Thanks Ian, a good summary. I had the same issues with my Zappi and VW ID.3 e.g. charging to full battery at peak rate straight after plugging in for the test charge. I changed to the Zappi integration a few weeks back and it’s far better controlled. The test charge is always 30 seconds and never fails. I had missed the subtle change from target charge to added charge though, so thanks for pointing that out. I wondered why I was always getting hours and hours of scheduled charging when the car only needed a small top-up.
Hi, thanks very much for a very informative video. Can I ask how you set the zappi to export available solar instead of charging the car whilst on eco+ mode?
Thanks for the comment! Eco+ is designed to charge the car from any excess solar. One option would be to set the Zappi to only charge the car if a certain amount is already being exported to the grid first by using the 'Export Margin' option in advanced settings. Using this feature means that only excess solar over the amount configured to go to the grid is diverted to the car. Hope this helps.
I have the same set up as you Ian, so if my car is set to 80% and I have 20% battery on the car currently , I set octopus to charge to add 80% what will I get?? Will the car charge to 100% or will it stop at 80% ? If it does stop at 80% then we could still use the Tesla to govern what charge we want into the car and just set the add charge upto 100%
Tried and tested last night, works exactly how I though it would, set my car to 90% told IOG to add 100% charge. Car stops at 90% 🙂 No need to try work out what percentage to add just set IOG to 100% and set your desired battery percentage in the car, happy days
Thanks for testing this out! My experience is exactly the same; when the target percentage set within the car is reached charging will stop even if the Octopus target percentage has not been met yet.
Awesome video thanks - was struggling to work this out and the supplier wasnt giving me the info i thought i sought - and here it is!! It is a bit daft saying add X% each time. i think they are doing this the wrong way around - we already set the charge by time, so it can work out from our battery level and solar charge what to do.
This was a great help as Octopus and me where getting nowhere fast! after a few minor stops and starts I am at the point where I will see if I get a charge at the scheduled time. Thanks for the heads up on the amount of charge I need to add, makes sense now. Thanks
Great video, which I followed and made the switch to the Zappi integration. But I wish I had watched it all the way through first, because that functionality change from target charge level in vehicle integration to target additional percentage in Zappi is a showstopper for me. I mean that is crazy. All I want to do is set a target for the range I need tomorrow, not do maths every evening. So I'll test it tonight just to see if it works, and switch back tomorrow. PS. Surely if I leave the Octopus integration as the vehicle one, I can just set the Zappi charger to EcoPlus if I want to 'foil' the Octopus Smart Charging, and leave the car ready to top up from surplus solar PV? What do you reckon?
PS. Belatedly realised why this is the case, as without access to the car the integration can't know its state of charge. Ideally they would grab both sets of login data (car+charge) and then allow you to choose which device is controlled.
@@MattParkins This is what I'm doing, as the Zappi integration seems far more than reliable than the Tesla one. When it hits the car's charge limit, it stops. I get a warning message on my Tesla app, which is no bother as I regard it like an alert that the car has charged. 👍
Thanks Ian. A couple of things. I had to start the Intelligent octopus again from Home Screen as adding the device in the app it wanted to scan a QR code which isn’t on the Zappi. It’s a bit annoying having to enter the add percentage which I’ll need to check each time I get home ready for the next day. Like you I read that incorrectly thinking it was charge limit. I have tried setting the charge amount at 50% which seems to ensure the charge doesn’t start outside the lower rate window. I’ll see how it goes. Thanks for the very useful video.
When octopus issues an early charge it can dump the contents of your home battery into the car. If this happens you may have to reset the charge time of your home battery .
Ian. Thanks for an excellent video. My configuration is like yours except I have a model Y rather than a 3. My only confusion is over the ‘Charge to add’ issue. Essentially I don’t want to do nightly adjustments but simply want it charged to 100% every night - set once and forget. Is that not possible?
Thank you for this video. Just changed over to IOG yesterday and failed to charge the MG4 last night (charge delayed displayed which maybe a car issue, will try again tonight). We also have the old Ioniq EV and was told (by Octopus) that the tariff is for one EV so might not work. Anyway it's a sunny Saturday afternoon and I plugged the Ioniq in and it's kicked in to charge and a schedule has popped up on the app. Great news! We have solar and battery and the 15p export tariff so hoping that this is going to be a great move. We were on agile for the last 10 months which has returned an average of 11p per kWh so hoping IOG is going to be even better. Quick question: When the Smart Charging Schedule shows daytime charging does that mean that I can charge the house battery at the cheap rate also?
Thanks! I’ve often wondered if moving to Agile would result in a lower average p/kWh. It will be interesting to see if you can match or better your 11p average now that you’re on the IOG tariff. My understanding is that electricity will always be the cheap rate during the smart charging times. This should mean you can run the house and charge your battery at that rate even if it’s outside of the 11:30-5:30 times.
Many Thanks. This just helped switching from my Ohme to the Zappi. I prefer the Ohme as a device, but the Zappi we have has a longer cable making it more practical for us
Couple of questions please 1) I have two cars plugged into one zappi. This seems like the way forward for me as I can use it with both cars. One charges at 3.6kw for a 32kwh battery and the other is at 7kw for a 60kwh batter so kind of the same. Looks like you have two Zappis though? 2) Is there any problem with just setting the ''Charge to Add'' to 100% all the time? I guess it just means the EV will be full sooner than Octopus were expecting if the car only needed 10% and not 100%
Thanks for the questions! 1. I only have a single car and zappi. I had 2 zappi's listed in my mobile app as I had recently had my zappi replaced due to a fault. The old zappi has since been removed from my account and no longer appears in the mobile app. 2. I believe that leaving the charge to add at 100% should work. The only problem I can see is that if adding 100% takes more than 6 hours it could result in the off peak time being extended. If this happens and Octopus don't detect that the car is being charged, then they may believe that you're trying to game the system. Octopus have a warning about gaming the system in the article I linked in the video description.
