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]

@MadScientist - I stop the charge via the Tesla app as soon as I see it has reached 7kWh charge rate, usually around 15-20 seconds after the charge starts. Probably unnecessary to do it this way but it has never failed to give a schedule at some point during late afternoon/evening.

 

[MadScientist]

Thanks Drew. That’s good to know. I probably didn’t give it long enough.

 

[xreyuk]

Apologies if this has been asked before but this is very long thread . I signed up to IO today and am trying it for the first time tonight. Initially, I plugged in my M3 and manually stopped the charging using then Tesla app. However, IO didn't seem to register that I'd plugged in and after about 30 min hadn't generated a charging schedule. So, I repeated the process but allowed IO to take control and it stopped the charge after about 5 min and generated a charging schedule. A few questions come to mind. Can you stop the charge manually and is there minimum time that electrons need to flow so that IO registers a plug-in event? And, a related question, how frequently does IO get data from Tesla cars? I'd wouldn't be too happy with IO allowing charge to flow for more than 20min especially when I'll have a Powerwall in a few months time.

Thanks for any feedback.

In my very limited testing, it seems that IO poll the car every half an hour. I stop my charge immediately after plugging it and it will generate a schedule, although I get the odd time it takes ages to do so. There was only one time where the app never showed me a schedule but the car did charge overnight according to one.

I've never had it not charge, after plugging it in like the above.

 

[Chanser]

Sometimes I have to force the car to charge in order to get a schedule from IO.

 

[MadScientist]

Thanks for the feedback, I’ll stop the charging shortly after plugging in.

 

[yessuz]

@Pete UK - do your inverters/app have a facility to set block discharge user-defined periods?

I am not techy enough to consider Home Assistant (& too busy/lazy to try) so an easy solution to prevent the batteries from draining was to block discharge for the hours 23.30-05.30 and set IO to always be ready by 05.30.

IO schedules are almost always during the six hour off-peak period and on the rare occasions additional slots are given earlier than 23.30 I either set additional temporary block discharge slots to cover this (my inverter permits three schedules, each with variable duration) or just let IO take a small amount from the batteries as each additional slot has never been more than one hour, mostly half an hour.

Here's the last time this happened back in April with IO starting at 11pm, ie just half an hour 'early' so I let it take about 750w total from the inverter batteries which were already full - the little pink peak at 23.00 shows this & then at 23.30 onward you can see that everything else IO is using is from the grid off-peak (I also have a further 9.6kW batteries attached to another downstream inverter so these are unaffected by car charging anyway).

A simple solution that works without intervention by me for almost 100% of the schedules I have been given over the past 11/2 yr since I signed up to IO.

View attachment 952896

that is all good - and my intention. but how do you measure 750W from inverter? I could, for example, limit it to max 2 kw discharge during the time between 22:00 and 23:30 and then IO picks it up.
or you just set the limit on this?

for me the issue is that usually, once a week I return with like 10% battery and then next day I might need 90% (due to another trip planned) so in such case I can have IO starting at 20:00 i.e.

I could probably set manual discharge block during these occasions :/

 

[MadManMark]

So, I managed to get myself moved onto the new variable IO rates this morning. Previously we were on a fixed IO contract due to end at the end of August - the day rate for that was 39p.

I rang Octopus and the call handler initially went away and then came back to say that because I was on a fixed tariff I could not move off it until the fixed term ends. However, I pushed back and quoted posts from other users in this thread (thank you). She went away again and then came back to confirm she would move me on to Flexible, which would then allow me to sign up as a new IO customer.

Flexible appeared as the current tariff almost immediately in the app. However, from the app at least, I wasn’t able to sign up to new variable IO until I had removed my existing IO device (Tesla model 3). To do this, click the face icon in the top left corner - devices - IO - scroll to bottom and select disconnect device. Once this was done I was able to sign up to IO within the app, do the test charge and about 10 min later got an email to confirm I was registered for IO (confirmed in app). Should save us about £20 per month for July and August so worth the half hour of my time.

 

[Yuff]

So, I managed to get myself moved onto the new variable IO rates this morning. Previously we were on a fixed IO contract due to end at the end of August - the day rate for that was 39p.

I rang Octopus and the call handler initially went away and then came back to say that because I was on a fixed tariff I could not move off it until the fixed term ends. However, I pushed back and quoted posts from other users in this thread (thank you). She went away again and then came back to confirm she would move me on to Flexible, which would then allow me to sign up as a new IO customer.

Flexible appeared as the current tariff almost immediately in the app. However, from the app at least, I wasn’t able to sign up to new variable IO until I had removed my existing IO device (Tesla model 3). To do this, click the face icon in the top left corner - devices - IO - scroll to bottom and select disconnect device. Once this was done I was able to sign up to IO within the app, do the test charge and about 10 min later got an email to confirm I was registered for IO (confirmed in app). Should save us about £20 per month for July and August so worth the half hour of my time.

