I'm having the battery issue. I've just given up and set the car to charge using the 6 hour slot and disabled the battery during these hours.

 

I have a zappie 2, with sofar inverter + 12Kwh battery.
When using eco+ for the excess solar I turn off the IO.
If it is left on IO will stop the charge thinking you are using unwanted expensive electric.
As for the batteries, I have it set up that it charges up to 5.30 to a set %age. Ie 100% in winter and 35% in summer.
Seems to work for me.

 

I have a zappie 2, with sofar inverter + 12Kwh battery.
When using eco+ for the excess solar I turn off the IO.
If it is left on IO will stop the charge thinking you are using unwanted expensive electric.
As for the batteries, I have it set up that it charges up to 5.30 to a set %age. Ie 100% in winter and 35% in summer.
Seems to work for me.

Hi,
Is turning off IO something simple via the Octopus App?

 

What kind of solar inverter / battery storage do you have?

 

Solis 5kW hybrid Inverter
Puredrive’s PureStorage II DC 10kWh batteries
4.7kWh Perlight PLM-295MB-54

 

I’m sure we had an identical thread last week?

 

Can you play around with the battery system's CT clamps to get the battery system to ignore any car charging?
This would stop battery getting discharged when IO slots are allocated.

Either you have the car controlled via Octopus, or have the charge point control charging based on solar. So, as said, disable IO smart charging of your car if you want to charge it on solar. Or disable solar charging if you want to charge via IO.

 

I've just taken on IO and plan to ask for the car to be ready by 0230 each day. 0230-0530 will then be used to top up domestic battery and ashp.
It kind of reflects how I had it configured until last night and should mean the domestic battery doesn't charge the car battery, leaving it empty for the a.m..
Car battery's only 30kwh and rarely gets excessively run down. A couple of hours is usually enough to keep me comfortable 😉👍

 

They put a stop to that years ago. The earliest you can request your car to be ready is 0400.

 

Just a thought, on the Niro EV and may be other models you can limit the charge rate in the settings. If this was set to a low value it would keep the charge going longer and because the current would be lower may be you could charge the home battery at the same time?

 

Thanks - finally worked out a solution appropriate to my set-up.
Domestic battery charges 2330-0530. During this time it doesn't discharge. Intelligent Octopus Smart Charging setting switched off, so it won't schedule charging during peak rate hours ( @ cheap rate or otherwise ) and OCPP switched off on Wallbox so Octopus not controlling charge times or anything else. Use Wallbox schedule to schedule EV charging between 2330-0530 x 7 days/wk. Plug car in if charge required.
This has the advantage of being able to get IO tariff without cheap rate leccy being drained from domestic battery to charge car, leaving domestic use during peak rate to be taken at peak rate from grid, rather than stored cheap rate from battery.
Job done. 😁👍
Octopus app mentioned it but didn't complain.

 

I read somewhere that if you don't let IO control the charge at least once a month, Octopus will revert you to Octopus Go. Don't know if this is true or not

 

As others have said, Octopus requires occasional use of their Smart Charging via Intelligent and the App to maintain the tariff.

Ts & Cs aside, this is going to become a bigger issue over time as a lot of the benefits of Octopus Intelligent Go (and Octopus Intelligent Flux) are driven by Octopus taking control. This is why they're now actively working with the ENO to understand how to flex the grid over the 24 hours.

If off-peak tariffs are going to stay with us, I don't believe it will be too many years before the likes of Octopus state you only get EV charging at a cheap rate if Intelligent is in control.
Given they have the alternative tariff of Octopus Go for generic EV charging, plus the continued increase in EV vehicles and hence grid demand, my personal opinion is that before the end of 2025 this will be enforced.

 

In that case I'll go for plan 'b'
Reactivate all the IO OCPP control and only plug the car in after 2330 - that should do it 😉👍
( my initial attempt was set car schedule to only allow charging after 2330. IO says it won't override car settings. Tried, it worked)

 

In that case I'll go for plan 'b'
Reactivate all the IO OCPP control and only plug the car in after 2330 - that should do it 😉👍

You can still plug in earlier if you like, so long as you ensure SoC required and/or departure time would not encourage Intelligent to create extra slots outside the core 23:30 to 05:30 hours.

