Wiki Everything you wanted to know about Intelligent Octopus But Were Afraid To Ask

Why write this post?
A lot of people are starting to get interested in IO. I don't think Octopus do a very good job of spelling out the benefits in their website. They have some FAQs, but the same questions keep coming up over and over on the forums.

What is it?
In a nutshell, IO is a split tariff that gives you a cheap off-peak rate for charging your EV and other electrical items in the household, including home batteries.

Isn’t that the same as Octopus Go or Go Faster?
The principle is the same, but in exchange for some benefits which we’ll explain, you allow Octopus to control the timing of your EV charge, so they can choose low carbon intensity and/or cheap wholesale priced time slots.

So I’m not in control of my charge? I don’t like the sound of that!
Well yes…and no. You’re in control of how much to charge and when you want the car to be ready, just like you would be normally. Within those parameters, you’re allowing Octopus to control which half-hour slots the car chooses to get to that target % charge. And you can always override IO if you want to “bump charge” through the day.

OK, but what are the benefits you mentioned for this trade off?
First of all, you get a larger guaranteed off-peak window for using household appliances and charging home batteries, etc. It’s six hours between 23:30-05:30. Go, for example, is a fixed 4 hour window.
In addition, when IO schedules your EV charging slots it sometimes creates schedules that fall outside of the fixed, six hour window. If that happens your EV charging and all your household use in these extra-slots is also charged at off-peak rates.
I have frequently had schedules give me seven or more hours of off-peak rates. On one occasion, I had a total of ten hours of off-peak rates.

Am I eligible?
You need a smart meter and a compatible car and/or charger. Since you’re reading this here, I assume you’ve got or are thinking of getting a Tesla. IO works with the Tesla API to create the charging schedules. The advantage of this is that IO will work with any* home charger. If you have a charger with smart features, you need to disable them so that the charger acts as a dumb switch. IO will control everything via Tesla’s API to start and stop your charging.
*Even your granny charger - but you need to tell IO what the max throughput is when you go through setup so that it can work out your schedules properly.

Some of this sounds too good to be true.
Phantom drain caused by having smart charging enabled in the Octopus app has been fixed as of 30th August 2022. One small side effect appears to be that schedules sometimes take longer to appear in the app after plugging in.

Further questions (to be updated in the main thread body once the edit timer on this post expires)

I have two EVs, can I charge the other while on IO?
Not with IO scheduling the charging, but you can charge any other car in the fixed 23:30-05:30 off peak window or at any other time at peak prices.

What are the rates etc?
Octopus do a decent job of explaining the peak and off-peak rates along with contracts etc. Head over to their pages to discover that.

I asked for a target % of x, but I got less than x.
There are two or three reasons for this.

The first, most common reason, is that Tesla reports battery % differently depending on where you look. The API (that IO uses) reports the gross battery %. This is generally fixed but can fluctuate very slightly. The Tesla app shows usable %. Apps like Teslamate and Teslafi can display both. Quite often, there is a delta of 2-3% which may be down to battery temp or other factors. This usable % will often be recovered as the battery warms up during a drive.

Some users have reported charging % being way off, perhaps 10% or more. This could be down to an error in the onboarding process. Some of the charger database entries incorrectly assume the charger you are onboarding is the 11kW version, without actually saying so in the charger description. The Andersen A2 was an early example of this. If you suspect this may be the case, the easiest thing to do is go through the on-boarding again and choose "Generic 7.4kW charger". It won't affect your functionality on IO in any way.

Lastly, it has to be mentioned that occasionally IO just craps out. It may be down to a comms error, a server error at Octopus' end, or just reasons. IO is a beta product and it's wise to expect one or two quirks from time to time

 

[Drew57]

Is your octopus app set at 100% and the car 100% or similar?

That is exactly what I would recommend.

• I used to leave IO at 100% and set the car to a lower target, usually 80 or 90%.
• It charged correctly every time for the first year since starting with IO.
  
  
• Then I got the app notification about setting the car target higher than IO.
• Since then I've dropped both IO and the cars' SOC target to be the same, either 80/80 or 90/90.
• It continues to charge correctly every time.

 

[duncans]

Is your octopus app set at 100% and the car 100% or similar?