By Flux I’m assuming you mean the Octopus Flux tariff? We are not on Octopus Flux, instead we use the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff for import which allows us to buy electricity overnight at 7p/kWh. We then use Outgoing Octopus for our export which pays 15p/kWh.
What you’ve uncovered is a very interesting way to hack your electricity tariff. By adding 70% you are reducing the price of electricity to 7.5p/kWh from 9:30pm and in doing so you can have other loads in your house piggy backing off that extended cheaper period such as charging up your home battery or indeed running your heat pump at a cheaper price so it’s very interesting what you have shown here.
The MyEnergi guide linked to above in the notes does warn that Octopus can tell if someone's "gaming the system" to get longer cheap periods and may take action against them. 🙂
You always could do this with IOG. You just let your car discharge a lot so that the max time available would have to be used when you eventually plug it in to charge it (obviously the practicality of this depends how much you use it). I think some chargers can also be throttled down so you can force the car to not be fully charged within a night. IOG would often then make the charging time window extend outside the normal 23:30 to 05:30 window. It will be interesting to see how this 'beta' version changes with time. I do so respect Octopus for doing all this innovation; it is a breath of fresh air to have some rare British service development where it is not actually about sneakily screwing over the customer. And the occasional free window of electricity as a bonus - brilliant!
Excellent video. Just set my Zappi up a couple of days ago. I didn't realise that the Octopus app charge percentage was different. That explains why mine started charging really early.
Great video, ive just changed to IOG through the zappi and first scheduled charge worked a treat last night but im still not sure if the zappi takes control when there is surplus solar or whether it was just coincidence today when the car charged during the afternoon and the sun was out. Either was i thought this was great but soon noticed the zappi was drawing full power from my home battery storage which i can see online that it can do. This is a disaster and there doesnt seem to be any way to stop this short of a manual override which defeats the object of the intelligent tariff. Any views or advice on this issue would be welcome.
Thanks for the comment! Couple of thoughts, do you have your Zappi set to eco++? Also, have you set the option with the Zappi menu to avoid battery drain? So far, the Zappi integration has worked perfectly for me. I’ve seen it take excess solar correctly during the day and then complete the charge overnight during the cheap rate. Good luck, I hope you can get everything working reliably.
@@ianburgess525 thanks for your reply Ian. Just want to check if you mean eco+ and not eco++ as I don't think that setting exists. Either way I am set to eco+. I also can't find a setting within the zappi to avoid the battery drain. Further research reveals this is a known issue and the only way round it is to position any house usage ct clamp on the tail supplying the main consumer unit and separate the ct clamp relating to the charger. This way the battery doesn't see the ev charger demand. Downside is the app monitoring any solar, battery system want accurately reflect whole house consumption but myenergi app will be correct. So I've moved the original ct clamp back to the house cu tail to test this.
Apologies, you're absolutely right, it's eco+ not ++. Within my setup, the avoid AC battery drain option is in 'Other Settings' -> 'Advanced' -> 'Supply Grid' -> 'Network'. Not sure what battery you have, but can you see your battery as its own entity within the myenergi app?
@@ianburgess525 Thanks for this Ian, I wasn't aware of this in the menu. I've looked on line and for hybrid solar / battery systems as it may be that a different setting may work as the zappi can't work out if surplus power is coming off the roof or from a battery. That setting is in advanced-supply grid-network- export margin. I need to delve into this further as not sure what value margin to set and I'm a little nervous about messing with it at this point. Would be interesting to see if any of your subscribers can add anything?
Hi Ian, great video. Could you explain how your home battery is also integrated into this arrangement? I want to ensure my home battery is not drained when charging the car overnight as I will need it fully charged to run the house during the day to avoid paying the higher daytime electricity rate. My roof could only take a small solar arrangement so Its not sufficient to run the house and charge the car and home battery which is why I'm sticking with Intelligent Octopus. Thanks.
Thanks for the comment! I use a Tesla Powerwall 2 for battery storage. To avoid it draining to charge the car overnight, I use the utility plan settings within the Powerwall settings so that the battery knows when electricity is cheapest. With that set, I then have the battery in time-based control mode which means that it will power the house when electricity is expensive and charge and/or let the grid power the house when electricity is cheap over night. By doing this, it means the battery won’t discharge when the car charges during off peak time. The only time this logic fails is when Intelligent Octopus starts the charging session before the start of the cheap rate electricity. I have a myenergi harvi which allows me to have CT clamps monitoring the current going into and out of the Tesla Powerwall 2. This allows myenergi to see the battery. The Zappi can then be configured to avoid draining the battery by setting the option within 'Other Settings' -> 'Advanced' -> 'Supply Grid' -> ‘Network’. This helps to avoid the car charging from the battery while it’s trying to charge from diverted solar during the day. Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions.
I've joined the Intelligent Go with a Zappi charger but have not had a successful charge overnight without manually changing it on the Zappi from Eco+. I followed the Zappi integration (just as you did) and don't have any other charging schedules. It's really frustrating having to stay up until after 11pm to get the charger to work 😢
Set to Eco+, then add scheduled charge times to match the low rate energy. Works a treat for us. Plug in the car anytime and leave it. Once the zappi scheduled charge comes on, the car charges and it stops at the end of the scheduled charge time.
@@timhey555 thanks, that was one of the first things I tried, unfortunately without success. Think there's issues with the zappi as I get error messages each time I send a command (but the commands work).
@@timhey555 I updated the software (thought I already had), put in the boost schedule and tonight we are having the first "automatic" charge. Thanks for your help!
