Hello, I have had installed 10 450 watt solar panels with the 9 kW GivEnergy battery and their string inverter. Very happy with the product. However, I have signed up for intelligent octopus flux import and export. This is giving me a smallish profit most days (independent of standing charges). What Puzzles me however, is that the battery, although controlled by octopus, has been left idle. This seems strange as it is a condition of the tariff to actually have a battery. I’m also confused by the fact that there is currently no nighttime cheap tariff from 2 am to 5 am. The octopus publicity states clearly that this tariff does have nighttime off peak and that octopus takes charge of your battery in order to maximise your savings. Obviously with import and export rates being matched, and with making plenty of solar, you could argue that the intervention of the battery might not make a huge difference in summer, as importing when the sun isn’t shining is balanced by the same rate of export at a different time (apart from peak import times - and peak import isn’t massively more expensive anyway).. Perhaps in Winter this tariff will start to use the battery. I have been in touch with Octopus and they assure me that the battery is under their control and working as it should. Certainly, if I give the battery any command, it is taken back over by Octopus within a few minutes– and left idling!! I wonder if other users are having their battery left idle or if I’m the subject of some as yet undiscovered or un acknowledged fault? Are others as confused as me? Being new to this game I am wondering whether I wouldn’t be better off with Wonderwatt coupled to agile octopus, though the export rates are much lower.
This is the very reason i didnt sign up to the “intelligent” and chose just the Flux option (twas already an Octopus customer), as i simply dont trust it and i wanted control. We had our installed at the end of Jan and after the dust has settled, we haven’t looked back. If its what you really want then im sure it will get sorted. But give it some thought about changing to flux. Others will be along with their help soon…
It should charge up during the day if sunny or overnight if it’s not going to be sunny.
It should then export somewhere around 4.30 pm onwards until it’s at 20% or 7pm whichever comes first.
The off peak period is 7pm to 4pm. There is an off peak, but not a super off peak overnight.
If it’s not actually charging then maybe there is a problem. Hopefully it’ll sort itself out.
During off peak there’s not much point drawing from the battery due to the round trip losses.
Consider the grid to be your large battery instead. You can borrow from it and pay it back later for the same price (or a bit more during the evening peak).
I’ve been monitoring flux intelligent flux and agile tariffs since April and for my usage intelligent flux is the cheapest option.
If your generation per month is 1.4x your usage (or more) then it’ll probably be worth being on the tariff - until the autumn, then switch off it.
Tim and Kat’s Green walk (YouTube) talks about the ratios and they have some spreadsheets too.
My energy bill so far this month is -£9 (that is electric and a little bit of gas and both standing charges). E.g. octopus owes me money overall.
My energy bill for last month was around -£35.
This is my last 7 days on IOF,
Over night charge if it’s going to be less sunny, late morning charge if sunny forecast.
A bit of solar ‘clipping’ charge during the day taking the battery the last 3-5% to full..
5pm-7pm discharge to ~20%
My COSY/Export vs IOF break point is 1.05* gen to use.
Last month I exported
Electricity:
27 Apr 2025 - 26 May 2025⚡896.83 kWh
We credited your account £231.11
Imported:
Electricity
24 Apr 2025 - 26 May 2025⚡341.82 kWh
We charged your account £92.99
A gain of £138.12 including the £14.50 standing charge
I had a similar issue at one point and found that an RCD in the fusebox had tripped meaning that the battery wasn’t being used at all. When I reset the fuse (just flipped the switch) it stirred back into action. Check your fusebox (the solar one not the usual one) and if you find the RCD has tripped then try resetting it. My battery now works just as everyone else has commented.
If you’ve only just joined octopus, it can take a while for Octopus to set up your smart tariff.
Before then, you’ll be on their standard tariff.
Apparently they all do this. It can take up to 6 weeks but they say they try to do it as fast as poss.
(One or of our hold ups when we put in a2nd pv system & battery was transferring our export from OVO to Eon, it took 4 months!) but it meant I learnt a lot about transferring between utility providers over those 4 months!
As Dave says above, “upto” 6 weeks they Octopus said to me and we’ll let you know (via email i presume) when its in place. I never had communication but only when i went into my account and saw the export page had appeared. So went back through the viewable history to see when it had actually been commissioned.
Regarding the night time cheap tariff, in the case of the intelligent flux tariff, this is referring to the peak period between 4pm and 7 pm when import and export rates are both more than the day rate (rest of the time). This is the period that it should be fully discharging your battery down to 20%, the standard lower limit used to keep to the standard recommended 80% dischatge limit (100%_20%).
How could you export so much in 1 month??? I exported just over 1000 in 9 months…
We only use 350-360kWh a month, so when we get 900kWh of generation, and some buy cheap, sell high, we manage to export plenty
Hello - after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between solar-aftercare@octopusenergy.services and the excellent tech help line at GivEnergy my battery is finally doing something! It was clear that octopus did in fact have control of my battery even though it sat idle for a whole month almost. (I could verify this by giving the battery a command on the GivEnergy app, and finding that octopus almost immediately turned it off again!). On my second call to the ever patient GivEnergy, in response to Octopus‘s suggestion that my system was at fault probably (which clearly it wasn’t as GivEnergy were themselves able to send commands to my battery), GivEnergy suggested I request Octopus “set up an API that turns on eco-mode.” Whilst Eco mode is not in fact enabled in a way that I can visibly see on the app, this request did result in my battery coming to life! Over the last two or three days it has been charging early morning and discharging for a short while during what appears to be a morning peak (0630-0700) and acting similarly later in the day charging during the day and discharging between 1600 and 1900. GivEnergy did also suggest I ask Octopus to explain how their tariff is meant to work relating to battery charge and discharge. Whilst Octopus haven’t put anything in writing or verbally one can now see the way it operates. It appears to me that Intelligent Octopus Flux provides the customer with a very good export rate mirroring the import rate (and no other tariff does this) in exchange for allowing Octopus to funnel our battery power to the grid at peak times, ‘for the common good’ as it were. It has taken a lot of persistence to get my battery working, and I have to admit that it would help if Octopus were a little bit more open about how the tariff is supposed to operate. They seem to cover their own backs by saying that it’s experimental! Having put this system in in my late 60s, I doubt I’ll ever recoup the investment fully, but it’s providing some diversion, and lowering the cost of running our much loved electric Aga….