As jlz says, it would be helpful if Octopus published that so that an informed decision could be reached! As far as I can tell from their Intelligent info page, they only give you the T&Cs once you gone through the sign up process.
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Octopus Energy, including Intelligent and go
- Thread starter UrbanSplash
- Start date
Drew57
Active ember
The T&Cs do mention...
3...other 'low carbon technology at home' including heat pumps and home batteries.
5b...EV charging and any underlying household usage.
5d...Usage in excess of the(se) six hours per day may be charged at the day rate.
I get the impression that Octopus will be flexible as long as they don't see excessive consumption during the low rate periods. One car plus house batteries could easily consume as much or more than a car plus dishwasher, washing, drying etc although if a second car is also included in any particular time period this could flag up enough concurrent consumption for Octopus to investigate. In my case I won't do that so will charge my wife's Fiat 500e predominantly on nights when the Tesla isn't being charged (smaller battery, low daily mileage).
One other point I notice from the app FAQs:
'Why isn't my car going to sleep?" - in my case and based on one day there is no evidence of that happening - SOC still reads 85% from the early morning charge as evidenced from my PV inverter summary below and no additional charge to the car is evident from either grid or solar so even though still plugged in, it doesn't seem to be losing or gaining to any extent (the car will stay plugged in for a while yet before I return - if it did seem to be losing & topping up significantly then I will switch off IO via the app using'Disconnect Vehicle')
.....incidentally IO has also provided two more additional slots this evening 20.30-21.00 &22.00-22.30 if they were needed (not)
3...other 'low carbon technology at home' including heat pumps and home batteries.
5b...EV charging and any underlying household usage.
5d...Usage in excess of the(se) six hours per day may be charged at the day rate.
I get the impression that Octopus will be flexible as long as they don't see excessive consumption during the low rate periods. One car plus house batteries could easily consume as much or more than a car plus dishwasher, washing, drying etc although if a second car is also included in any particular time period this could flag up enough concurrent consumption for Octopus to investigate. In my case I won't do that so will charge my wife's Fiat 500e predominantly on nights when the Tesla isn't being charged (smaller battery, low daily mileage).
One other point I notice from the app FAQs:
'Why isn't my car going to sleep?" - in my case and based on one day there is no evidence of that happening - SOC still reads 85% from the early morning charge as evidenced from my PV inverter summary below and no additional charge to the car is evident from either grid or solar so even though still plugged in, it doesn't seem to be losing or gaining to any extent (the car will stay plugged in for a while yet before I return - if it did seem to be losing & topping up significantly then I will switch off IO via the app using'Disconnect Vehicle')
.....incidentally IO has also provided two more additional slots this evening 20.30-21.00 &22.00-22.30 if they were needed (not)
Yep, absolutely clear that only one car can be connected to flexibly charge outside off-peak charging.
Now, about charging a second car in the fixed off-peak times, as we were discussing…
Thanks Drew57, if you don’t mind expanding - do those paragraphs say that pumps, batteries, EV charging are not allowed?
I‘m a very happy Octopus Go customer, but all this Intelligent stuff seems to be behind something of a smokescreen!
From the t&cs:
- The Intelligent Octopus tariff is for customers with low carbon technology at home, including electric vehicle home charging, heat pumps or home batteries. Any electricity used by low carbon technology as well as any other electricity used in your home during off-peak hours will be charged at the night rate.
Drew57
Active ember
Thanks, so when I use the car during the day or if away from home I will disconnect via the app then reconnect after 5pm if I need to charge (disconnecting again after finishing)
@PaulMD As I didn't really need the charge last night, I left the car plugged and set the schedule on the app anyway. Although I didn't get any plan in the app, IE still managed to control the schedule and the car charged on a HH slot schedule. I checked my inverter graphs this morning for confirmation. I also set the in-car charge limit higher than the IE limit to ensure it wasn't just dumb charging.
@browellm I switched back to letting Octopus manage my charging, and I did in fact get a couple of half-hour slots before (and after!) the normal 6h window. How do you confirm that you are being charged @5p for those slots? I spent half an hour on the Octopus account dashboard and goodness me it is very inconsistent and very difficult to get anything useful out of (it makes a show of being useful, but isn't actually that useful!). The only place I've ever seen the rate for a given slot is on the bills, so I would have to set a reminder to remember which days I got those extra slots and wait for a bill to come (also not the most reliable thing in the world)?
There are quite a few people on the Octopus forums and they're validating the billing is solid.
Billing is the only regular place you can confirm, but I know a couple of guys who have been able to do some homebrew API stuff that has talked to Intelligent and been able to get the HH slot info to align to their home battery charging etc. There's no commercial product using the Intelligent APIs because they're generated on a per user basis.
Drew57
Active ember
Very impressed with IO so far.
Tonight is another occasion with an extra half hour 22.30-23.00 & in spite of a peak rate of nearly 26p (compared to previous Go Faster 14p) we are able to use the 6+ hours at 5p for charging & with increasing amounts of solar during the day filling the house batteries to cover the rest (or if not, running dishwasher/washing/tumble dryer etc during nights when the car doesn't need topping up).
Tonight is another occasion with an extra half hour 22.30-23.00 & in spite of a peak rate of nearly 26p (compared to previous Go Faster 14p) we are able to use the 6+ hours at 5p for charging & with increasing amounts of solar during the day filling the house batteries to cover the rest (or if not, running dishwasher/washing/tumble dryer etc during nights when the car doesn't need topping up).
Quick Question, do i only get my 5p rate if and when my M3 charges? So if i don't plug in or I'm at full charge, I'm not offered the 30min slots and so can't schedule other things to run (dishwasher/dryer etc) between 11:30 and 05:30 unless my car is charging? It wasn't massively clear when i signed up to it, it read like the window for low rates was between that window of time and have only been on the tariff a couple of days so can't check bills yet.
You *always* get off-peak rates between 23:30-05:30.
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