If I move to Intelligent Octopus Go, which will be once Zappi integration is publicly available, I will try and work it such that I don't have to micro-manage my solar batteries to accommodate any extra charge slots.

Mind you, they now seem to have Intelligent Octopus Cosy which supports Daikin ASHP. I had one of these installed by Octopus not that long ago, so will now need to investigate what that is, tariffs, etc. Sadly nothing on the website or FAQs about it yet, although it is in the App as an option already.

 

A solution may be to set your departure time at 05:30 and only plug in the car when the home battery is flat, assuming your battery doesn't last until 23:30 on a cloudy day.

 

A note to add to this being slightly off the original topic is that Octopus Energy no longer appear to be letting customers onto their Octopus Go tariff without an EV. My neighbour who hasn't got and doesn't intend on getting an EV was told by Octopus Energy this week he couldn't go onto the Go tariff without proof of purchase of an EV. He's an intelligent chap and wouldn't have misunderstood what he was told by them and has now been told twice on two separate occasions. First occasion he just thought the Customer Service agent didn't know or understand his request !!

 

Heard this elsewhere as well that Octopus is now being more vigilant about Octopus Go customers.
There were examples of people having Go without an EV but using it for say heating via storage heaters, rather than being on their Economy 7 tariff option under the standard Octopus Flexible tariff. Basically, because it was cheaper overall.

 

They've been wanting evidence of EV ownership for GO and IO for a long time, at least a year, just a bit patchy at enforcing it. When I got my Enyaq in Nov 21, they were starting to get a lot hotter on it then, but it was required before.

Also, T&C's of IO just state you have to have a device enrolled in the app at all times, nothing about charging every X days any more. This is because they've added heat pumps and batteries to the devices that IO can control (in testing).

 

Certainly signs of more grid balancing activity via the EVSE integrations for IO, seeing a lot of charging slots at odd times of day.

Just moved onto the Zappi beta and that is working very well now, so much better than the Kia integration.

 

I am on octopus GO at the

 

Certainly signs of more grid balancing activity via the EVSE integrations for IO, seeing a lot of charging slots at odd times of day.

Ditto, also on the first wave of beta testers on IO x Zappi.

 

Sorry hit the button too early.
I have a lot of storage heaters and no gas. I have an EV( Niro EV) and a Zappi 2 wall box. I will have 16 KWhours of battery very soon with around 7 kw of solar max.( minimal in the winter)
I need the cheapest off peak rate over the winter period and am on Octopus GO , which is fine for now but I really need the six hours of IO once the storage heaters are switched on , so want to go to IO soon. I have applied but at the moment cannot switch due to the Kia and Zappi not being on their list.
I believe from previous posts that I could possibly be able to switch to IO soon if the Zappi is now being accepted.
As I do very few EV miles can I use the cheap overnight rate on IO as long as I connect my car once a month to let IO do its job? If the car battery is quite full and it is set on the car to max at 80% will IO accept me if it only adds say a small charge to reach the 80%?
Obviously I do not want the house battery to be charging the car.
Is there any limit to the amount of KWhours I can get between 0030 and 0530. I will need a lot in the depths of winter to charge up my house battery and feed the storage heaters.

 

I believe from previous posts that I could possibly be able to switch to IO soon if the Zappi is now being accepted.

Hopefully the Zappi will be open to everyone before the end of October, the beta is going very well in general.

As I do very few EV miles can I use the cheap overnight rate on IO as long as I connect my car once a month to let IO do its job? If the car battery is quite full and it is set on the car to max at 80% will IO accept me if it only adds say a small charge to reach the 80%?

There is no minimum charging requirement, but if you are currently using excess solar PV to charge the car you will want to change that once you are on IO as you will get 15p/kWh for export and only pay 7.5p/kWh for your imports at the low rate.

Obviously I do not want the house battery to be charging the car.

