Just trying to pick the collective brain to see if anyone else has figured this out ?
I have had a 3.6kw hybrid and a 8.2 battery & panels for a few years now and no major issues. I recently bought an EV so I have switched from Intelligent Octopus Flux to Intelligent Octopus Go. Part of the reason for getting IOG was the 6hrs cheap rate overnight charging which I could use for the home battery also.
I have also found that during the middle of winter my 8.2 KWh battery is often draining to zero before the next charging period comes around, so with batteries becoming slightly cheaper Iāve just bought an additional 9.5 battery that will hopefully be fitted on Thursday.
Part of the payback calculation for the new second battery is that Iāll now be able to do some energy trading during the rest of the year (not winter)
On my import tariff IOG I can charge at around 8p (Including tax and losses) and export later on IOF export rate at 31.85p.
So hereās the main question, I can set my timed overnight charge period and ECO mode for the rest of the time no problem, but if I also enter a timed export rate for later in the day it disables ECO mode ?
Is there any way to have overnight timed charge, eco during the day and a timed export slot later in the day ?
Iāve tried it in the phone app and also in the āremote controlā section of the cloud, neither seems to work.
Is there some way around this problem ? I canāt see why GE would allow eco and charge, but not eco and export ?
How will you combine IOG with Intelligent Flux export? I donāt think this would be possible, unless Iām missing something.
To the best of my knowledge, the best Octopus export rate available in combination with IOG is Outgoing Octopus, which has just dropped to 12p/kWh, making the payback from battery arbitrage almost uneconomical (~3p/kWh when round-trip losses are taken into account).
If you do still want to go down the route of arbitrage, then automation via something like āpredbatā (thereās a turnkey cloud version as well now) is your best bet, unless you really are up for manually babysitting it with a calculator every dayā¦
thereās a mistake in your logic, the phrase āexport tariff IOFā
Flux and Intelligent Octopus Flux are combined import and export tariffs, you cannot pick and choose which parts you have, you have to have them both, or nothing.
If you are on IOG for your import then you can only be on the flat rate outgoing tariff (15p now, 12p from 1st March) or agile outgoing. You cannot remain on IOF export.
It could well be that Octopus have not moved your outgoing tariff and youāre still seeing that you are on IOF outgoing, but this is not allowed and eventually Octopus will realise and will rebill you on the flat rate. This happened to me, and has happened to others, when I moved from Flux to Agile import they didnāt change the outgoing, then 6 months later they rebilled it all.
Best thing is to tell them the mistake and get it fixed on your account, itāll get changed at some point in the future anyway
Yes, It would appear that Octopus have forgotten to move over my export tariff when they moved my import one. Since mid October I have been showing IOG as my import tariff and Intelligent flux as my export one. I didnāt realise that it was a mistake by Octopus. I just assumed that it was OK as thatās just the way it was after they moved me to IOG.
I think, as you say, Iād better let them know about it. Iāll drop them an email this afternoon.
Even so, Iād still like to be able to do timed export without messing up the Eco setting. Iāve just done a quick google for āPredbatā and it looks like Iād have to have it running on a PC thatās running 24 / 7 ? Seems like a lot of hassle if Iāve read it right. ?
Is there not a simple way of setting this up in the GE cloud ? The settings are there already but why would turning on timed export disable the eco mode when turning on timed import doesnāt ?
OK, so itās possible to do it by a 3rd party service, (Thanks for the info) - but am I correct in thinking that GE wonāt let you do it yourself - and why on earth would they give you the button on the app and also in remote control if it then screws up the Eco setting when you use it ? I canāt see the logic here.
Or - is it something in my particular setup thatās causing this ?
Does everyone else have the same issue ?
Is there a way to make it work just within the GE cloud or app ?
I donāt know if this will help but my system setup does something like what you want.
I have eco mode on and timed charge for the usual early hours. Thereās no timed export set. Iāve set my ābattery reserveā to 20%. So during the day the battery feeds the domestic load until battery is down to 20%.
In the āremote controlā settings, I have āDischarge 1ā settings timed at 17:00 to 19:00. The battery reserve then discharges to house/grid at allotted times (till it gets to 4%). By altering the reserve and discharge time settings you could play about with this behaviour.