@@twigrose69 delighted to have been of some help. This is now following your programmed schedule, which may be enough for your use day to day - especially once you have the low rate hours programmed for every night. It’s what I use in combination with Octopus Go (not intelligent octopus go - my car didn’t support it and until recently my zappi didn’t support it either). It’s your decision as to whether you reattempt the octopus integration to play fully with intelligent octopus, though that would mean using the octopus app to control your charging. For me, it’s convenient to have the low rate hours programmed in - as it is then as simple as plugging in before turning in for the night and letting it start and stop charging itself. Plus I like the My Energi app. In the past I found Myenergi support to be very helpful too, as I had some problems getting it overnight charging in the beginning too. I also had a problem with the plug solenoid lock which they were able to sort out a warranty repair for. I’ve recently done a firmware update as I opted in to Myenergi’s Powergrid service that allows them to control charge start and stop times when the grid is under strain. Much like intelligent octopus aims to do. Hopefully I can get some small amount of earnings back from that, but it’s new and I’ve only just started, so we’ll see how it goes this winter. I chose this as I wanted to take a fixed tariff Octopus Go 15month offer, whereas from what I could see intelligent octopus is a variable rate tariff. So even though intelligent octopus has the lowest overnight rate, I estimate that increases that I expect in winter/spring to day rate variable tariffs will outweigh that benefit. Anyway - many happy charges.
An informative and helpful video - thank you! I'm just about to make the switch to Intelligent Octopus Go and will be using the Zappi integration as I also want to retain the ability to charge my EV with solar power whenever possible. I've got three 5kW home batteries which are charged each night from the grid between 1st of October and 31st of March, when solar generation is lowest. Given the IOG import rate is 7.5p/kW and the solar export rate is 15p/kW it will make sense to charge the home batteries from the grid every night of the year and export all excess solar to the grid whenever it's not needed for my EV or EDDI for water heating. I will need to make sure the batteries don't charge my EV though.
Great Video , I had real challenges joining IO partly my fat fingers and partly misunderstanding, not there yet but your video has really helped ! Main issue was using a third party log in to myenergi account … big mistake as had to delete account and start again using e mail login which is a must ! Lesson learnt
Does anyone know if with vehicle integration, do you need to press the + button on the zappi when you plug in the charger, in order to get your vehicle charged with the overnight schedule? I know you can push the + button to manually charge the car but wondered if you also need to do this in order for the charge schedule to work overnight
Sorry for not replying sooner. You should not need to press the + button for the overnight schedule to work. From my experience, all you need to do is plug in the car and confirm that Octopus has set a charge plan in their app. Once the plan is there it should charge without needing to do anything else.
Excellent video. Just picked up our Nissan Ariya 87kw model and still learning about charging and Octopus charging schedules. A couple of questions though, I have battery and solar (6.4kwp), and need to figure out how to use Solar for free charging. Also, what have you done to have the Solar panels and battery on your Zappi app?? Lastly, love your Lego collection! Like you I’ve got the Saturn V, Lunar Lander and the Maclaren F1, and my collection also includes Mustang, Dom’s Charger from Fast & Furious, Ecto 1, and yet to build Alfa Romeo F1 and a Mega Bloks Tesla Cybertruck!
Thanks for the comment! If the Zappi is set to Eco+ then it should divert excess solar to the car if it's available. The way I understand it from the Octopus documentation, any charge that is diverted from solar will count towards the target charge % set within the Octopus app, so whatever % is added from solar divert will reduce the amount of charge added over night during off peak by the same %. I have an AC battery (Tesla Powerwall) and use a Myenergi Harvi with extra CT clamps to monitor the energy going into and out of the battery along with the energy coming from the solar panels and going to/from the grid. Once you've setup the details of each CT clamp in the Myenergi options, those devices then appear in the Myenergi app. Lego is awesome, the only problem is finding places to keep it all! Your collection sounds great. I'm currently in the process of building the Concorde. :-)
@@ianburgess525 many thanks for the reply. I did notice I had some unused charge in my house battery (Growatt), and it was discharging 3.5kw to the car and the other 4.5 or so was grid, and figured that it would reduce my grid cost (even though grid at 7.5p/kwh is cheap!!) Not got any export tariff yet with Octopus so will need to see if I can have Intelligent Go and Agile (for the export part!). Will get a Harvi and put the CT clamp on the relevant cable in my meter cupboard. Can’t be too hard to do (🥴🥴). Yes, Lego is great fun. But where to display them is another thing altogether. Meant to add in my earlier comment, love the Space Shuttle. It’s on my list to get. I’ve fitted light kit to the Lander, not yet done so on Ecto 1, and Dom’s Charger, or on the Saturn V (so far!!) The Mega Bloks Cybertruck is over 3000 pieces (🥴🥴)
Very helpful. I recently had a tesla powerwall 2 installed and also switched to Octopus Intelligent Go after install, frankly not really understanding how it works ! Still having some teething problems, partly because Powerwall wasn't initially installed with a CT clamp on the battery (hopefully being fixed next week), but your video helped me understand some of the behaviour of the zappi charger on Intelligent Go. Hopefully I can set it up so solar divert works during the day and if I charge overnight, I need to make sure it doesn't drain the battery and charge from the grid. Still work in progress.
I'm a little confused. You talk about charging the car from the solar panels when it is sunny, because it is free. But with Octopus you get paid about 15p per kWh if you are supplying power to the grid, and are charged 7.5p per kWh overnight - so IWHT that it would be better to sell the excess electricity when it is sunny, and buy it back overnight. Am I missing something somewhere?
