MG4, Zappi and Octopus Intelligent Go

[mikgle]

Energy companies aren't exactly known for their benevolence so may end up easier for them to scrap the compatible chargers and just go back to APIs.

I would hope Octopus are different, they do have several benevolent policies eg electric blankets they give out..

 

[Rolfe]

I emailed Octopus about this on 2nd Nov.
"
Hi,


I assumed that car charging scheduled outside the 7p window meant
only charging was at that rate. Someone has suggested to me that, say
Octopus scheduled to charge between 20:30 and 22:00, that the whole
house gets cheap(7p) rate. Which is correct please?"

They replied on 4th Nov.

"Thank you for your question!


To clarify, with your Intelligent Octopus Go tariff, the household energy benefits from the off-peak rate of 7p/kWh during the scheduled smart charging window, which is typically between 11:30pm and 05:30am.


If we schedule smart charging outside of this window, such as between 20:30 and 22:00, the energy used to charge your EV will indeed be charged at the 7p rate. However, any energy consumed in the household during that time will be charged at your standard peak rate.


If you have any further questions or need more assistance, feel free to reach out!


Kind regards,


Travis
Energy Specialist @ Octopus Energy"

I had a similar exchange many months ago. It didn't seem to be true then. My impression of Octopus from that exchange was that many of their staff, including Greg, don't know how their own system works. I had a lot of trouble getting an answer to my question (which wasn't about that) and had three different answers from five different people.

 

[GaryMG4]

A good case of using AI for monitoring..

They do have some kind of filtering in place, 6 months ago if smart charge gave you a bonus hour or two it would be an extra day before the estimated price would show on the app (at full price) then another day or so before it was corrected down include the extra 7p slots. I currently have 3 days 'pending' probably due to them being high consumption charges (brought about by signing up for greener nights and therefore doing less longer charges), the oldest of these has been pending for almost 2 weeks.

 

[Les burrows]

There is no way Octopus can monitor where the electricity is going within the schedule time slots,the can only control the on/off functions of the Evse.

This is how people are able to play the systems and switch on heavy use appliances during the same period of time, i have been guilty of this myself I hold my hands up, by running a tumble dryer while the car is charging but on my bil/print out from Octopus there are not 2 or more different charges within the same time periods all electricity used in that time slot all are 7p no matter what time of day it is or where the power has gone to I can assure you of that.
Les

 

[LenEV2016]

it's people putting larger % amounts than the car needs or can take, on the charger app, so that they get periods out with the core hours and use heavy use appliances on them then they car stops charging far sooner than IOG expects during the core hours