[Alnair]

I've got to make the switch from Go Faster to Intelligent [Ohme Charger] on the 15th Jan which is a Sunday. Unsure if best to do an online switch on the Friday before or the Monday after?

The switch is triggered via the Octopus app (which will then require you to sign into your Ohme account), so it shouldn't matter - but of course you could incur troubles with the process, so perhaps safer to wait for Monday in case you need to get in touch with either company's customer service?

 

[Alnair]

I assume there's some constraint to prevent abuse of the system? Eg can I tell it at 4pm that I want 28kWh by 8pm and get peak-time energy at cheap rate ?

That is indeed a loophole that has been discovered and abused by some people - but, judging by some comments on the Octopus forum, the fightback is starting...

 

[Alnair]

Do you only get extra off-peak charge slots if Octopus can see your SOC?

Had hoped someone might have replied.

My Ohme can’t read my EV’s SoC and I can (and do) get cheap slots outside of the default Intelligent off-peak hours.

Also, they’ve already sent out invitations to a trial for the solar integration to eligible users, so it’s definitely happening 😎

 

[Alnair]

So there has to be some sort of mechanism where Ohme report back to Octopus when charging happened. But I assume Octopus would want some influence on which extra hours are used.

I'd be surprised if it made much difference whether the Ohme could see the SOC or not. Even when it can't, it is responsible for getting N kWh into the car by a certain deadline.

When using IO via Ohme charger, I assume you only get extra cheap slots when Ohme reports to Octopus that it did some additional charging.

That's my understanding as well. It doesn't matter if Ohme read the SoC or not because, if not, the user is responsible for asking a specific amount of kWh by setting the '+XX% added range' in the charge schedule.

when plugging the car after 5PM in it always starts charging immediately so... turned the car's charge timer back on until 10mins before it is supposed to start charging at 11:30.

If you're preventing the car from charging when Octopus (via Ohme) tells it to, you're missing out on any cheap slots outside of the default off-peak hours...

Seems to work well with no usage before 11:30. Not seen any 10p random slots yet.

...which would explain this...

Looking at a recent bill for Octopus Intelligent I can see the random 10p slots. The car was not plugged in.

...but not this 🤔 it looks like a bug in the system, but of course one that works in your favour. I've never had such luck

It certainly makes it easier to understand if Octopus simply make cheap slots available unconditionally on whether the car is plugged in and charging

That's the first time I hear of that happening to anyone, and I'm pretty sure Octopus would swiftly act to change that behaviour if it was widespread!

 

[Alnair]

Apperently the Ohme is correctly setup but charges immediately when plugged in which is not what I want being 40p peak!

But the point is that it WON'T be 40p peak! As long as you aren't explicitly requesting to charge immediately, you'll always be billed at the cheap rate for any half-hour slot where the car is charging.

 

[Alnair]

Yes, I got that. I thought you meant that when you first plugged in the car, it started charging, and that was cheap rate because it was part of the IO sequence.

If it keeps charging, and you can see the graph on the dashboard going up, then it is going to be cheap rate for the full half-hour slot at least.

 

[Alnair]

Now I have the confidence to plug in I need to setup some smart gear to trigger other devices when random cheap slots come along...

Are you planning to automate that with a CT clamp around the Ohme feed-in cable?

 

[Alnair]

You can do that with Agile and ITTT, eg set your smartplugs to come on anytime the price drops below a threshold you set, but for some reason you can't do that with IO (so I hear).

That would be because, unlike Agile, there is no public API for it - as far as I know/understand, at least.

 

[Alnair]

In the Ohme app you can set a price cap for charging to be the 10p night right. The app then automatically changes the start time to be 11:30pm. The car will then only charge during the 10p period.

Welcome to the forum and to Intelligent Octopus

I just wanted to point that you're actually NOT supposed to use the price cap setting with this tariff: if you turn it off, Octopus/Ohme will occasionally schedule to charge outside of the default cheap periods, but you will still be billed at 10p/kWh (and not just for the EV charging - all your house consumption will also benefit from the reduced rate!)

Keeping the price cap enabled could actually count as "misusing" the tariff, possibly even leading to the terms & conditions being breached...

why so many pointless settings that may conflict with each other?

I agree with that, actually. I keep suggesting them to just disable those options for IO, since one is not supposed to use them anyway!

 

[Alnair]

In that scenario, Ohme said I'd be charged off peak whereas Octopus said the opposite, lol.

Probably another occurrence of being unlucky with the customer care lottery?

Point 5b of the terms & conditions clearly states:

If we schedule your electric vehicle to charge outside of the off-peak hours 23:30 to 05:30, we'll give you the night rate for your EV charging and any underlying household usage in any charging half hours.

So the key point is to make sure that it's them scheduling the charge - i.e. no price cap, no explicit request to switch to max charging, and no preconditioning (as that effectively means max charging) outside of the cheap hours.

I keep double-checking my bills and it's still all off-peak when the car charges 🤷‍♂️

 

[Alnair]

Will certainly be interesting to see the first proper bill. Cheers!

I've also heard of customers getting a £20 goodwill gesture as compensation for some billing mistakes at the very beginning of the Ohme integration, so it might actually be beneficial to have a couple of slots at the peak rate 🤑

 

[Alnair]

I just had a reminder that the Ohme app can be updated to version 1.27.0 on the Play Store. This is odd, since the current installed version and the current available version is 1.26.2.

I just checked, version 1.27.0 was released to the App Store the day after your post - but the beta had been out for a while. Perhaps someone just got a bit over-enthusiastic with their announcements 😅