I’ve just done this, this morning. I was fixed until September on IO but checked the IO tariff for my postcode online, it then took me to a page to download octopus on the appstore( which I was already logged in to). I opened the app via the webpage, it asked all the usual questions, car, charger etc took me to the app which I was logged into and tariff was updated instantly at the new rates. Took seconds to update the tariff and showed the new prices immediately in the app
I don’t use much peak but the higher standing charge probably is negated by the peak savings over the month

 

[MadManMark]

I’ve just done this, this morning. I was fixed until September on IO but checked the IO tariff for my postcode online, it then took me to a page to download octopus on the appstore( which I was already logged in to). I opened the app via the webpage, it asked all the usual questions, car, charger etc took me to the app which I was logged into and tariff was updated instantly at the new rates. Took seconds to update the tariff and showed the new prices immediately in the app
I don’t use much peak but the higher standing charge probably is negated by the peak savings over the month

Well that is a much simpler way of sorting it! Thanks for sharing.

 

[kelvin 660]

Yeah, that worked great @Yuff Just follow get IO and fill out the car/charger details and it's done immediately!

 

[WllXM]

So, I managed to get myself moved onto the new variable IO rates this morning. Previously we were on a fixed IO contract due to end at the end of August - the day rate for that was 39p.

I rang Octopus and the call handler initially went away and then came back to say that because I was on a fixed tariff I could not move off it until the fixed term ends. However, I pushed back and quoted posts from other users in this thread (thank you). She went away again and then came back to confirm she would move me on to Flexible, which would then allow me to sign up as a new IO customer.

Flexible appeared as the current tariff almost immediately in the app. However, from the app at least, I wasn’t able to sign up to new variable IO until I had removed my existing IO device (Tesla model 3). To do this, click the face icon in the top left corner - devices - IO - scroll to bottom and select disconnect device. Once this was done I was able to sign up to IO within the app, do the test charge and about 10 min later got an email to confirm I was registered for IO (confirmed in app). Should save us about £20 per month for July and August so worth the half hour of my time.

Yes from my experience unfortunately Octopus staff on the phone are not knowledgeable at all about IO, the fact that it was fixed vs. variable now, and the difference between day rate and off-peak.
If you sense the operator at the other end is not very bright, better hang up and try another one; took me several tries before I could stumble upon somebody who could actually help.

But ultimately that's right, you just need to sign up again like a new customer on https://octopus.energy/smart/intelligent-octopus/ , fill in the info again with car make model / charger and you're good to go. You might need them to approve the process so it can take a few minutes before you see it on your online account. Otherwise just call them again to speed up the process.

 

[MattG5]

I did an online change a few hours ago from my current fixed IO to the new variable. It said the change had been accepted, but it's sitting there saying they are going to book a smart meter exchange! Think I'll wait until tomorrow and if it's not changed give them a call.

 

[Drew57]

that is all good - and my intention. but how do you measure 750W from inverter?

I knew what the full Battery SOC was pre 11pm and checked what SOC the solar app showed at 5.30am. The difference was under 800w so I reasoned a small amount of overnight loss giving approx 750w 'consumed' by car charging.

I don't set a limit, the image I posted shows that a slot outside of the block discharge period uses predominantly off-peak from IO with the balance draining from the batteries unless I add another temporary block period (I only do this on the very rare occasions where the car SOC was extremely low & IO added slots totalling an hour or more pre 23.30).

 

[Buzzliteyear]

I’m still new to all this, the car charged fine overnight. Now the Tesla app can’t connect to the car, but tezlab does. Tried restarting the phone..

 

[Cardo]

I’m still new to all this, the car charged fine overnight. Now the Tesla app can’t connect to the car, but tezlab does. Tried restarting the phone..

Tesla servers have been having issues, this morning.

 

[MattG5]

They seem to be working again now. I had force close the app on my iPhone and it's now connected to the car

 

[MrBadger]

Thankfully Octopus IO and other API based apps weathered that storm. Just the Tesla app it seems, and now resolved.

Ironically I first encountered the app issue when checking if IO had charged the car. Didn’t look like it at first, but IO app and TeslaFi confirmed otherwise and the app was just very stale.

 

[Buzzliteyear]

Thanks, glad it was a temporary problem.

 

[xreyuk]

Is anybody running tracker for gas and IO for electricity?

I recently asked them to change Gas only to tracker but according to my account my electricity has switched to tracker and I have the message “We're setting you up to join Intelligent Octopus. We need to book your smart meter exchange next” even though I’ve been using IO for months.

I am however able to view the ‘devices’ section in the app and manage a charge

 

[Drew57]

Is anybody running tracker for gas and IO for electricity?

I recently asked them to change Gas only to tracker but according to my account my electricity has switched to tracker

Yes, I switched to gas tracker in January this year and have been in on the IO tariff for 19 months.

It’s important when asking Octopus for a change to make it very clear that you do not want the other tariff to be affected but in your case it sounds like someone made an error regardless.