Free Octopus Electricity

[DaevM]

And here it was again today for a couple of hours 7-9a.m.
Ah, Octopus .
Already got my head round getting up at 0645 on a Sunday ( !!??!! ) to get it all going. ASHP heating and hot water, car, electric underfloor heating, domestic battery.

All going well, unfortunately Octopus OCPP overrode my bump start and created a schedule, 0705-0730,0730-1200 . This then proceeded to stop charging at 0730 but not start up again (!). Until I got up and went and disconnected/reconnected the cable physically it wouldn't restart charging. Lost 20 mins of free charging time .
I've had this happen before mid OCPP charging schedule when there's an unnecessary break, i.e finish previous slot 0730, start next slot 0730. Mostly it's all good and gets on with it, resulting in happy me... but occasionally. .

Anyways got a fivers worth of free leccy so well worth getting up early on a day off and assisting with balancing the grid

 

[rjhfandclf]

And here it was again today for a couple of hours 7-9a.m.
Ah, Octopus .
Already got my head round getting up at 0645 on a Sunday ( !!??!! ) to get it all going. ASHP heating and hot water, car, electric underfloor heating, domestic battery.

All going well, unfortunately Octopus OCPP overrode my bump start and created a schedule, 0705-0730,0730-1200 . This then proceeded to stop charging at 0730 but not start up again (!). Until I got up and went and disconnected/reconnected the cable physically it wouldn't restart charging. Lost 20 mins of free charging time .
I've had this happen before mid OCPP charging schedule when there's an unnecessary break, i.e finish previous slot 0730, start next slot 0730. Mostly it's all good and gets on with it, resulting in happy me... but occasionally. .

Anyways got a fivers worth of free leccy so well worth getting up early on a day off and assisting with balancing the grid

Personally, I’m all for simplicity – and an easy long-retired life! These sessions don’t always save much, but this time really did – with no early rises or anything other than a couple of pre-settings the night before. I worked out a while ago that it is far better to keep things separate rather than hoping that different product ranges will always happily talk to each other:

• Car charging needs are fairly low, so always set charge through the car’s app, despite Myenergi Zappi wanting to control everything from solar down. Thus, set car for fast charge (6.8 kWh) from 07:00 – 09:00.
• ASHP is balanced perfectly now via Octopus Cosy, so don’t mess with as always heating at this time.
• Some welcome solar this a.m., but not enough that early to lose out.
• 9 kW Battery is always forced to charge via Cosy's cheap hours between 04:00 - 07:00, so simply extended (temporarily) the forced charge by 2 hours to 09:00 via the online GivEnergy inverter settings.
• Got up at normal Sunday time to switch on oven to bake some croissants; toasted bread and made coffee etc. Put on dishwasher.
• At 09:00, checked EV stopped, changed inverter setting back to 07:00 ... all done!

Couldn’t find any more load to add, but drawing continuously at over 10 kWh for the two hours, so all-in-all should have made around £5, as normally the battery would be discharging to cover this time.

 

[johnb80]

And here it was again today for a couple of hours 7-9a.m.
Ah, Octopus .
Already got my head round getting up at 0645 on a Sunday ( !!??!! ) to get it all going. ASHP heating and hot water, car, electric underfloor heating, domestic battery.

All going well, unfortunately Octopus OCPP overrode my bump start and created a schedule, 0705-0730,0730-1200 . This then proceeded to stop charging at 0730 but not start up again (!). Until I got up and went and disconnected/reconnected the cable physically it wouldn't restart charging. Lost 20 mins of free charging time .
I've had this happen before mid OCPP charging schedule when there's an unnecessary break, i.e finish previous slot 0730, start next slot 0730. Mostly it's all good and gets on with it, resulting in happy me... but occasionally. .

Anyways got a fivers worth of free leccy so well worth getting up early on a day off and assisting with balancing the grid

Change to Tomato and you'd save £5 on standing charge alone, add to that the 5p / 13.3p and 23.2p kWh rates and youre on a real winner and.......... no need to get up early

 

[GaryMG4]

Change to Tomato and you'd save £5 on standing charge alone, add to that the 5p / 13.3p and 23.2p kWh rates and youre on a real winner and.......... no need to get up early

Ah but we can't resist 'free', I dread to think how much I spent at Sainsbury's on coffee/breakfast and extra shopping whilst charging my car for 'free'. Fortunately when they installed their Kempower chargers they removed the free Podpoints!

 

[Bam Bam]

Well we topped up the car fine.

However, I'm annoyed with Givenergy because it seems to have drained the battery to do so!

Have the option ticked 'do not discharge battery to the car' so I don't see how this happened.

