Intelligent Octopus or Octopus Go

[ChangoMutney]

I could do with a bit of advice.

We have a Zappi, 7.7Kw of installed Solar and Octopus Go. We charge our Enyaq only about 20-25 times per year (4hrs at 7kw) from imported grid energy as the rest of the year it's on solar. This all works fine and I've found the Zappi to be rock solid and reliable for solar and the schedule on the Zappi is easy to program for making use of the 4hrs of Octopus Go.

The reason I've held off switching to Intelligent octopus is I don't want to mess up what already works really well. I'm in control of everything and it always works. I'm a bit worried that if I switch to Intelligent octopus I have to start relying on the Skoda software a bit more whereas at present the Zappi does everything.

I feel like I'm missing out a bit on slightly cheaper electricity 7.5p instead of 9p I'm currently paying, but also Intelligent Octopus is for 6hrs rather than 4 hrs.

The savings are minor but I'd like to get them as long as there are no downsides.

So my questions are.

1) are there downsides to using IO rather than OG?
2) how does the 6hrs timing work? Does Octopus give you 6 hrs when they can if the prices are right or do you always get 6hrs between 11:30-5:30 and the reduced rate?
3) are there any reliability issues using IO on the Enyaq? I often charge to 100% the night before a long journey and I would not like to lose the certainty that I can do this.
4) presumably you can benefit from IO for any energy needs like the dishwasher or washing machine and not just the car?
5) do you get 6hrs of cheap electricity even when the car isn't plugged in? Most of the time we would want the car charged overnight because we want to utilize the solar.

Any advice would be welcome.

[Lorttrol]

Hello ChangoMutney

So to answer your questions

1) are there downsides to using IO rather than OG?
- Not in my opinion.

2) how does the 6hrs timing work? Does Octopus give you 6 hrs when they can if the prices are right or do you always get 6hrs between 11:30-5:30 and the reduced rate?
- You get 6 hours between 11:30 and 5:30 every day regardless of the wholesale price

3) are there any reliability issues using IO on the Enyaq? I often charge to 100% the night before a long journey and I would not like to lose the certainty that I can do this.
- Very rarely do I get any issues in over 6 months I think only 4 times has it failed to charge. Usually unplugging the car and plugging back in sorts it out. The bit that really helps is that you get to set the car and the octopus app to the max charge you want. Octopus decide on a schedual and will charge during those periods. You can also set a time you want it ready by between 4am and 11am.

Now what you can do here is plug in at 6am and say it needs to be 100% charged by 11am. If it will take the next 5 hours to charge to reach your target of 100%, octopus will schedual the charge to run until 11am and your whole house will get the cheap rate. There are no gaurentees on this but I usualy charge from 20-80% 4 times a week on a quiet week and often get the cheap rate on the weekends up till 11am, so I tend to do a cooked breakfast on those days to make the most of the cheap rate (no gas here)

Each charging segment is done in 30 min increments. so you may charge at 9am till 9:30 and then charge again at 10am till 11am. During the time slots the car is being controlled by Octopus you'll benefit every bit of electric you use at 7.5p

4) presumably you can benefit from IO for any energy needs like the dishwasher or washing machine and not just the car?
- the entire house will benefit form the 7.5p rate during the overnight hours, if you have batteries charge them because on Intelligent octopus go you can still get a 15ppkw export rate on the solar, you cna buy power for 7.5p over night and then sell it back at 15p. Its a money maker if you get it right!

5) do you get 6hrs of cheap electricity even when the car isn't plugged in? Most of the time we would want the car charged overnight because we want to utilize the solar.
- Yes, you get the cheap rate every night. In my opinion you'd be better off charging the car and your batteries, using washing machines and dish washers over night on the cheap rate and then sell your solar back to the grid. With the Octopus Go import tariff you can only have their 8p export, with Intelligent Octopus Go you can have their 15p export tariff.

Hope this helps and if you have any questions give me a shout! I am just starting my solar journey with a 12kw system and 20kwh of storage.

[CrowSysE243]

