Just Joined the Intelligent Octopus Tariff

[nowty]

Excellent, as I hoped the Tesla App stopped the charging at SOC of around 85% (around 3am) even though I set the Octopus APP to 100% from which it did its calculations for how many extra cheap slots earlier evening I needed.

[nowty]

Just read through the T&Cs on my Intelligent Octopus tariff which only seem to be available on the APP.

They state the tariff is aimed at customers with low carbon technology, EVs, heat pumps and home batteries, so that's definitely me then.

But there is a fair use policy clause (gulp ) of a max of 6 managed hours of EV charging per 24 hr period and they reserve the right to charge excess hours at peak rate. OK that's not so bad, 6 x 7kWh is about half my Tesla battery and for 90+% of the time that's OK with me, even if I returned home empty, its unlikely I would need a full battery the following day.

Problem is my Tesla charging is only a small fraction of my daily cheap rate import at this time of the year and I certainly don't want to kill the golden goose.

[Stinsy]

I get that you’re enjoying faffing with the tariff and your inverter/smartplugs every single day. But what if you could no longer do that (if you or a family member was ill for example)? Does it all fail back to default settings and the default cheap period?

[nowty]

I get that you’re enjoying faffing with the tariff and your inverter/smartplugs every single day. But what if you could no longer do that (if you or a family member was ill for example)? Does it all fail back to default settings and the default cheap period?

I've only been faffing with it because I like to see how it works, what the limitations are and if there are ways to use it to my advantage. Typically if I'm only using the car to do local driving, it only gets a relatively small charge once or twice a week.

Its not very clear from the T&Cs and again the FAQs seem more appealing than the T&Cs.

For example if I disconnected the connection between the Octopus APP and the car (there is a function on the APP to do this), and did not re-instate it for 30 days then I could be moved over to another tariff.

But what I don't know is, if I don't use the charging APP for 30 days, do I still get kicked off the tariff. In Summer with my solar + home battery, I could go months without using it. Or I could still use the APP in summer and it would show the kWh's charged on the APP, but it results in no import because of my solar + home battery.

They also pass on info to the network operators so they can understand better how to balance the grid, so they may get some income for providing this info.

[nowty]

Another 1.5 hrs of extra cheap slots tonight between 9:30pm to 11pm and its very cold this evening so I feel some extra storage heater boosting plus an extra degree on the heatpump thermostat will be temporarily required.




EDIT - Taking advantage of the extra 1.5hrs.

[Stinsy]

They do like a bot of on-off-on-off with the 30min cheap slots!

[Joeboy]

Guys, I am requesting to go onto Octopus Go faster once the meter is replaced on the 8th Dec. Is this tariff u fellas are on better than that?

[nowty]

They do like a bot of on-off-on-off with the 30min cheap slots!

Yes but at least this time the extra 3 slots were back to back with only the one 11:00pm to 11:30pm slot to dodge.

Interestingly when they show half hour slots which are on separate lines but are still back to back, the charging does stop and start for about a minute or two between slots. I assume that is to prevent any peak time hit for the customer if they were not back to back. But as I have a 3.5 min error on the meter clock that does not help me. I keep thinking of emailing Octopus to correct that as it would make my life easier, but I fear any remote reset of the meter might take it offline for whatever reason. I am not risking that at the start of the winter so I'm going to wait until next summer to get that changed when I wont need to import anything.

[nowty]

I get that you’re enjoying faffing with the tariff and your inverter/smartplugs every single day. But what if you could no longer do that (if you or a family member was ill for example)? Does it all fail back to default settings and the default cheap period?

And Stinsy, sorry I did not answer your earlier question correctly, I obviously did not read it properly.

I do keep answering this similar question on the thread but it is difficult to get your head around it when I publish the charging regime which does not match up with the default cheap rate period.

So for example, my battery inverter and all my WiFi smart plugs are programmed to run in the default cheap rate period which is 11:30pm to 5:30am, i.e. charge home batteries from grid, charge storage heaters, run heatpump on hot water tank, etc.

Whatever happens, plug the EV in, don't plug the EV in, and even if Octopus doesn't want to charge my EV during the default cheap rate period. It does not matter, the whole house ALWAYS gets the cheap rate during the default 11:30pm to 5:30am (6hrs). So yes everything in my house already is programmed to the default settings.

But if Octopus wants to charge out of the cheap rate period, those are EXTRA cheap rate slots and apply to the whole house. So I do a one off change to the battery inverter which I reverse out the next day. WiFi sockets can be enabled with a countdown timer so its a one off change and I don't need to reverse it the next day.

But I'm only taking advantage of the extra cheap slots if its cold and I need to add extra heat so my relatively small heat pump can cope and also add additional charge into the batteries so the heatpump can run on the batteries all the following day if the solar forecast is especially poor.

So far I am only using an average of 3kWh of peak rate per month and even that is just down to the response time of my battery inverter.

[nowty]

Guys, I am requesting to go onto Octopus Go faster once the meter is replaced on the 8th Dec. Is this tariff u fellas are on better than that?

I think so but I seem to be the ONLY fella on it here !, but for now you need your Tesla first !

Go faster gives you either,
4.5p / kWh for 3 fixed hours
5p / kWh for 4 fixed hours
5.5p / kWh for 5 fixed hours

But this tariff gives you 6 fixed hours 11:30pm to 05:30am for 5p / kWh and sometimes extra 5p half hour slots depending on weather and / or how much charge your Tesla requires. The only issue is if you agree to the extra cheap slots and you have a battery inverter, then you have to change the settings to avoid your battery inverter charging your car via your battery bank.

The important thing is if you want to use it just like Go Faster you can by simply plugging your car in at 11:30pm except you get an extra hour for 10% less cost.