Both set to 90%

(If it helps, I'm a software developer with 30 years of experience, have Teslamate running in a Docker container, a UniFi setup, Home Assistant and all that jazz I might have missed something but I did try to get the basics checked off before posting here )

Tonight I'll turn off IO and schedule it manually on the car to try and rule anything else out. I suspected the PodPoint, but know that the Tesla app will give a notification if the PodPoint shuts off the supply during a charge, and it hasn't done that.

 

[Rooster6655]

Both set to 90%

(If it helps, I'm a software developer with 30 years of experience, have Teslamate running in a Docker container, a UniFi setup, Home Assistant and all that jazz I might have missed something but I did try to get the basics checked off before posting here )

Tonight I'll turn off IO and schedule it manually on the car to try and rule anything else out. I suspected the PodPoint, but know that the Tesla app will give a notification if the PodPoint shuts off the supply during a charge, and it hasn't done that.

ok from what it sounds like it is IO shutting off the charge, the only thing other thing I can think of is IO may think you are not at your home location and is shutting the charge off, perhaps check you have a home location set in your car.

This assume that IO actually checks the location of the car and the home location which based on my experience is an unknown.

I also have Teslamate running and it doesn't interfere with IO for me.

 

[duncans]

ok from what it sounds like it is IO shutting off the charge, the only thing other thing I can think of is IO may think you are not at your home location and is shutting the charge off, perhaps check you have a home location set in your car.

This assume that IO actually checks the location of the car and the home location which based on my experience is an unknown.

I also have Teslamate running and it doesn't interfere with IO for me.

Thanks for the suggestions: home location is a good one, but that is all fine.

The only thing that it might be is earlier in the week I had the charging amps in the Tesla app set lower in the daytime to soak up some excess solar and inadvertently left it set low (10 amps) overnight for the IO session. I’ve since reset it back to 30 amps but it’s still exhibiting the same odd behaviour. In any case I’d expect it to *not* stop the charge with a lower charge rate. In fact I’ve read of people doing this on purpose so as to “cheat” and get more IO slots!

Update from last night, I turned off smart charging in the Octopus app and got a full 11:30-5:30 charge (scheduled via the PodPoint), so it’s pretty clear now it’s not anything else stopping the charge. I will disconnect and reconnect the car in the Octopus app which will hopefully reset things and try smart charging again this week,

 

[Slarty1080]

Had issues last night, trying to work out if it's IO turning the car charging off, or the car itself playing up. Started charging at 22:30 (nice, extra slot or two) but it turned off at 00:56, where it should have gone all the way through to 08:30 according to slots reported in the Octopus app. I woke in the early hours and noticed it wasn't charging and kicked it off again, but it stopped 15 minutes later, leaving me short in the morning...

Looks like its IO turning the charging off when it polls the car (within 30 mins)

 

[Slarty1080]

If you want to rule out a few things, I would recommend turning off the delay charging until 11.30 in the car, plug the car in and let it charge until the IO app stops the charge, once it does this there should be a charging schedule setup and you can see if it works from there.

In my experience the main symptom of not charging over night is when you delayed charge turned off in the car and then when you plug the car in you manually turn the charge off and the car sleeps without IO setting a charge schedule. Octopus could easily solve this by waking the car up at a certain time to ensure schedules are set, maybe they have updated I don't know but the other week I didn't get a charge at all until I woke them car up at 7am which it then gave me a schedule bizarelly!

Yes I have turned off the scheduling after 23:30 in the car. I really do need to charge the car tonight so I pressed bump charge in the IO app but it still didn't work. I went outside at 01:00 and unplugged the car and plugged it back in and pressed start charging button in the Tesla app (bump charge was still active in the IO app) seems to be still charging now so I can go to bed.

 

[Skie]

In my experience the main symptom of not charging over night is when you delayed charge turned off in the car and then when you plug the car in you manually turn the charge off and the car sleeps without IO setting a charge schedule. Octopus could easily solve this by waking the car up at a certain time to ensure schedules are set, maybe they have updated I don't know but the other week I didn't get a charge at all until I woke them car up at 7am which it then gave me a schedule bizarelly!

The car being asleep has nothing to do with the IO schedule. IO is just sending the same api call that the Tesla app does when you hit the start charge/stop charge icon. The car knows nothing about a schedule, and if the car has a schedule IOs use of the API can override it. IO will still poll the API and create the schedule, it just started doing it much later than 5pm.

I think the biggest culprit of issues is charger based schedules which the Tesla API can’t override (and people forget they have setup), and general communication issues which Tesla has been having a lot of recently.

