GivEnergy Local + Intelligent Octopus Go

General Home Automation
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A local-first Homebridge plugin for GivEnergy inverters, bringing reliable battery control and Intelligent Octopus Go optimisation into Apple Home.

What this plugin does

This plugin brings clean local control of your GivEnergy battery system into Apple Home via Homebridge.

It offers:

  • Intelligent Octopus Go dispatch-aware battery charging
  • Grace period handling after smart charging sessions
  • Charging during your configured Off-Peak Hours, with a default of 23:30–05:30
  • Manual Force Charge and Force Export with configurable durations
  • Battery SoC shown as a clear percentage tile
  • Solar generation shown in Home, including Off at night
  • Useful status sensors for:
    • Cheap Rate
    • Grace Period
    • Smart Window
    • Charging
    • Discharging
    • Importing
    • Exporting
    • Online

All inverter control commands are sent over your local network. The plugin does not rely on GivEnergy cloud control.

Architecture

The plugin is designed to work with:

  • GivTCP — local inverter telemetry via MQTT and local inverter control via REST
  • Mosquitto or another MQTT broker
  • Octopus Energy API — only for retrieving Intelligent Octopus Go dispatch windows

In practice:

  • Reading telemetry → MQTT from GivTCP
  • Writing control commands → local GivTCP REST API
  • Smart charging logic → Octopus API polling for cheap-rate windows

Requirements

You will need the following running on your local network:

  • GivTCP
  • an MQTT broker, such as Mosquitto
  • Homebridge

Disable any other plugins or automations that may send conflicting commands to the inverter.

Main controls in Apple Home

  • Force Charge — starts a timed local charge window using the REST slot system
  • Force Export — starts a timed local discharge/export window using the REST slot system
  • Automatic IOG Charging — opens a battery charge window during Intelligent Octopus Go cheap periods and handles the grace period cleanly
  • Off-Peak Hours Charging — charges during your configured off-peak hours when no smart dispatch is active

Turning a manual switch off, or letting its timer expire, automatically clears the temporary slot and returns the inverter to normal operation.

Important notes

  • All inverter control is performed locally on your network
  • This plugin is intended to be the primary controller for scheduled charging and export
  • Avoid overlapping control from other plugins, apps, or automations
  • Energy management actions are taken at your own risk, so test carefully before relying on unattended automations

Configuration

The Homebridge configuration UI is designed around the details most users actually need:

  • Battery Serial Number
  • Battery Size (kWh)
  • Maximum Solar Power (kW)
  • Octopus Account Number
  • Octopus API Key

The Battery Serial Number can be found in the GivEnergy app under Settings → Local Monitoring → Scan for your inverter.

Optional charging behaviour settings are available in a collapsed section:

  • Target Charge %, default 100
  • Off-Peak Start, default 23:30
  • Off-Peak End, default 05:30
  • Grace Period, default 30, which carries a smart dispatch to the end of the current :00 or :30 half-hour period

Advanced MQTT, GivTCP, polling, and tuning settings are prefilled for the standard local setup and normally do not need changing.

Installation

Install the plugin through the Homebridge UI or via npm.

Then:

  1. configure the required fields, especially MQTT, GivTCP REST URL, and Octopus details if using IOG
  2. restart Homebridge
  3. add the new accessories in the Home app
  4. test behaviour during a cheap period before relying on automationhttps://github.com/JayC68/homebridge-giv-iog-local
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