Nope, you’re absolutely right. I agree that it makes most financial sense to charge the car overnight on the 7.5p tariff and export as much as possible at 15p during the day. It still feels a little strange to me to not be using as much of the energy we produce as possible inside the house, but the way the tariffs are setup, Octopus are encourage export during the day. My situation is a little complex, in that my solar system can produce 6kW while my DNO only allows me to export 3.6kW to the grid. This means that when the system is producing more than 3.6kW I need to use it inside the house or the system will limit production. I have my system setup to export to the grid first, then if there is extra charge the house battery, then heat the hot water and finally charge the car.
Currently model y but getting an extra ev and can only have 1 vehicle linked. Does that change if it’s Zappi linked to octopus rather than vehicle to octopus or still just the one? Also, any tips for sourcing solar?
This should work with multiple cars. Zappi and Octopus don't know what car is plugged in, so it should provide charge at the times defined by Octopus to whatever car is plugged in at the time. The only problem I can think of is that the amount of charge you define within the Octopus app is determined by the battery capacity of the car Octopus believe you have (which is the car you define while setting up the Octopus/Zappi integration). So if your 2nd car has a significantly bigger or smaller battery than your first car you'll need to bear that in mind when setting the percentage charge you want to add during the next charge. By sourcing solar, do you mean finding a good installer? When we had solar installed I used the local Facebook groups for my town to ask for recommendations. From this I ended up with a number of local installers who I then got out to quote.
Thanks Ian, just a quick one, so if there is any solar available in your battery etc, will this be taken first to charge your vehicle prior to the grid?
By default, yes, it would come from the battery first if there was charge left. However, I’ve setup our battery (a Tesla Powerwall 2) so that it knows when electricity is at the cheap rate. As long as the car is charging within the cheap rate times then the battery wont discharge and instead all will come from the grid.
Brilliant video - I have the exact same setup as you, so it was helpful to see someone who had switched now the Zappi is compatible with Octopus intelligent - so thank you :)
That all said - mine won't Bump Charge!! So had to remove it. No idea why or what is causing the conflict. Will have to ring Octopus. Mine is BMW i4 M50, not a Tesla
Thank you so much for providing this much detail! I have to say that this all seems like hot, proprietary garbage to me, and I can't see why Octopus can't get rid of the app completely and simply define a set of times when a broadly cheaper rate can be counted on? For the cheapest pricing of all, why couldn't they simply publish real-time prices (beneath that overall cap for the window) in an open, standardised format, such that chargers which support these price feeds could ramp-up and ramp-down the number of amps they're charging at, to minimise their costs? This would truly allow user controlled smart charging, like being able to configure your charger to only charge at super low prices (e.g. 2p/KWh) if the available charge within the battery is above 50%.
I know it wouldn't be for everyone, but I'd personally prefer a tariff where I get exposed to the wholesale prices plus the energy suppliers margin, at which point they can offer me the cheapest prices by not having to expose themselves to any pricing risk, and I can optimise my home to take advantage of that variable pricing.
Thanks for the comment! It sounds like you're describing Agile Octopus, where prices change every 30 mins based on the whole sales prices (octopus.energy/smart/agile/). I've been tempted to give Agile a go, but so far I haven't had enough time to investigate if it's possible to automate car charging / house battery charging at the cheapest rates.
HI Ian thanks again for your in depth video👍very helpful. My Zappi now installed and tariff changed to Intelligent Octopus. I assume you do not have the Tesla Precondition or charging schedule set in the Tesla app now? as I guess the Tesla will start Precon when the Octopus schedule starts!
Thanks for the comment! Correct, I don’t have any scheduling setup in the Tesla app at all for the car. Instead Octopus and myenergi control the charging schedule.
This now makes Zappi charging a Jaguar i-Pace a lot more reliable with Intelligent Octopus Go, too. Interestingly, I had the same car integration problem you had with your Tesla; sometimes it just wouldn't work. And it was never a great thing anyway because it could take a long time to stop the charge after you plugged it in (an advertised up to 30mins of expensive electricity - utterly stupid and unfit for purpose as that could be the same cost as 2hrs at night - to avoid that I always had to use the car app to 'stop' charging as soon as I plugged in and then hope that Octopus would un-pause it when it wanted to charge later at night - sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, who knows why?). Apparently the Jaguar integration with IOG now no longer works so it's great that myenergi and Octopus have sorted out an interface. As you say, the big difference is that you have to work out how much you want putting into the car (unless you don't mind it fully charging or reaching whatever the max is that the car has been set to charge to every night) because neither the Zappi, nor Octopus communicates with the car anymore. They now have no idea how charged the car battery is before charging or while charging but obviously it will stop charging when the car refuses to take anymore. You tell the Octopus app which model of car you have I expect solely so that it can calculate the kWhr quantity it needs to try to feed it for the % top up you specify. By telling it what car you have, you are telling it the total capacity of your battery. Because of the expensive plugging in hassle and inability to use solar, I hardly ever used to let IOG control the car charging anyway; I used to set the car to manually charge using the Smart setting on the Zappi, though you are not really supposed to under the IOG tariff. Technically, I think you only had to let IOG take control once a month to satisfy the IOG tariff agreement but I doubt Octopus were going to complain to anyone anyway. It was just cheaper and easier not to, and meant you could use solar to charge the vehicle. Now, I shall see how this new method goes. I don't like charging the car to 100% unless I really need to in order to maximise battery life (yes, I know there are differing opinions on this and 100% means different things on different cars - Jaguar say that 100% is not 100%; it's actually a bit less in order to stay on the safe side of not overcharging the battery, but not so with other models as I understand it).
