charge pack.

duplada I need to decide at some point if moving from my guaranteed rates on Intelligent Go would be worth it long term to not be in conflict with Axle. Nobody else can match the tariff for me right now and I just have a feeling the £1 per kWh can't be sustainable. That and the once I tried Axle the export didn't work, and they didn't pay for what I did export. If it wasn't for the £25 sign up I'd be out of pocket with them.

SunnysideAl

I have a Gateway With Dual AIO system and Axle are unable to send the correct commands to my system, and actually that is how I like it. Axle allow me to set my own schedules and pay on my Smart Meter readings. I use Wonder Watt for all my scheduling which is super reliable. I use one of their standard schedules which goes dormant after execution. All I have to do when Axle send me an email with the times of the next session is adjust the start and end times of the schedule and toggle it activate again, takes all of thirty seconds.

I am not saying this is the right thing for you I was just giving a comparison of what is possible. You are probably correct about the sustainability of the project long term, but if it happens it is just a case of adapting to the best available options at the time. At the moment if Axle continues giving me the same level of slots each month it will pay for my entire Gas bill for the year, which is quite something.

duplada
It may not be sustainable, on that I think all will agree but.....and it's a big 'but', it has to be attractive enough to make people want to take part. If it's not I'm not going to cycle my battery for their benefit!

Coys68 Yes, you are correct I cycle my battery every day to 8% come what may in any case as it makes financial sense, I have spare capacity all the time to export for 1 hour a day irrespective, so getting paid £1 per kwh for something I am already doing is a huge bonus to me.

duplada

absolutely, I've started brown export a little lately because the new GE app makes it really easy to do. My point is that for grid balancing events, it will have to be attractive enough or it simply won't get the support it needs to work.

Coys68 My point is that for grid balancing events, it will have to be attractive enough or it simply won't get the support it needs to work.

Agreed 100%

Coys68 I agree, but attractive enough will mean different things to different people. I'd say right now most of us battery owners are a bit ahead of the curve, made a big investment looking for payback and know what we're looking at.
I like the idea of Charge Pack because I'm fed up either tweaking automations or manually pushing buttons, I'm prepared to not squeeze absolutely every penny from it if it's hands off.
Now put that in the context of Octopus and their recent announcement that they are going to sell batteries. They can demonstrate general battery savings with no user input and they build a massive VPP.
I consider this the beta for that phase.

Apparently Axle has over 300,000 devices in the UK with 2GWH of Power (2 Power Stations) it gets paid by NESO between £1.20-£2.00 per kWh on a standard forecasted event. However judging by the email I posted above Axle is attempting to expand more into the DFS short term notice arena, where the payments are much more lucrative and are £3 per kWh provided.

philipdawsonladds I have no control over what Octopus do, they seem to discharge my battery nearly every evening to around 20% then charge overnight but rarely to 100%, solar tops it up once Mr Sun rears his shiny head!! paid so far £5.57 in credits plus the extra for outgoing.

Doesn't seem like a lot, for how many kWh and over what period?

duplada However judging by the email I posted above Axle is attempting to expand more into the DFS short term notice arena, where the payments are much more lucrative and are £3 per kWh provided.

I'm sure my email from Axle said the same £1 payable for the shirt notice events. Is that correct?
If they receive more than double I may switch off the support for those until they pay appropriately....

Coys68 I may switch off the support for those until they pay appropriately..

When i checked my Axle dasboard the default setting is set to off for the short notice events. Though as you say they could probably afford a little more for the inconvenience than the £1 they are offering. Since I have to set my schedules manually. I emailed them to say I would consider it if they implemented WhatsApp messaging as I only check email once a day and i don't have email on my phone, whereas with WhatsApp I do, and I can then react quickly.

Anyone had a bill yet to see how the payments have worked and determine if it is worthwhile?

I've had about £14 in credits on my bill attributable to Charge Pack. However my battery exports have dropped considerably as they won't discharge below 20% or charge above 90%. And very little battery discharge at weekends. I reckon it's about break-even but may be costing me a few pounds per month. Benefits are the paid Premium Giv app and removing the aggravation of constantly monitoring battery/pv levels.
They need to schedule more sessions (6 during July) or adjust export rates.
I'm not sure! I may leave it for another month just to see if it settles down.

I notice the latest version of the app has a smart schedule showing on the dashboard: use, buy, sell, pause in 30 min slots. Anyone know if this still disables ECO mode? I want to export remaining battery powered each evening down to 20% before charging overnight

Coys68 Is the export schedule interfering with daytime battery use? ECO mode?

I've had over £50 from OE charge pack credits last month.

Ortwin Interesting but not a great deal of use when there are no details of your system. Over how many sessions was this?

Ortwin is that in addition to normal exports?

Slight correction as octopus have now updated my charge pack list. For July I had 7 charge pack events which credited me £17.35 and yes in addition to my export credits

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