I know there are a number of 3rd party apps that provide lots of control over the inverter but I. just looking for something simple that will give me three charge slots if I move to Octopus Cosy tariff. I already pay for the Givenergy premium tier, so don't want to have more monthly charges if possible.
raybee Does the GE smart scheduler work ?
I have the same situation. Gen 1 inverter with only one timed charge slot per day (with direct control) and am on Octopus Cosy so want to take advantage of the three cheap slots per day.
I currently use the GE Smart Scheduler on Premium to achieve this. It kind of works but makes some pretty odd decisions which are not always very "smart". It often decides to only charge up to 50% for some reason - not taking full advantage of the cheap slots; sometimes it sails through them completely without charging at all even when the battery level is relatively low. There have even been a few occasions when the battery has drained flat as a result of these decisions (e.g. because I had the audacity to put the washing machine on). It seems to want to try and get away with charging as little as possible but that means that when your usage deviates even slightly compared to what it considers a "typical day", the battery quickly hits the buffers. What's more annoying is that the Smart Scheduler is a complete black box with no way of steering its (dubious) decisions. I have reported all this to Givenergy a few times with concrete examples but not had any response.
In short, the Smart Scheduler is the least bad option I've been able to find so far for this scenario. It mostly works, albeit imperfectly, but if anyone knows of another option that doesn't cost any more and doesn't require a lot of deep techy knowledge, I would also be very interested.
Its another subscription, but I use Wonder Watt for scheduling, It's not just for people with IOG or Agile, it has very configurable Standard schedules that you can adjust to suit any of Octopus Tariffs. It is very very reliable, and is well worth the subscription fee, as that cost is soon saved in the reliability, flexibility and fantastic support the system has. You need GE Premium to use it, because it uses the GE API, though you can get a free trial to test before you decide to subscribe. An Annual subscription is around £54 but there are other payment options too.
I forgot to say that Wonder Watt works perfectly with GEN 1 AC inverters that have only one time slot and require ECO to be off on Export etc. There are settings in WW for all those eventualities you can configure as many schedules as you want with just one actual slot on your inverter. WW will set the times, Turn ECO off for you on an Export schedule and set everything back when the schedule has ended. It just works I wouldn't use anything else for creating schedules.