Thanks for the info Ian 👍 I have been using the Zappi integration since early March when JLR restricted access to the API for my i-Pace and I failed to notice the "Charge to add!" This explains why all my charges so far have taken me up to 100%. Funny, I have emailed Octopus but they didn't mention it, you would think they would know that the data field changes on the devices tab?! 🤔 Looking forward to trying it properly now. Cheers Howard
I'm new to this whole thing, and I was thinking I need to use my solar to charge my car. but, if I charge my car overnight at 7.5p/Kw and sell at 17p/kw when i'm generating, isn't that silly. Use the overnight to fill the car and my home battery and get paid for my generation during the day. this isn't gaming the system it's helping. take energy when the system needs to off load and provide energy when the system needs it. It is a hard one for me, a socialist at heart to get my head around, but in sync with the MD of Octopus it's all about making theenergy market fair and work for the users. (sounds like a tory. sorry, but it does make sense.)
I agree completely. When I originally had solar installed the export rates were rubbish, so it made complete sense to try and use everything I generated. As you point out though, recently that has changed and it's now possible to sell for twice as much as you can buy for overnight. Changing my approach to charge everything overnight and then sell as much as I can during the day has taken some getting used to!
An admirable concience. However when you sell solar, the energy company makes money for no investment or purchase of energy.. By selling your energy at 17p /kWh your neighbour will buy it for standard rate (approx 24p /kWh ) and thus the energy company makes 7p/kWh for no investment or energy generation purchase whatever. Don't forget, you also pay the energy company standing charge (50p'ish per day) so the first 3 hours of exporting solar generation has to pay this off before you start getting any financial return on generation. You however have invested at some expense to install solar panels and it will be some time before your 17p /kWh will pay back (if ever) this cost. In the evening the national load is low but wind turbines still run and at periods of low demand the competitive energy market prices drop such that the energy companies can still profit by selling to you at 7p/kWh in the small hours. They make money on every kWh. It is 'free' market capitalism. There should be no guilt here!
If you setup the Tesla integration, then Octopus should communicate directly with the car to control when charging happens. That should mean that it will work with the granny charger (although I haven’t tested it myself).
@@ianburgess525 It does.. I was on the 9p 4 hour tarrif, I realised yesterday I didn't need a smart charger to switch to IO tarrif. I got about 9 hours charging last via granny handled by the octopus app, about 90 miles range added. There are not many people that need a dedicated charger IMO when average mile is about 20 miles day, a granny is enough for most people. Model 3 LR here.
Thanks Ian, a good summary. I had the same issues with my Zappi and VW ID.3 e.g. charging to full battery at peak rate straight after plugging in for the test charge. I changed to the Zappi integration a few weeks back and it’s far better controlled. The test charge is always 30 seconds and never fails. I had missed the subtle change from target charge to added charge though, so thanks for pointing that out. I wondered why I was always getting hours and hours of scheduled charging when the car only needed a small top-up.
Hi, thanks very much for a very informative video. Can I ask how you set the zappi to export available solar instead of charging the car whilst on eco+ mode?
Thanks for the comment! Eco+ is designed to charge the car from any excess solar. One option would be to set the Zappi to only charge the car if a certain amount is already being exported to the grid first by using the 'Export Margin' option in advanced settings. Using this feature means that only excess solar over the amount configured to go to the grid is diverted to the car. Hope this helps.
That’s great thanks. I’ll set that to above the inverter output so no excess goes to the car and I export as much as I can.
I have the same set up as you Ian, so if my car is set to 80% and I have 20% battery on the car currently , I set octopus to charge to add 80% what will I get?? Will the car charge to 100% or will it stop at 80% ? If it does stop at 80% then we could still use the Tesla to govern what charge we want into the car and just set the add charge upto 100%
Tried and tested last night, works exactly how I though it would, set my car to 90% told IOG to add 100% charge. Car stops at 90% 🙂
No need to try work out what percentage to add just set IOG to 100% and set your desired battery percentage in the car, happy days
Thanks for testing this out! My experience is exactly the same; when the target percentage set within the car is reached charging will stop even if the Octopus target percentage has not been met yet.
Awesome video thanks - was struggling to work this out and the supplier wasnt giving me the info i thought i sought - and here it is!! It is a bit daft saying add X% each time. i think they are doing this the wrong way around - we already set the charge by time, so it can work out from our battery level and solar charge what to do.
This was a great help as Octopus and me where getting nowhere fast! after a few minor stops and starts I am at the point where I will see if I get a charge at the scheduled time. Thanks for the heads up on the amount of charge I need to add, makes sense now. Thanks
Great video, which I followed and made the switch to the Zappi integration. But I wish I had watched it all the way through first, because that functionality change from target charge level in vehicle integration to target additional percentage in Zappi is a showstopper for me. I mean that is crazy. All I want to do is set a target for the range I need tomorrow, not do maths every evening. So I'll test it tonight just to see if it works, and switch back tomorrow. PS. Surely if I leave the Octopus integration as the vehicle one, I can just set the Zappi charger to EcoPlus if I want to 'foil' the Octopus Smart Charging, and leave the car ready to top up from surplus solar PV? What do you reckon?
PS. Belatedly realised why this is the case, as without access to the car the integration can't know its state of charge. Ideally they would grab both sets of login data (car+charge) and then allow you to choose which device is controlled.
Is it possible to set a limit in the car and then just leave the additional percentage on +90% @@EugeneLambert ?
I suppose the risk is IO might think you were gaming the system.
@@MattParkins This is what I'm doing, as the Zappi integration seems far more than reliable than the Tesla one. When it hits the car's charge limit, it stops. I get a warning message on my Tesla app, which is no bother as I regard it like an alert that the car has charged. 👍
Thanks Ian. A couple of things. I had to start the Intelligent octopus again from Home Screen as adding the device in the app it wanted to scan a QR code which isn’t on the Zappi. It’s a bit annoying having to enter the add percentage which I’ll need to check each time I get home ready for the next day. Like you I read that incorrectly thinking it was charge limit. I have tried setting the charge amount at 50% which seems to ensure the charge doesn’t start outside the lower rate window. I’ll see how it goes. Thanks for the very useful video.