Setting off-peak charging to finish by 5:30am in the Tesla app was my bulletproof method, as it meant the car would still charge until the end of the cheap rate if IO or the Tesla API were broken.

 

[Rooster6655]

The car being asleep has nothing to do with the IO schedule. IO is just sending the same api call that the Tesla app does when you hit the start charge/stop charge icon. The car knows nothing about a schedule, and if the car has a schedule IOs use of the API can override it. IO will still poll the API and create the schedule, it just started doing it much later than 5pm.

I think the biggest culprit of issues is charger based schedules which the Tesla API can’t override (and people forget they have setup), and general communication issues which Tesla has been having a lot of recently.

Setting off-peak charging to finish by 5:30am in the Tesla app was my bulletproof method, as it meant the car would still charge until the end of the cheap rate if IO or the Tesla API were broken.

I know how the api works, the issue is IO doesn’t always detect the car has been plugged in. It’s not the same as the start charge function on app as the app wakes the car before you can use most functions.

IO will wake the car for its schedule if it’s set but it’s not waking the car to test for the charger being plugged in, as that was constantly keeping the car awake hence why they changed it.

I have a dumb charger so that rules out your charger schedule possibility. Bear in mind IO can change anything at anytime so that was ny experience at the time.

 

[Cardo]

I know how the api works, the issue is IO doesn’t always detect the car has been plugged in. It’s not the same as the start charge function on app as the app wakes the car before you can use most functions.

IO will wake the car for its schedule if it’s set but it’s not waking the car to test for the charger being plugged in, as that was constantly keeping the car awake hence why they changed it.

I have a dumb charger so that rules out your charger schedule possibility. Bear in mind IO can change anything at anytime so that was ny experience at the time.

I’ve noticed this. If the car goes to sleep before IO polls it, it won’t realise the car is plugged in and no charge map is created. The car then carries on sleeping and unless some external event wakes it up it won’t charge overnight. It didn’t seem to do this when I first moved to IO back in December as the charge map was created within a few minutes of plugging in, however more recently it can take a while for the map to appear and this issue can manifest.

 

[Rooster6655]

I’ve noticed this. If the car goes to sleep before IO polls it, it won’t realise the car is plugged in and no charge map is created. The car then carries on sleeping and unless some external event wakes it up it won’t charge overnight. It didn’t seem to do this when I first moved to IO back in December as the charge map was created within a few minutes of plugging in, however more recently it can take a while for the map to appear and this issue can manifest.

I don't plug the car in straight away on returning home, but when I do plug it in it probably only briefly wakes the car, I think the key would be to keep the app open to keep the car awake if you don't have it set to start charge in the car at 11.30.

 

[Skie]

I know how the api works, the issue is IO doesn’t always detect the car has been plugged in. It’s not the same as the start charge function on app as the app wakes the car before you can use most functions.

Polling (getting info), waking and starting a charge are all different commands. And yes start_charge in the app is the same function IO uses, as the main reason the api exists is so the app can actually work. The app wakes the car as part of its general startup to get live status info and get ready for a drive/action. Nobody wants to hit a button in the app and it take 15 seconds for the car to respond!

IO will wake the car for its schedule if it’s set but it’s not waking the car to test for the charger being plugged in, as that was constantly keeping the car awake hence why they changed it.

It shouldn’t need to wake the car, as the plugged/unplugged status is available without waking the car. IO was working fine for a long time after the fixed the waking up/phantom drain, it just took longer to generate schedules.

Tesla have probably broken something with an update that means the car or api are less likely to cache the plugged in status. Hopefully octopus can convince them to fix it, or they can go back to a more aggressive method of waking the car up once or twice if IO can’t tell if it’s plugged in after a certain time. Setting off peak charge will also wake the car up at some point so IO can see it

 

[Astrape]

E7 was available long before GO and IO; we used it 30 years ago and that was locked to GMT. It's octopus that have decided not to use GMT.

If you don't like it, just fit a contactor and time clock. The solution is very easy and simple.

Sure but this isnt 30 years ago, its today, and the ALCS now sits in a "smart" meter, that can adjust multiple features in half hour settings, and can do automatic clocks change.
It still makes no sense for a switch in a meter with clock change capability not to be set to follow the clock change. So the question remains why.
And no its not a simple change to add a bunch of kit for which there is no room in the meter enclosure. Moreover Octopus fitted it as a 5 port meter for use with their tariffs. I even phoned the support line when the meter fitter said he had a compatible 5 port switch, and asked if it was fully compatible with IO, and got a yes.
So its very much up to Octopus to sort it out. I dont mind if they do it in software or to it manually every 6 months. The solution is very simple - its THEIR responsibility to make it work.