Simple answer there is don't leave the car plugged in when you don't want a charge (remember you'll want to export the excess solar PV anyway) and when you do plug-in for a charge you may need to adjust what your batteries are doing if you get a schedule with slots outside the normal low-rate period.

Is there any limit to the amount of KWhours I can get between 0030 and 0530. I will need a lot in the depths of winter to charge up my house battery and feed the storage heaters.

No limit.

 

Brilliant and thanks Mark for answering all my concerns.
Now I am on GO they have told me my solar export rate has gone down from 15 p to around 8 p . This won’t be a problem as the solar generation will be low over winter.
I hope to hear something before too long regarding switching over to IO.

 

I was on Octopus Flux. In the last week of September, I moved to Octopus Go with export now under Outgoing Lite at 8p/kWh. Only because Kia was removed, and Zappi is in private beta that I'm not in scope for.

As soon as Zappi is out of private beta, I will want to move to Intelligent Octopus Go for the extra hours and cheaper rate.

I'll charge my EV via Intelligent Octopus Go via the App the once or twice it needs each month (low mileage driver) and ensure I manage the target SoC so that I try and minimise any extra slots outside the 23:30 to 05:30 to limit having to micro-manage my solar battery settings to avoid drain.

I am going into this winter with a new ASHP so will have no idea how much my consumption will be. I just know I want as much cheap energy shoved into my 13kWh of solar batteries overnight so that I can get as far toward the next cheap overnight rate as possible. i.e. when using ASHP for heating, limit the amount of grid import at day rates.
Sadly, I do not believe 13kWh will cut it due to other household loads even with moving as much into off-peak as is sensible.
Not a big deal, as I view things on an annual basis and the savings and money made in Summer help pay for winter.

 

I'll charge my EV via Intelligent Octopus Go via the App the once or twice it needs each month (low mileage driver)

The only requirement as per the current T&C's is to maintain an active authorisation, rather than actually charging at any particular interval, so that does make things easier.

 

They are now finishing any remaining fixes which include the need for a new version of the App for both iOS and Android to fix an onboarding error, before the larger launch.

Agreed, they need the onboarding to be fixed before it goes public for sure.

Right now it is believed that the v3.86 app is fixed, but there still needs to be a back-end update to complete the fix.

Also I did a quick check via another account I have access to which confirmed that the Zappi integration is not generally available yet.

 

I keep applying online to go from GO to IO but it won’t let me do it.
I also emailed them but they said I had to keep checking when the Zappi is accepted, and they could not give me a potential acceptance date.

 

Several people on this forum are on the Beta with their Zappi. Can;t imagine it'll be long before general release (or at least open beta).

 

Intelligent Octopus Go integration with Zappi as Charger is still a closed beta but is likely to be more generally available later this month.
Indications are that whilst there are a few niggles and the odd person with a problem, it all largely works as expected.

If you've not done so already, go into the Octopus App, Intelligent Octopus, Charger, then as Zappi is not present click the 'Request an Integration' and add yourself to their list of people wanting the MyEnergi Zappi.
As the product gets announced, or MyEnergi/Octopus elects to open it wider, those on that list will be contacted first.

 

The "optimal" solution to this is to just set your battery to charge from the grid during the IO charging slots. Technically the terms & conditions say only energy put into the car will be charged at the off-peak rate, but in reality they clearly haven't figured this out yet, so you get all energy in that slot cheaply. This can be automated if your inverter can be hooked up to something like Home Assistant. Then you get the benefit of extra off-peak slots for both your house usage and battery charging, plus you can set your charge point to never charge outside those hours so you export any excess solar at a profit (15p/kWh currently).

I'll be doing this once they allow Zappis on the IO tariff. Of course I never got invited to the beta despite registering interest as soon as the IO tariff launched. :/

 

If you have a reasonable amount of battery storage, you are probably able to stay off grid for peak rates and the extended overnight cheap rate is long enough to charge most systems. Using the extra slots may not be worth the effort. The biggest issue is ensuring that the battery isn't supplying the charger during the additional slots.