Octopus Energy, including Intelligent and go

[UrbanSplash]

Hi. I just had an email from Octopus to sign up to Intelligent Octopus. Anyone else?


Why sign up: Intelligent Octopus gives you access to a whopping six hours of super-cheap electricity overnight (much longer than other smart tariffs) that you can use for electric vehicle charging and any other energy needs. What’s more, we’ll manage your charging to make sure that you only fill up on the very greenest electricity. In short, you’ll get a chance to save cash, charge your electric vehicle in a greener way, and participate in the future of smart energy.


How it works: You’ll get a six hour low-cost night rate at 5p/kWh between 11:30pm and 5:30am - two hours longer than our Octopus Go tariff. You simply register with the Intelligent Octopus app and tell us when you need your electric vehicle charged by. We make sure that the car’s charged by that time. We’ll schedule your car to charge at times when renewables are abundant, reducing the strain on the grid and the need to burn dirty fossil fuels.

 

[Vinny2102]

Does it mention what the standing charge will be or the normal rate per kwh?

 

[UrbanSplash]

Unfortunately that’s all the info that was in the email.

 

[bctomuk]

Seems pretty good

 

[Dilly]

My ‘Go’ rates are 5p & 14.12p plus 25p daily standing charge.
with the benefit of solar, I pretty much only use cheap rate over winter.

 

[NorfolkMustard]

What’s the url?

 

[MrBadger]

Reading between the lines, looks like you may not get a guaranteed 6 hours when charging your car, just enough to fulfil your charging needs however you tell them that - is the app only to tell the time or the energy required too? What is also not clear is what happens when your cars charging needs overlap the "when renewables are abundant" window, either because it needs longer than the 6 hours or, outside your control, when part of the 6 hour window is not "when renewables are abundant" - are you going to get pushed into peak rate because its more green? I think the spirit of this tariff (or at least it should be) is that it is greener, but at the trade off that at times it will not necessarily be cheaper.

 

[Womble74]

Looks like they had a blog post on it, but when linking to it from Google, I get a 404 error.

But thanks to the power of Google cache..

Intelligent Octopus: your questions answered

Intelligent Octopus is a beta smart tariff just for EV drivers. In this blog we're going to tackle some intelligent Octopus FAQs!

webcache.googleusercontent.com

 

[bctomuk]

Intelligent Octopus currently works with Tesla cars or Wallbox Pulsar Plus chargers, but we're working to add more chargers all the time.

 

[Fred2]

The page to get the rates is still up though: Octopus Energy

I get the same rates as for octopus go

 

[NewbieT]

My guess is you do get a guaranteed 6 hours, you just don’t get to choose when within these 6 hours. I.e. they’ll choose the cheapest half-hour blocks to charge (upto what you need) turning the car charging on and off during that period. These HH blocks will also happen to be the greenest times to charge (lowest demand or highest surplus).

Relatively simple to do.
Poll the API to get current charge, target charge, calculate how many kWh needed, add on 5%, convert into how many HH blocks are needed, work out the cheapest HH blocks, use the Tesla API to wake-up your car and turn car charging on and off. Voila. A raspberry pi could do it

 

[kuruma]

still smart meter dependent... for those of us who still can't get a smart meter due to the blinkin RAF

 

[Jason71]

And so it begins

 

[GRiLLA]

Relatively simple to do.
Poll the API to get current charge, target charge, calculate how many kWh needed, add on 5%, convert into how many HH blocks are needed, work out the cheapest HH blocks, use the Tesla API to wake-up your car and turn car charging on and off. Voila. A raspberry pi could do it

Nah, they use 'KrakenFlex machine learning' apparently

 

[Jason71]

My guess is you do get a guaranteed 6 hours, you just don’t get to choose when within these 6 hours. I.e. they’ll choose the cheapest half-hour blocks to charge (upto what you need) turning the car charging on and off during that period. These HH blocks will also happen to be the greenest times to charge (lowest demand or highest surplus).

Relatively simple to do.
Poll the API to get current charge, target charge, calculate how many kWh needed, add on 5%, convert into how many HH blocks are needed, work out the cheapest HH blocks, use the Tesla API to wake-up your car and turn car charging on and off. Voila. A raspberry pi could do it

This will be using smart chargers not the Tesla Api.

 

[UrbanSplash]

I’m not sure if this is good or not. On Go I have 4 hours to charge. I usually manage to get what I need during this window. If not, I will top up the next night. It’s simple, and works ok.

 

[ACarneiro]

To be fair, this seems even simpler than that if you’re willing to relinquish control of your charging.
I would imagine that they’ll prioritise your target charge level even if that means charging at “dirtier” times.
This may be pretty good, although I don’t think I’ll be rushing to take it up… control freakery is hard to overcome.

 

[Drew57]

Sounds interesting although the fixed overnight 4 hrs with Go Faster are already sufficient for the cars' needs on the occasions when solar doesn't suffice.

Our current 02.30-06.30 is also useful if using the Go Wife app for dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer etc. However, Beta learning mode seems quite buggy, doesn't always hit the correct time period, occasionally fails catastrophically & I'm struggling to programme the overnight cooking facility without excessive feedback. I also need a way to adjust the warning sound volume when electricity usage causes our house to turn 'blue' not green.

 

[Epico]

Normal rates on this are more expensive than go for me.
15.59 on this Vs 13.8 on go

 

[NewbieT]

More expensive for me too but that’s only because I’m locked into the old Go rate. It’s the same price as if I signed up to Go today.