Tesla Powerwall and Octopus IO integration

[Planky]

I am looking at getting a Powerwall 2 now that VAT has gone on battery installations.
The question I have is that I am on Octopus IO and so how does one deal with any extra cheap charger slots outside the 23:30 - 05:30 slot? I obviously don’t want the battery to try and run the house or charge the car during these slots!
Is there an option in the Tesla app to put the battery into an “isolated” state for these times?
Is there a guide somewhere online that shows how to optimise usage with Octopus IO? I have looked online but not managed to find anything yet.
Thanks for all the help.

 

[phil4]

Using HA yes. it's not perfect,but basically you detect the Octopus slot, and tell the PW to stick it's reserve to 100%. It'll charge up, or if already there, not power the house or charger.

the not perfect is that it takes a few minutes for the PW to react, during which you can be powering the house, or charging the car with it.

Or you can manually do it, by telling the PW that the slot is a super-off peak, with no export and very cheap import. That's more tidy, with timekeeping but also entirely manual.

 

[KennethS]

We rarely get slots outside of the 23:30-05:30 lower rate period, but when it happens we manually adjust the Powerwall settings to either not discharge or add charge. As mentioned by @phil4 people report success using Home Assistant to automatically adjust the PW settings but it isn't something I have yet to spend time figuring out.

 

[ACarneiro]

I have emailed Octopus a couple of times asking for a Powerwall integration to Intelligent Octopus.
They said no, but I imagine with the API opening up and the number of Powerwall installations going up they may have more interest.
Worth dropping them a line, I guess....

 

[KennethS]

I have emailed Octopus a couple of times asking for a Powerwall integration to Intelligent Octopus.
They said no, but I imagine with the API opening up and the number of Powerwall installations going up they may have more interest.
Worth dropping them a line, I guess....

Good idea and I will do the same. In the past when Octopus teamed up with Tesla and had the Tesla Energy Plan offering the Powerwall integration worked well. I see no reason why Octopus can't implement a Powerwall integration if they choose to do so.

 

[ACarneiro]

Good idea and I will do the same. In the past when Octopus teamed up with Tesla and had the Tesla Energy Plan offering the Powerwall integration worked well. I see no reason why Octopus can't implement a Powerwall integration if they choose to do so.

Interest and developer time, I suppose....

 

[Pink Duck]

They have already done this with IO Flux and GivEnergy API interface, so it wouldn’t be that much effort to achieve now that they’ve switched to using the Tesla SDK. I expect we’ll hear about it at some point in the future. I filled the form in online asking for this, twice to date.

 

[Bantam]

What if you set the Ready to charge time in the IO App to 05:30. In my experience if you set it too 05:30 (when I leave for work most days), the odd time that IO thinks it cant charge your car in the cheap rate period it assigns you the slots just before the cheaper window starts (i.e. 23:00-23:30 slot) and even if that means the additional slots draws the power from the PW you still have the whole of the cheap window to refill the battery back up.

Obvs I may be over simplifying this logic (having only recently signed up for IO myself).

 

[Planky]

I have been on IO since September last year and had extra cheap slots only 14 times so far, so I think it will not be too much bother to manually control the battery whilst I investigate HA. Thanks everyone.

 

[simon_rb]

Using HA yes. it's not perfect,but basically you detect the Octopus slot, and tell the PW to stick it's reserve to 100%. It'll charge up, or if already there, not power the house or charger.

the not perfect is that it takes a few minutes for the PW to react, during which you can be powering the house, or charging the car with it.

Or you can manually do it, by telling the PW that the slot is a super-off peak, with no export and very cheap import. That's more tidy, with timekeeping but also entirely manual.

Adding to this, you can turn off Grid charging if you didn't want to charge the Powerwall.

 

[Mark_T]

I have been on IO since September last year and had extra cheap slots only 14 times so far, so I think it will not be too much bother to manually control the battery whilst I investigate HA. Thanks everyone.

The availability of the extra slots outside the low-rate period does seem to vary a lot between customers and regions, but I do get a lot of early morning slots where IOG is preferring to charge up to 08:00 rather than between 00:30-03:00.

Not an issue as I use HA to deal with this situation and use the extra slots appropriately.