Intelligent Octopus or Octopus Go

[ChangoMutney]

Just swapped over. It went very smoothly. I now just have to sort out the PV export which is slightly complicated by the fact we have 2 solar arrays. One was purchased 10 years ago (3.3kw) and has a FIT scheme and the other (4.4kw) was added 14 months ago with no FIT. The FIT is now with Ocotopus as they recently bought out Shell energy so hopefully this should make things a bit more straight forward.

Thanks to everyone who replied and provided very helpful advice.

[HampshireEV]

Our experience has been eloquently put by all these recent responses ... some subtle nuances in how we use our system, but essentially agree with everything said in this thread.

We have 6.5kwp of solar, 6kwh battery, Zappi & Eddi. Since switching to Octopus 12 months ago, we've been on Go (initially), Flux (summer months for the increased export values), and Intelligent since October. IO serves us very well for all the reasons others have highlighted, therefore planning to remain on IO even into the summer, due to being able to manage a lot of our house load at cheaper rates, and exporting surplus solar at 15p.

Octopus took a couple of attempts to initiate the test charge, but subsequently no problems at all with the standard timed cheap hours 23.30-05.30, or the smart tariffs generated when we plug the car in.

[ChangoMutney]

Last question on this. If I forget to plug in for an overnight charge and I want to put in only solar, is that an option. I know I can 'boost' from the Octopus app but that will just deliver 7.2Kw whether we are generating or not. Has anyone with my setup used Boost in combination with Eco+ on the Zippi to limit the output to solar excess? When I tried it, it wouldn't work but maybe I didn't try it for long enough because Octopus can take a few minutes to work out what it's doing after you connect. It seems that Octopus can only work and take control of the charge if the Zappi is set to Fast (7.2kw). It's not a biggy, I just want to know what my options are.

[RichR]

There are a couple of options, but the easiest one is to disable the device temporarily in the Octopus app. I seem to think there is a bit on the Octopus website about this, as it was something I was wondering about too. In the app, tap on the picture of a person in the top left, then on Devices, Intelligent Octopus Go, Disconnect Device and finally 'Suspend Smart Charging'. Then the Zappi will sit on ECO+ and do the normal charging when there's more than 1.4kW of export happening etc. When you want to switch back to using off-peak rates scheduled by Octopus, you can enable the charger again in the app in the same menu location.

At the moment, I'm just letting the excess solar export (given Octopus are paying so much at the moment), and using the scheduled intelligent off-peak charges when the car needs topping up. But I might do something different in the summer, haven't decided yet.

[Aragorn]

Sell the excess solar for 15p, and charge overnight at 7.5...

[MikeJL]

Sell the excess solar for 15p, and charge overnight at 7.5...