GivEnergy Battery with Intelligent Octopus Go

[invictus1980]

Hello. I'm new to Intelligent Octopus Go. I have a Ohme charger and GivEnergy battery. I've read about people setting the GivEnergy battery to charge/discharge at certain times eg. charge off-peak overnight and discharge 4pm-7pm.

I can't find any instructions of how to do that and wonder if the smart people of this forum could point me in the right direction?

 

[Jomarkh]

Hi and welcome to the forum.
I have a similar set up, I charge the house battery between 2330-0530. I don't discharge the battery unless there is a savings session as I don't think it worth the extra stress on the battery for a few quid.

 

[Bam Bam]

Hello. I'm new to Intelligent Octopus Go. I have a Ohme charger and GivEnergy battery. I've read about people setting the GivEnergy battery to charge/discharge at certain times eg. charge off-peak overnight and discharge 4pm-7pm.

I can't find any instructions of how to do that and wonder if the smart people of this forum could point me in the right direction?

Do you have the Givenergy App and/or the in-browser dashboard? You log in with the details your installer set up for you.

It is probably easier on the app - go to settings.

On the web portal if you go to inverter settings you can set up charge and discharge:

At this time of year I only discharge for 60 or 90 minutes in the peak times because we get hardly any solar and also our current tariff doesn't have a peak time price premium.

 

[Bam Bam]

Do you have a hybrid inverter or the all-in-one?

Here are some video explainers about using the Givenergy app (which is very intuitive):

 

[invictus1980]

Thanks so much guys!

 

[invictus1980]

As you said, the app is actually really intuitive but as I'm here I realised there may be a bug - unrelated to my earlier question.

The bug is that the app is no longer showing any grid usage. It's used to show and I haven't changed anything so I wonder if something has gone awry. I hope it's just a problem with the app and not an actual change in energy flow eg. the grid might have started going through the battery instead of directly to the home. I wonder if this is something you might have come across?

 

[Bam Bam]

As you said, the app is actually really intuitive but as I'm here I realised there may be a bug - unrelated to my earlier question.

The bug is that the app is no longer showing any grid usage. It's used to show and I haven't changed anything so I wonder if something has gone awry. I hope it's just a problem with the app and not an actual change in energy flow eg. the grid might have started going through the battery instead of directly to the home. I wonder if this is something you might have come across?

I did have an issue like this where the fuse for the inverter had tripped in the consumer unit and the inverter was islanded from the house and grid.

However, your inverter seems to be running the house so does that mean you are in some sort of backup mode?

In a way that might be what you want, or what the installer thought you wanted - everything runs off solar.

Hard to say what is going on but check the other tabs too and if you can't work out the issue then maybe let Givenergy know, or your installer if they are local.

 

[invictus1980]

You're a genius! It was the fuse that had tripped

 

[invictus1980]

Bam Bam, one more for you, hope you can help! Although we managed to get the battery charging overnight along with the intelligent octopus time, the discharging schedule is not working at all. Have you encountered this before? I attached some images to show that the battery does charge overnight, but it starts discharging before 6am (the schedule I've set for it to start discharging). Basically it's charging early in the night and discharging in the same off-peak window (aside from the EV, I have a heat pump so I'm using energy during the night at a time that I would like the battery to be filled instead of used)

The screenshots show that at 2am it's 90% charged, at 4am it's already discharging and used up a lot of battery, by 6am it's completely depleted.

 

[Bam Bam]

Bam Bam, one more for you, hope you can help! Although we managed to get the battery charging overnight along with the intelligent octopus time, the discharging schedule is not working at all. Have you encountered this before? I attached some images to show that the battery does charge overnight, but it starts discharging before 6am (the schedule I've set for it to start discharging). Basically it's charging early in the night and discharging in the same off-peak window (aside from the EV, I have a heat pump so I'm using energy during the night at a time that I would like the battery to be filled instead of used)

The screenshots show that at 2am it's 90% charged, at 4am it's already discharging and used up a lot of battery, by 6am it's completely depleted.

Quite a tough question.

Is the issue that there is unwanted discharge from battery to car during the night?

In general I would say you should firstly make sure you've got the battery set to full charge at all times during the off peak period. That should cover the problem for the usual period.

I guess your problem will be that the car charging will sometimes happen at times outside the standard off peak window and you can't anticipate these in advance. The battery will see a load during those times and attempt to meet it.

I had this happen when Octopus had a free electricity window. I charged the car but it took it from the battery because it wasn't set to full charge during that time window.

I suppose the ideal would be that Octopus would change the settings on your inverter at the same time as they change the settings on the EVSE. You could ask if they would do that - they do have integration for Octopus Flux after all so you could give Octopus access via the app.

I don't use the 'discharge' function myself because it didn't seem to make any difference to anything, perhaps due to my other settings like 'cover house load.'

I assume you don't have a Givenergy EVSE [you said Ohme above].

Sorry that is a very limited solution. I would contact Octopus and maybe Givenergy and also check out the Givenergy forums as there are more experts on there.

 

[invictus1980]

I left the EV unplugged this week to ensure it wasn't interfering. The app is intuitive so I think the discharge schedule is set appropriately (ie to not discharge during off-peak hours) but it's just not working. I will attempt to contact Givenergy. Thank you once again.

 

[Everest]

I'm fascinated how much solar you have - 231kWh of generation in two weeks, at this time of year, is impressive!

And puzzled how you can be drawing so much from the battery, if there is no incoming energy from grid to home to charge batteries up?

 

[Akleman]

I suppose the ideal would be that Octopus would change the settings on your inverter at the same time as they change the settings on the EVSE. You could ask if they would do that - they do have integration for Octopus Flux after all so you could give Octopus access via the app.

There is a workaround but it does need a bit of extra kit - we have it working. There is an API available for GivEnergy on their website, so you can automate the charge settings to charge whenever the car charges outside the standard cheap rate. There are lots of hardware options. We do it via a piece of home automation software called OpenHAB. In generic terms you need something to measure the current going to the charger (ie some sort of current sensing clamp) that can then send commands to the GivEnergy system via the API. If anybody is interested I can either DM some more details.

 

[Rolfe]

I had a fight with GivEnergy over Christmas and New Year. Early evening on Friday 20th December both the web site and the app logged me out and wouldn't let me back in. I phoned and emailed, but was told everyone was on a fortnight's holiday so hard luck.

I always set my battery to export in the evening, timing it manually so it empties at or just after 11.30. I wasn't able to change the settings until someone finally answered an email on 2nd January, and told me the solution instantly. Not a happy bunny here, lousy service for an energy company. The net result was that while I was away over Christmas the export was starting nearly an hour too late - and these pennies add up. Then on Ne'erday when I was cooking a meal for guests and I had the lowest solar generation I've seen all winter (360 watt-hours for the day, I think), it transpired that the battery ran out at 9.30. But since I couldn't get into the app I didn't have any opportunity to take evasive action.