1) I have not used OG but I am happy with IO. If I have several other loads running over night it is easier to sequence them to control peak load with the IO 6 hours than with the OG 4.
2) It is always off peak between 23:30 and 05:30. If it suits Octopus they will add extra off peak slots outside the standard hours. This often happens if I am adding a significant amount of charge and quite often if I am adding less but do not need it until later in the morning. It is not uncommon for IO to remap the charging during the night. The earliest start I have had is 21:30.23:00 is fairly common. The latest end I have had is 10:00. With the earl start or late end there are usually several gaps.
3) I have rarely had problems. If the Skoda servers are not working IO would not be able to control the car. Similarly it would not be possible to control the car if the battery protection limit has cut in. I have had the battery protection limit cut in, but mostly when I am charging above 80% but forgotten to increase the car limit from 80%. In this case the car charges to 80% and it appears that Octopus keeps trying to start a charge slot but fails and eventually I get a message that it has not been possible to control the car. The other time was after leaving the car longer than usual without using it in very cold weather. The limit had activated and would not clear when I drove the car and would not clear in response to the app. As I was aware of the problem I was able to charge using timed charging under control of the car.I can add about 50% charge in 6 hours this way. Although Ohme used to be the only charger that IO could control I think that Zappi has now been added. I know 1 person who has just bought an incompatible EV and Octopus arranged to fit a Zappi for him to use.
4)All usage during the off peak period, and any additional slots mapped by IO, is at the lower rate.
5)Yes. I do not want to use solar to charge the car. I prefer to export any surplus at 15p/kWh and charge the car on IO at 78.5p/kWh. My aim is to have depleted the battery before the off peak period and any early IO charging slots and end before any significant solar generation. Controlling the end point is easy by ensuring that the required by time is set appropriately.

Overall IO has been very successful and enabled a good saving on domestic use, in addition to the saving on car charging. It may be possible to save more using Agile Octopus, however it would take more dynamic planning and other members of the household are not keen. IO has been easy to use, uncluding for charging the incompatible car using the standard 6 hours. To keep it active it is only necessary to do smart charging about once per month.

[CrowSysE243]

There is an added advantage using IO if you also use Electroverse. The IO discount is 8% which is larger than with OG. With the standard Electroverse Ionity discount you end up with 13%.

[ChangoMutney]

Perfect, thanks for all your answers here. Some great information to digest.

[Ken3966]

You will always get enough at off peak rates if there is time to do so before the time you have set to need the car.
If you need it by 7:30 say set it at that.
But if you need it later you can usually go up to 10:30am, or even 11:00 on a Sunday sometimes.
I suspect if you need a big charge by say 4am it woul start before 23:30 to fit in enough time.

Our car was set to charge by 9:00 last Sunday but the charge hadn’t worked overnight, probably a Skoda server issue, when we got up at 8:30. I realised at 9:05.
By changing the charge required on Octopus app to 85%, and needed by to 10:30, (it would not accept 11:00), it got it to set a new schedule, even though car still at 80% limit.
It just about managed to get to 79% in time available, and we ran a washer and dryer at the same time to benefit from the off peak extra slots.

[RichR]

We changed from Octopus Go to Intelligent a month or so ago. The extra couple of hours of off-peak, plus getting off-peak rate whenever you plug the car in (often during the afternoon or mid-evening) does make a difference, as if you time it right, you can be cooking your evening meal using off-peak electricity. It certainly seems to work very reliably with the Zappi rather than trying to control the Enyaq.

We did have to do a bit of juggling to get our export tariff changed, as the one we were on before wasn't compatible with IO. However we're now getting about 17p for export, which is more than we were before.

The only awkward thing I've found is that if you do plug in during the day, it'll want to charge when it schedules it, which can mean it's using 3.6kW from our house batteries (we have a 3.6kW inverter), and 3.6kW from the grid rather than all from the grid. I know there are ways around that, but it's not really a big deal, as generally I'm charging in the evening and overnight, and the batteries are set to charge from the grid during the off-peak period. When it's sunny and I'd normally be using the Eco+ mode of the Zappi to dump excess power from the solar panels into the car when the house batteries are full, that's more awkward as having the car plugged in will cause IO to want to charge it. However, as we're getting paid more per kWh for export than off-peak/intelligent import costs, it's probably better to be exporting now anyway.

It's all highly dependent on your individual usage and generation (if you have) it, but I reckon you're in a similar situation to me, so will be worthwhile.

[MikeJL]

If you need to guarantee charging for a long trip you can always switch off IO in their app & revert to using the car or charger to schedule the charge.

Their terms say you must use IO at least once a month, but people have reported going much longer without consequence.

And agree, sell your solar @ £0.15 & charge the car at £0.075

[ChangoMutney]

Is the IO daytime rate also dropping from just under 30p to just over 26p per kwh on the 1st April, or is that only for OG

[Aragorn]

yeah IO rate is also dropping.

The solar export rate is a big win if you dont have batteries. Infact, it works out cheaper to just export all the solar and not bother charging the car with it, then charge the car overnight on the cheap rate.

The whole house drops to 7.5p for the 6 fixed hours so you get some more savings from that, plus on top of that if the system schedules extra slots, those slots also end up cheaper for the whole house. Sometimes the car will start charging at 11 or 10:30 PM and sometimes its still charging at 6 or 6:30.

The other thing is, if your charge is going to take longer than 6 hours, it doesnt limit you to 6, it just fully charges the car at the cheap rate.