When octopus issues an early charge it can dump the contents of
your home battery into the car.
If this happens you may have to reset the charge time of your home battery .
Ian. Thanks for an excellent video. My configuration is like yours except I have a model Y rather than a 3. My only confusion is over the ‘Charge to add’ issue. Essentially I don’t want to do nightly adjustments but simply want it charged to 100% every night - set once and forget. Is that not possible?
That should be fine. The car will simply stop taking juice when it is full; the Zappi can't force feed it more than it wants to take.
Thank you for this video. Just changed over to IOG yesterday and failed to charge the MG4 last night (charge delayed displayed which maybe a car issue, will try again tonight).
We also have the old Ioniq EV and was told (by Octopus) that the tariff is for one EV so might not work. Anyway it's a sunny Saturday afternoon and I plugged the Ioniq in and it's kicked in to charge and a schedule has popped up on the app. Great news!
We have solar and battery and the 15p export tariff so hoping that this is going to be a great move. We were on agile for the last 10 months which has returned an average of 11p per kWh so hoping IOG is going to be even better.
Quick question: When the Smart Charging Schedule shows daytime charging does that mean that I can charge the house battery at the cheap rate also?
Thanks!
I’ve often wondered if moving to Agile would result in a lower average p/kWh. It will be interesting to see if you can match or better your 11p average now that you’re on the IOG tariff.
My understanding is that electricity will always be the cheap rate during the smart charging times. This should mean you can run the house and charge your battery at that rate even if it’s outside of the 11:30-5:30 times.
Many Thanks. This just helped switching from my Ohme to the Zappi. I prefer the Ohme as a device, but the Zappi we have has a longer cable making it more practical for us
Couple of questions please
1) I have two cars plugged into one zappi. This seems like the way forward for me as I can use it with both cars. One charges at 3.6kw for a 32kwh battery and the other is at 7kw for a 60kwh batter so kind of the same. Looks like you have two Zappis though?
2) Is there any problem with just setting the ''Charge to Add'' to 100% all the time? I guess it just means the EV will be full sooner than Octopus were expecting if the car only needed 10% and not 100%
Thanks for the questions!
1. I only have a single car and zappi. I had 2 zappi's listed in my mobile app as I had recently had my zappi replaced due to a fault. The old zappi has since been removed from my account and no longer appears in the mobile app.
2. I believe that leaving the charge to add at 100% should work. The only problem I can see is that if adding 100% takes more than 6 hours it could result in the off peak time being extended. If this happens and Octopus don't detect that the car is being charged, then they may believe that you're trying to game the system. Octopus have a warning about gaming the system in the article I linked in the video description.
Hello, how do you export your electricity? Don't you use flux?
By Flux I’m assuming you mean the Octopus Flux tariff? We are not on Octopus Flux, instead we use the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff for import which allows us to buy electricity overnight at 7p/kWh. We then use Outgoing Octopus for our export which pays 15p/kWh.
What you’ve uncovered is a very interesting way to hack your electricity tariff. By adding 70% you are reducing the price of electricity to 7.5p/kWh from 9:30pm and in doing so you can have other loads in your house piggy backing off that extended cheaper period such as charging up your home battery or indeed running your heat pump at a cheaper price so it’s very interesting what you have shown here.
The MyEnergi guide linked to above in the notes does warn that Octopus can tell if someone's "gaming the system" to get longer cheap periods and may take action against them. 🙂
You always could do this with IOG. You just let your car discharge a lot so that the max time available would have to be used when you eventually plug it in to charge it (obviously the practicality of this depends how much you use it). I think some chargers can also be throttled down so you can force the car to not be fully charged within a night. IOG would often then make the charging time window extend outside the normal 23:30 to 05:30 window. It will be interesting to see how this 'beta' version changes with time. I do so respect Octopus for doing all this innovation; it is a breath of fresh air to have some rare British service development where it is not actually about sneakily screwing over the customer. And the occasional free window of electricity as a bonus - brilliant!
@@jam99I've heard of people getting away with this for years, seems octopus aren't really taking action against anyone for it... Yet
Excellent video. Just set my Zappi up a couple of days ago. I didn't realise that the Octopus app charge percentage was different. That explains why mine started charging really early.
Great video, ive just changed to IOG through the zappi and first scheduled charge worked a treat last night but im still not sure if the zappi takes control when there is surplus solar or whether it was just coincidence today when the car charged during the afternoon and the sun was out. Either was i thought this was great but soon noticed the zappi was drawing full power from my home battery storage which i can see online that it can do. This is a disaster and there doesnt seem to be any way to stop this short of a manual override which defeats the object of the intelligent tariff. Any views or advice on this issue would be welcome.
Thanks for the comment!
Couple of thoughts, do you have your Zappi set to eco++? Also, have you set the option with the Zappi menu to avoid battery drain?
So far, the Zappi integration has worked perfectly for me. I’ve seen it take excess solar correctly during the day and then complete the charge overnight during the cheap rate.
Good luck, I hope you can get everything working reliably.
@@ianburgess525 thanks for your reply Ian. Just want to check if you mean eco+ and not eco++ as I don't think that setting exists. Either way I am set to eco+. I also can't find a setting within the zappi to avoid the battery drain. Further research reveals this is a known issue and the only way round it is to position any house usage ct clamp on the tail supplying the main consumer unit and separate the ct clamp relating to the charger. This way the battery doesn't see the ev charger demand. Downside is the app monitoring any solar, battery system want accurately reflect whole house consumption but myenergi app will be correct. So I've moved the original ct clamp back to the house cu tail to test this.