 

[RedMod3]

Sure but this isnt 30 years ago, its today, and the ALCS now sits in a "smart" meter, that can adjust multiple features in half hour settings, and can do automatic clocks change.
It still makes no sense for a switch in a meter with clock change capability not to be set to follow the clock change. So the question remains why.
And no its not a simple change to add a bunch of kit for which there is no room in the meter enclosure. Moreover Octopus fitted it as a 5 port meter for use with their tariffs. I even phoned the support line when the meter fitter said he had a compatible 5 port switch, and asked if it was fully compatible with IO, and got a yes.
So its very much up to Octopus to sort it out. I dont mind if they do it in software or to it manually every 6 months. The solution is very simple - its THEIR responsibility to make it work.

Octopus have told me they will willingly reset the ALCS every 6 months. I have asked them not to, and leave the ALCS as it is as the 4-hour GO slot always falls within IO. Besides, 4 hours is enough for the immersion and Granny in winter (solar heats spring-autumn, and charges our second EV). You could do the same to always give you 5 hours cheap with no ALCS changes.

 

[Astrape]

Octopus have told me they will willingly reset the ALCS every 6 months. I have asked them not to, and leave the ALCS as it is as the 4-hour GO slot always falls within IO. Besides, 4 hours is enough for the immersion and Granny in winter (solar heats spring-autumn, and charges our second EV). You could do the same to always give you 5 hours cheap with no ALCS changes.

Since I have night storage heaters which are designed for a 7 hour charge, 6 hours is probably significantly closer to optimal in the cold parts of the winter than only charging for 5hours. But your solution is neat if you dont need the extra time. I'm sure Octopus will eventually resolve the issue to meet my needs. Its just a long process for them to appreciate the requirement. There must be tiny numbers of people trying to get this provision.

 

[RedMod3]

Since I have night storage heaters which are designed for a 7 hour charge, 6 hours is probably significantly closer to optimal in the cold parts of the winter than only charging for 5hours. But your solution is neat if you dont need the extra time. I'm sure Octopus will eventually resolve the issue to meet my needs. Its just a long process for them to appreciate the requirement. There must be tiny numbers of people trying to get this provision.

We used to have thermostatically controlled night storage heaters, but we ripped them out and replaced them with air-sourced heat pumps for heating in winter and cooling in summer. I was a good cost saving move and freed up a lot of space with the storage heaters going.

 

[DM250141]

The PodPoint app should still tell you how much has gone into the car even if you don’t use a schedule. I also receive a monthly email with the daily charging quantities.

Hi Cardo. PodPoint app is now showing me how much charge to car.
The PodPoint app has updated today. A good improvement I think.
In At Home, there are now buttons for Smart/Manual and Charge Now. Simples.

 

[Cardo]

Hi Cardo. PodPoint app is now showing me how much charge to car.
The PodPoint app has updated today. A good improvement I think.
In At Home, there are now buttons for Smart/Manual and Charge Now. Simples.

I’ve just forced the update and can indeed see these changes. Nice that they’re making improvements.

Still has the silly quirk that you can’t have a schedule that straddles midnight! No 2330-0530 schedule for you! 0000-0530 or bust.

 

[xreyuk]

Had a weird one this morning, but welcome.

Car wasn’t plugged in, did the latest software update, and when it rebooted I got a charging window from octopus for no reason

 

[Basicbob]

I’ve got intelligent but recently the car stops charging after a while.

Yesterday the doc was 20% so I charged it overnight this morning it was at 25% both devices are set to 90%

Any ideas because it’s happening all the time

 

[TomH0927]

Same issue here this morning with the car not reaching the requested SoC (car and octopus app both set to 90%).

I happened to check a couple of hours ago and noticed the charge stopping a couple of minutes into the 30 min slot. Using ‘start charge’ on the Tesla app allows the charge to continue before eventually stopping again as IO seem to override and take control again. No schedules set on the car or charger.

Third week in with IO and my third week with issues. Cannot depend on this system when I have a 60 mile commute, often at very unsociable hours.