I've sent them an email because I guess this option does not do what I thought it did.

 

[Chrisjk]

Hi, just checked and on Agile we’ve used 46 kw since midnight and octopus have paid us 0.26p for the privilege

 

[Bam Bam]

Hi, just checked and on Agile we’ve used 46 kw since midnight and octopus have paid us 0.26p for the privilege

I was warned off Agile on the basis that there can be extended expensive days. Did that happen last winter?

 

[johnb80]

Hi, just checked and on Agile we’ve used 46 kw since midnight and octopus have paid us 0.26p for the privilege

Swings and roundabouts, I prefer nice straight and level flight with no surprises. Definitely a difference between Tomato and Octopus Agile, I used 61.2 kWh costing me £3.06 so you win!

 

[rjhfandclf]

Some welcome solar this a.m., but not enough that early to lose out.

... a mildly interesting PS to this was that with the battery kept fully charged at grid expense during these hours, the knock-on effect was that the later reasonable autumn sunshine gave us around 10 kWh of power, so not only covered the ASHP and lunchtime usage, but also left a further £1 in surplus export tariffs. At the same time, with the battery at a ca 50% higher SOC by the next charging session, it cost somewhat less to re-charge too. All small stuff, but feels good - and all adds to the kitty.

 

[rjhfandclf]

Well we topped up the car fine.

However, I'm annoyed with Givenergy because it seems to have drained the battery to do so!

Have the option ticked 'do not discharge battery to the car' so I don't see how this happened.

I've sent them an email because I guess this option does not do what I thought it did.

Just a thought (while I obviously don't know your set-up in any way), after I recently updated the Inverter hardware (to D0.309-A0.309), I had major problems with the battery not responding to any charge settings, so continuously discharging to flat - having worked perfectly up till then. After much ineffective fiddling and tweeking, I eventually contacted support at GivEnergy, and have to say, I got a really helpful technician (by name of Jacob Smith) who reset various things remotely, which seemed to have been changed with the update, and also advised a total re-entry of all the charge and other settings. That all worked, but took a few days to find the issue his end and sort it ... but he kept onto it for me. Might be worth trying even if you haven't updated?

 

[Bam Bam]

Just a thought (while I obviously don't know your set-up in any way), after I recently updated the Inverter hardware (to D0.309-A0.309), I had major problems with the battery not responding to any charge settings, so continuously discharging to flat - having worked perfectly up till then. After much ineffective fiddling and tweeking, I eventually contacted support at GivEnergy, and have to say, I got a really helpful technician (by name of Jacob Smith) who reset various things remotely, which seemed to have been changed with the update, and also advised a total re-entry of all the charge and other settings. That all worked, but took a few days to find the issue his end and sort it ... but he kept onto it for me. Might be worth trying even if you haven't updated?

Thanks for sharing that.

I'll bear that in mind, though, when Givenergy get back to me.

Looks like we are on D0.909-A0.909, last updated in July.

Do you recommend holding off on the update, then?

 

[rjhfandclf]

Thanks for sharing that.

I'll bear that in mind, though, when Givenergy get back to me.

Looks like we are on D0.909-A0.909, last updated in July.

Do you recommend holding off on the update, then?

I don't recognise that numbering sequence, but suspect that yours might be a G2* hybrid inverter? A quick Google produces a Givenergy page (here) that lists about half a dozen upgrades from yours (at bottom of page!) - but I am not qualified to advise. If you go to the inverter page on your web account (PC best?) you can click on the software tab to check the current inverter s/w version and whether it recommends an update ... or ask the support people for advice, perhaps?

*Ed. Sorry - left out the all-important 'G2' ... mine is G3 so different version series.

 

[Bam Bam]

I don't recognise that numbering sequence, but suspect that yours might be a G2* hybrid inverter? A quick Google produces a Givenergy page (here) that lists about half a dozen upgrades from yours (at bottom of page!) - but I am not qualified to advise. If you go to the inverter page on your web account (PC best?) you can click on the software tab to check the current inverter s/w version and whether it recommends an update ... or ask the support people for advice, perhaps?

*Ed. Sorry - left out the all-important 'G2' ... mine is G3 so different version series.

Yeah, turns out it was updated in 2023, so there are quite a few updates out there!

 

[Rolfe]

The sunny-day sessions are no use to me but this might have been slightly handy. If only I hadn't been getting ready to leave Lewes in Sussex at that time, and the house set to use as little as possible...

 

[Turkish]

Depends how deep you want to go down the rabbit hole but Home Assistant means I can cover all bases even when I am not at home and automations like Predbat means I rarely touch Giv or MyEnergi app.