Octopus Go Intelligent new 6 hours charging limit

[EVsince2016]

I just received an email stating Octopus Go Intelligent will now be limited to 6 hours a day at cheap rates

"
Thanks for choosing Intelligent Octopus Go to power your home and charge your car.

Since we launched Octopus Go over 7 years ago, we’ve invested millions in unlocking the power of smart electricity, and passing on savings to customers like you who are literally driving the clean energy transition forward.

Intelligent Octopus Go has always offered super-cheap power for your whole home every night and smart charging to let you charge cleaner for less.

To keep our off-peak rates as low as possible, by the end of January we will be updating Intelligent Octopus Go to automatically apply the 6 hour limit for super-cheap smart-charging.

Around 80% of Intelligent Octopus Go charging sessions are already using less than the 6 hours mentioned in our terms – which is good, because scheduling more inevitably drives up the cost as we're charging when wholesale costs and grid stress are higher.


The fundamental benefits of Intelligent Octopus Go remain the same:

• Intelligent Octopus Go customers will continue to receive 6 hours of off-peak electricity for your whole home between 11:30pm and 5:30am. Guaranteed, reliable, schedule-friendly off-peak savings.
• Plus up to 6 hours of super-cheap smart charging every 24 hours – these may be during your home’s off-peak hours (11:30pm - 05:30am), outside those times, or a mix of both.
• Whenever the 6 hours smart charging is scheduled outside your off-peak window, the electricity for your whole home will also be at the discounted rates.
• If we need to schedule more than 6 hours to reach your target charge, only the first 6 hours of charging will be at the discounted rate – extra half-hours will be charged at your Bump rate (even if they’re scheduled during the off-peak window).

Plugging in your vehicle daily (when possible) makes Intelligent Octopus Go cheaper and reduces the amount of smart-charging hours you need overnight.

Tens of thousands of Intelligent Octopus Go customers are already plugging in daily. But all Intelligent Octopus Go customers benefit from more cars being available to the grid more of the time – so if you can, please do.

If you want to read more about this change head over to our blog.

Thanks again for trusting us to power your wheels – and for helping to harness the power of abundant clean energy to lower bills and create a fairer energy system.

Love and power,

Pete Miller
Co-founder & Head of Customer Experience"

 

[EVsince2016]

My problem with this, is not the 6 hours of time limit but how it works with solar.

Currently when charging on solar, Octopus often choose to allocate charging slots when I'm on solar.

The indication is that if I charge on solar all day, I will no longer get the cheap rate at night on Go.

Any idea?

 

[raynard]

My problem with this, is not the 6 hours of time limit but how it works with solar.

Currently when charging on solar, Octopus often choose to allocate charging slots when I'm on solar.

The indication is that if I charge on solar all day, I will no longer get the cheap rate at night on Go.

Any idea?

Why aren't you exporting your solar ? Then charging in the six hour period

 

[EVsince2016]

I'm on deemed 50% export but use nearly all of it, so profit

 

[JohnV6]

Pause the charging to suit you export, or plug in late pm. I do this as Octopus give me 15p to export so I'm better off selling it.

 

[LenEV2016]

Too many people gaming the system as always the greedy ruin it for everyone else.
Won't massively impact me but people with cars with massive batteries will probably need to plug in and plan charges more to get big amounts added.
Extra slots are now a thing of the past

 

[GaryMG4]

My problem with this, is not the 6 hours of time limit but how it works with solar.

Currently when charging on solar, Octopus often choose to allocate charging slots when I'm on solar.

The indication is that if I charge on solar all day, I will no longer get the cheap rate at night on Go.

Any idea?

turn off smart charging while on solar, that way you won't be using any slots?

 

[Gomev]

The fundamental benefits of Intelligent Octopus Go remain the same:

• Intelligent Octopus Go customers will continue to receive 6 hours of off-peak electricity for your whole home between 11:30pm and 5:30am. Guaranteed, reliable, schedule-friendly off-peak savings.
• Plus up to 6 hours of super-cheap smart charging every 24 hours – these may be during your home’s off-peak hours (11:30pm - 05:30am), outside those times, or a mix of both.
• Whenever the 6 hours smart charging is scheduled outside your off-peak window, the electricity for your whole home will also be at the discounted rates.
• If we need to schedule more than 6 hours to reach your target charge, only the first 6 hours of charging will be at the discounted rate – extra half-hours will be charged at your Bump rate (even if they’re scheduled during the off-peak window).

Is this ambiguous ?
Bullet 1, guaranteed the 6 hours overnight.
Bullet 2, PLUS up to 6 hours every 24 hours......

So are they restricting it to the overnight, or to 6 hours sometime as has been said and it sort of reads like that or is it 12 hours as it says ?

I'm not on IGO at the moment but may want to be in the future and this is confusing.