Thanks for that Richard, it sounds like it might do the trick ;-) Iāll have a play around with those settings and see how it goes. Now that Iāve got my 2nd battery fitted earlier today I should have enough spare capacity to do something similar. Iāll report backā¦
On the tariff topic, after trying to switch my export tariff on the Octopus app yesterday and failing (I am on a fix with my import IOG, so it wouldnāt allow switching) - Iāve spoken to the helpdesk today and they got me switched in 2 mins. Iāve gone onto the standard flat rate outgoing for now, but if that settings trick ^^^^ works OK I may well go onto agile in a month or so when we get some more sunshine and then I can do a little evening exportingā¦
Just so you know. If you have a GE home charger this will NOT work with Octopus Intelligent Go. Octopus and their website say they can but after going around the houses with both companies GE confirmed its does NOT.
This means Octopus canāt control the charging and so you cannot be on Intelligent GO with the really cheap rate. Now they have to notice this and I am not sure how they will do this. They knew because I had been dealing with them and after a few weeks moved me to the Octopus GO. I then controlled the charging via the GE app its just was only for 5 hours and not as cheap.
I have a 13.5kW AIO and a Gen 3 hybrid inverter 5.0. I am on Intelligent Octopus Go and Outgoing Octopus export tariff. I use the Eco setting with a charge setting overnight and an export setting for late in the evening up to 23.30. I vary the start time of this export manually usually to suit the likely surplus charge available to export (we have a heat pump so in winter this is very little). It all works fine. I recently purchased Home Assistant Green to link my Ohme charger with the GivEnergy setup and this was quite easy so I may set up a routine to automatically set the export start time depending on available charge mid-evening.
I have an Ohme charger, and itās OK with the octopus tariff although it hasnāt been as reliable as I would like but thats another story.
There has also been an issue with it draining the house battery whenever IOG scheduled a charge outside of the normal 23:30 - 05:30 window, so Iāve mostly been granny charging the car during the normal cheap period instead, to save the hassle and my GE battery.
But Octopus have just announced that sometime in March they will be introducing a āScheduled hours only capā option, so that will be perfect for me.
Yes, I always delayed plugging in the EV until my battery was down to zero to avoid using it on the car with IOG. However with the routine I have set up to automatically charge the AIO if the IOG/Ohme starts charging I have overcome this problem. Now I try to get IOG to operate during the day to get the AIO recharged and running the heat pump into the evening.
As for IOG/Ohme, we have two EVās: the Porsche never has any issues but the Audi Q4 (ie VW id4 or Skoda Enyaq) is very unreliable, which seems to be a sensitivity to dynamic charging (no help from Audi, Ohme or Octopus on that one!).
What Geoffrey said is correct. However, you can set a timed charge and timed export (donāt use the timed discharge) whilst using Eco mode. Just beware that if you set a timed charge period the battery will not power your house during this time, even if it has hit 100% charge. Saying that it makes sense to use mains power during your off peak rate anyway.
If you set a timed discharge this will be the only time the battery will power your house. I think if you set this it disabled eco mode. I have never found a use for it.
I have always had timed discharge enabled, set to 05:00-00:00 (peak period of my tariff), and timed charge 00:00-05:00, both in tandem with Eco mode enabled. Manually disabling Eco mode causes my batteries to sit idle.
On a similar tip, Iām also wondering how best to set all solar production to be exported to the grid, now that the days are getting longer and my batteries are comfortably covering the dayās usageā¦
I think your set up is the same as just having a timed charge, with the only difference that your solar probably wonāt charge your battery during timed discharge, although i have never tried that.
I am not sure of you can stop your solar powering your house. What i do is fully charge my battery at off peak and then do a timed export later in the day to get paid for any spare battery power. This works for me as my off peak rate is lower than my export rate so similar to what you are trying to do.
Excess solar definitely does charge the batteries during the ātimed dischargeā period.
Itād be odd if it indeed wasnāt possible to configure all solar generation to be exported without covering house load; Iād have thought that this would be a pretty basic and fundamental use caseā¦
you can do it either way round, either using a timed discharge for the non-peak hours or just a charge for the peak hours. I personally wouldnāt use a timed discharge as @ectoplasmosis has done, its far simpler to just use a timed charge for the off peak period and leave the inverter in Eco mode for the rest of the time.
Timed discharge is really more useful if you have a 3-rate tariff such as Octopus Flux and you want to preserve the battery soc to a peak rate period and not letthe battery be used in the day time.
Also worth noting that timed discharge doesnāt work well for some of the older inverters