Apologies, you're absolutely right, it's eco+ not ++.
Within my setup, the avoid AC battery drain option is in 'Other Settings' -> 'Advanced' -> 'Supply Grid' -> 'Network'.
Not sure what battery you have, but can you see your battery as its own entity within the myenergi app?
@@ianburgess525 Thanks for this Ian, I wasn't aware of this in the menu. I've looked on line and for hybrid solar / battery systems as it may be that a different setting may work as the zappi can't work out if surplus power is coming off the roof or from a battery. That setting is in advanced-supply grid-network- export margin. I need to delve into this further as not sure what value margin to set and I'm a little nervous about messing with it at this point. Would be interesting to see if any of your subscribers can add anything?
Excellent, thanks for this! I'm sure Octropus/Zappi could find a slicker way to make this happen...
Hi Ian, great video. Could you explain how your home battery is also integrated into this arrangement? I want to ensure my home battery is not drained when charging the car overnight as I will need it fully charged to run the house during the day to avoid paying the higher daytime electricity rate. My roof could only take a small solar arrangement so Its not sufficient to run the house and charge the car and home battery which is why I'm sticking with Intelligent Octopus. Thanks.
Thanks for the comment! I use a Tesla Powerwall 2 for battery storage. To avoid it draining to charge the car overnight, I use the utility plan settings within the Powerwall settings so that the battery knows when electricity is cheapest. With that set, I then have the battery in time-based control mode which means that it will power the house when electricity is expensive and charge and/or let the grid power the house when electricity is cheap over night. By doing this, it means the battery won’t discharge when the car charges during off peak time. The only time this logic fails is when Intelligent Octopus starts the charging session before the start of the cheap rate electricity.
I have a myenergi harvi which allows me to have CT clamps monitoring the current going into and out of the Tesla Powerwall 2. This allows myenergi to see the battery. The Zappi can then be configured to avoid draining the battery by setting the option within 'Other Settings' -> 'Advanced' -> 'Supply Grid' -> ‘Network’. This helps to avoid the car charging from the battery while it’s trying to charge from diverted solar during the day.
Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions.
@ianburgess525 Thanks Ian, very helpful.
I've joined the Intelligent Go with a Zappi charger but have not had a successful charge overnight without manually changing it on the Zappi from Eco+. I followed the Zappi integration (just as you did) and don't have any other charging schedules. It's really frustrating having to stay up until after 11pm to get the charger to work 😢
Set to Eco+, then add scheduled charge times to match the low rate energy. Works a treat for us. Plug in the car anytime and leave it. Once the zappi scheduled charge comes on, the car charges and it stops at the end of the scheduled charge time.
@@timhey555 thanks, that was one of the first things I tried, unfortunately without success. Think there's issues with the zappi as I get error messages each time I send a command (but the commands work).
@@twigrose69 ah, sorry to hear it. Sounds glitchy… zappi firmware updates can be helpful to improve this sort of problem.
@@timhey555 I updated the software (thought I already had), put in the boost schedule and tonight we are having the first "automatic" charge. Thanks for your help!
@@twigrose69 delighted to have been of some help. This is now following your programmed schedule, which may be enough for your use day to day - especially once you have the low rate hours programmed for every night. It’s what I use in combination with Octopus Go (not intelligent octopus go - my car didn’t support it and until recently my zappi didn’t support it either). It’s your decision as to whether you reattempt the octopus integration to play fully with intelligent octopus, though that would mean using the octopus app to control your charging. For me, it’s convenient to have the low rate hours programmed in - as it is then as simple as plugging in before turning in for the night and letting it start and stop charging itself. Plus I like the My Energi app.
In the past I found Myenergi support to be very helpful too, as I had some problems getting it overnight charging in the beginning too. I also had a problem with the plug solenoid lock which they were able to sort out a warranty repair for.
I’ve recently done a firmware update as I opted in to Myenergi’s Powergrid service that allows them to control charge start and stop times when the grid is under strain. Much like intelligent octopus aims to do. Hopefully I can get some small amount of earnings back from that, but it’s new and I’ve only just started, so we’ll see how it goes this winter. I chose this as I wanted to take a fixed tariff Octopus Go 15month offer, whereas from what I could see intelligent octopus is a variable rate tariff. So even though intelligent octopus has the lowest overnight rate, I estimate that increases that I expect in winter/spring to day rate variable tariffs will outweigh that benefit.
Anyway - many happy charges.
An informative and helpful video - thank you!
I'm just about to make the switch to Intelligent Octopus Go and will be using the Zappi integration as I also want to retain the ability to charge my EV with solar power whenever possible.
I've got three 5kW home batteries which are charged each night from the grid between 1st of October and 31st of March, when solar generation is lowest. Given the IOG import rate is 7.5p/kW and the solar export rate is 15p/kW it will make sense to charge the home batteries from the grid every night of the year and export all excess solar to the grid whenever it's not needed for my EV or EDDI for water heating.
I will need to make sure the batteries don't charge my EV though.
Great Video , I had real challenges joining IO partly my fat fingers and partly misunderstanding, not there yet but your video has really helped ! Main issue was using a third party log in to myenergi account … big mistake as had to delete account and start again using e mail login which is a must ! Lesson learnt
Does anyone know if with vehicle integration, do you need to press the + button on the zappi when you plug in the charger, in order to get your vehicle charged with the overnight schedule? I know you can push the + button to manually charge the car but wondered if you also need to do this in order for the charge schedule to work overnight
Sorry for not replying sooner. You should not need to press the + button for the overnight schedule to work. From my experience, all you need to do is plug in the car and confirm that Octopus has set a charge plan in their app. Once the plan is there it should charge without needing to do anything else.