 

[JohnV6]

I agree but I assume it is 6 hrs per day. So if it charges from 09 00 to 15 00 you don't get the low price from 23 30 to 05 30

 

[LenEV2016]

Is this ambiguous ?
Bullet 1, guaranteed the 6 hours overnight.
Bullet 2, PLUS up to 6 hours every 24 hours......

So are they restricting it to the overnight, or to 6 hours sometime as has been said and it sort of reads like that or is it 12 hours as it says ?

I'm not on IGO at the moment but may want to be in the future and this is confusing.

It's six hours ev charging max a day, made up of slots in or outwith the guaranteed 6 hrs window.
Your get the 2330-0530 hrs slots for your house even if your 6 hrs EV charging was made up with slots from outwith.

The only difference is your extra slots don't give you more cheap charging on top of the 6hrs 2330-0530hrs period

This has been brought about to stop the gaming of the system that was going on, all the people adding high % of charge (even though they didn't need it) just so they got extra on top of the six hours they were guaranteed.

As always the greedy ruin it for the many

 

[Gomev]

It's six hours ev charging max a day, made up of slots in or outwith the guaranteed 6 hrs window.
Your get the 2330-0530 hrs slots for your house even if your 6 hrs EV charging was made up with slots from outwith.

The only difference is your extra slots don't give you more cheap charging on top of the 6hrs 2330-0530hrs period

Light bulb moment... By George I think I've got it

I still think that is an extremely badly worded statement and the use of the word PLUS, which normally means in addition.

So to confirm cheap electricity for the house between 11:30pm and 5:30am (the whole purpose of an EV tariff of course) and by the way we will charge you car for you as well for a max of 6 hours which may or not be within that period.

 

[LenEV2016]

On the app they give some scenarios.

I’m not sure I understand. Can you share some examples of how it works?
×
Imagine you need a 5-hour charge (that’s what most people need).

Scenario 1: we schedule all of the 5 hours outside of the off-peak period (eg. between 2:00-4:00pm, and between 8:00pm-11:00pm)

You get off-peak rates for your home and for your car between 2:00-4:00pm and between 8:00pm-11:00pm
You also get off-peak rates for your home between 11:30pm and 5:30am (you always do)

Scenario 2: we schedule some of the 5 hours outside of the off-peak period (eg. between 8:00pm-11:00pm) and some during the off-peak period (between 12:00am-2:00am)

You get off-peak rates for your home and for your car between 8:00pm-11:00pm and between 12:00am-2:00am.
You also get off-peak rates for your home between 11:30pm and 5:30am (you always do)

Scenario 3: we schedule all of the 5 hours during the off-peak period (eg. between 12:00am-5:00am)

You get off-peak rates for your home and for your car between 12:00am-5:00am
You also get off-peak rate for your home between 11:30pm-12am and 5am-5:30am, as always
What if the charging session lasts more than 6 hours, for example 7 hours?

That’s unusual, but if that’s the case, the first 6 hours of smart charging will be at off-peak, and the last one billed at peak rate regardless of what time of the day it is scheduled.

 

[Rolfe]

Honestly, I'm just going to set the occasional Smart charging session for say 50% starting at 11.30 and ending at 5.30 to keep on board with the requirement to use it sometimes, and charge on the Zappi schedule the rest of the time.

I think they're going to find that a lot of people are going to be doing that, and that they're not going to get many takers for any surplus they have outwith that period.

 

[mg4mc]

Honestly, I'm just going to set the occasional Smart charging session for say 50% starting at 11.30 and ending at 5.30 to keep on board with the requirement to use it sometimes, and charge on the Zappi schedule the rest of the time.

That's a bit contradictory isn't it? If it is Smart Charging then you have no control of the "when" so you cannot force it to be within 11:30 to 5:30?

 

[Rolfe]

Yes, you can. I did it last night.

 

[EVsince2016]

But back to my issue, charging off solar when slots allocated.

 

[Rolfe]

Don't leave Smart charging on when you don't want the car to charge.

 

[EVsince2016]

Don't leave Smart charging on when you don't want the car to charge.

Except that is a breach of the terms & conditions!

 

[Rolfe]

It's not though. You only have to do a Smart charge once a month to fulfil the T&Cs, and they're not absolutely strict about that.

Come on, they can't force you to plug your car in when you don't want to! How would they even know you were at home? And they don't give you a switch to turn off Smart charging and then ban you from using it.

 

[LenEV2016]

It's not though. You only have to do a Smart charge once a month to fulfil the T&Cs, and they're not absolutely strict about that.

Come on, they can't force you to plug your car in when you don't want to! How would they even know you were at home? And they don't give you a switch to turn off Smart charging and then ban you from using it.

They will probably remove it at some point, it has been removed from the ohme app (as far as I can see)