According to the GE portal, my current battery temperature is 7C. A good time to enable Winter Battery Conditioning. However, I’m on IOF (have been for a few years - I don’t bother changing tariff during the winter months), and the ‘total lockout’ for the end user means that I’m unable to enable it. Bit of an oversight, on Octopus’s part, I’d say.
And… I’ve not seen a single command in the log, since 7pm, yesterday - battery has been stuck at 20% since then. Interested to hear from anybody on IOF if they’ve had a similar issue.
that does seem odd. even in your inverter details in teh portal?
@Backx - thanks for the response - not sure which is odd! (Inability to enable WBC or no comms from Octo…)
IOF comms reappeared in the early hours today (so nothing from 3rd @ 19:08, until 5th @ 02:31. I had emailed smart@ Octopus (about both issues) around 00:25 this morning. No response from them, yet - but comms reappeared 2 hours afterwards…
I just took my amount back off the intelligent flex. Really not sure why I bothered going back on, but wanted to see if it would be any better this month with the super cold weather. I’ve had the same experience, my battery just sat there idle, never using the energy directly to the house, etc. So once again I’ve taken control back to I can enable Eco mode and set charging times before the peak.
I don’t know what it will take for Octopus to recognise that (for me) it’s not just a matter of saving money, I want to actually use the energy my solar is putting out.
How simple / easy is it to switch back & forth between tariffs - e.g. from IOF to a tariff that gives cheap overnight electricity. And, that still allows me to export excess solar?
It’s a bit of a pain and usually takes a few days, but I’m like an abused partner, I keep going back to the intelligent tariff thinking “this time it will be different”.
1 Like
Could you disconnect your AIO from octopus, toggle winter mode on and reconnect it?
FYI, I have a Giv HY3.6 Gen.3 Inverter, along with 9.5KWh Gen.2 Battery (not an AIO). My experience of attempting to make any changes to my GE system, lead me to expect IOF to ‘cancel’ WBC, if I were to set it.
That said, IOF (still a Beta product?) seems to be evolving - I had banged-on at length on various fora (inc. this one!) about some of the IOF Remote Commands causing my Inverter to fall-over (repeated “Enable Eco Mode [OFF]” commands, in particular). Despite raising this with Octopus and GivEnergy over a year ago, with both parties telling me to contact the other party(!), nothing was done. Suddenly (early December 2025, IIRC), the “Enable Eco Mode [OFF]” messages disappeared… If you monitor (graph) things like Battery Charge / Discharge over the months, you’ll see that IOF adopts evolving ‘patterns’ - typically, seasonally-related. Comparing those patterns (e.g. Summer 2024 / Summer 2025), you can see that the patterns are different (evolving).
I have to say that I’ve quite enjoyed the ride, to date (despite some frustrations), and having stuck with it through three Winters, I’d be sad to abandon it!
Any road up, the worst of the cold snap seems to be over (what a stupid thing to predict!).