Thanks Ian. Just ordered a model Y and a zappi from Octopus. Helpful explanation for setting up my solar usage.
Excellent video. Just picked up our Nissan Ariya 87kw model and still learning about charging and Octopus charging schedules.
A couple of questions though, I have battery and solar (6.4kwp), and need to figure out how to use Solar for free charging.
Also, what have you done to have the Solar panels and battery on your Zappi app??
Lastly, love your Lego collection! Like you I’ve got the Saturn V, Lunar Lander and the Maclaren F1, and my collection also includes Mustang, Dom’s Charger from Fast & Furious, Ecto 1, and yet to build Alfa Romeo F1 and a Mega Bloks Tesla Cybertruck!
Thanks for the comment!
If the Zappi is set to Eco+ then it should divert excess solar to the car if it's available. The way I understand it from the Octopus documentation, any charge that is diverted from solar will count towards the target charge % set within the Octopus app, so whatever % is added from solar divert will reduce the amount of charge added over night during off peak by the same %.
I have an AC battery (Tesla Powerwall) and use a Myenergi Harvi with extra CT clamps to monitor the energy going into and out of the battery along with the energy coming from the solar panels and going to/from the grid. Once you've setup the details of each CT clamp in the Myenergi options, those devices then appear in the Myenergi app.
Lego is awesome, the only problem is finding places to keep it all! Your collection sounds great. I'm currently in the process of building the Concorde. :-)
@@ianburgess525 many thanks for the reply.
I did notice I had some unused charge in my house battery (Growatt), and it was discharging 3.5kw to the car and the other 4.5 or so was grid, and figured that it would reduce my grid cost (even though grid at 7.5p/kwh is cheap!!)
Not got any export tariff yet with Octopus so will need to see if I can have Intelligent Go and Agile (for the export part!).
Will get a Harvi and put the CT clamp on the relevant cable in my meter cupboard. Can’t be too hard to do (🥴🥴).
Yes, Lego is great fun. But where to display them is another thing altogether. Meant to add in my earlier comment, love the Space Shuttle. It’s on my list to get.
I’ve fitted light kit to the Lander, not yet done so on Ecto 1, and Dom’s Charger, or on the Saturn V (so far!!)
The Mega Bloks Cybertruck is over 3000 pieces (🥴🥴)
Very helpful. I recently had a tesla powerwall 2 installed and also switched to Octopus Intelligent Go after install, frankly not really understanding how it works ! Still having some teething problems, partly because Powerwall wasn't initially installed with a CT clamp on the battery (hopefully being fixed next week), but your video helped me understand some of the behaviour of the zappi charger on Intelligent Go. Hopefully I can set it up so solar divert works during the day and if I charge overnight, I need to make sure it doesn't drain the battery and charge from the grid. Still work in progress.
I'm a little confused. You talk about charging the car from the solar panels when it is sunny, because it is free. But with Octopus you get paid about 15p per kWh if you are supplying power to the grid, and are charged 7.5p per kWh overnight - so IWHT that it would be better to sell the excess electricity when it is sunny, and buy it back overnight. Am I missing something somewhere?
Nope, you’re absolutely right. I agree that it makes most financial sense to charge the car overnight on the 7.5p tariff and export as much as possible at 15p during the day. It still feels a little strange to me to not be using as much of the energy we produce as possible inside the house, but the way the tariffs are setup, Octopus are encourage export during the day.
My situation is a little complex, in that my solar system can produce 6kW while my DNO only allows me to export 3.6kW to the grid. This means that when the system is producing more than 3.6kW I need to use it inside the house or the system will limit production. I have my system setup to export to the grid first, then if there is extra charge the house battery, then heat the hot water and finally charge the car.
Currently model y but getting an extra ev and can only have 1 vehicle linked. Does that change if it’s Zappi linked to octopus rather than vehicle to octopus or still just the one?
Also, any tips for sourcing solar?
This should work with multiple cars. Zappi and Octopus don't know what car is plugged in, so it should provide charge at the times defined by Octopus to whatever car is plugged in at the time.
The only problem I can think of is that the amount of charge you define within the Octopus app is determined by the battery capacity of the car Octopus believe you have (which is the car you define while setting up the Octopus/Zappi integration). So if your 2nd car has a significantly bigger or smaller battery than your first car you'll need to bear that in mind when setting the percentage charge you want to add during the next charge.
By sourcing solar, do you mean finding a good installer? When we had solar installed I used the local Facebook groups for my town to ask for recommendations. From this I ended up with a number of local installers who I then got out to quote.
Thanks Ian, just a quick one, so if there is any solar available in your battery etc, will this be taken first to charge your vehicle prior to the grid?
By default, yes, it would come from the battery first if there was charge left.
However, I’ve setup our battery (a Tesla Powerwall 2) so that it knows when electricity is at the cheap rate. As long as the car is charging within the cheap rate times then the battery wont discharge and instead all will come from the grid.
@ianburgess525 Thanks Ian.
Brilliant video - I have the exact same setup as you, so it was helpful to see someone who had switched now the Zappi is compatible with Octopus intelligent - so thank you :)
That all said - mine won't Bump Charge!! So had to remove it. No idea why or what is causing the conflict. Will have to ring Octopus. Mine is BMW i4 M50, not a Tesla
Thank you so much for providing this much detail! I have to say that this all seems like hot, proprietary garbage to me, and I can't see why Octopus can't get rid of the app completely and simply define a set of times when a broadly cheaper rate can be counted on?
For the cheapest pricing of all, why couldn't they simply publish real-time prices (beneath that overall cap for the window) in an open, standardised format, such that chargers which support these price feeds could ramp-up and ramp-down the number of amps they're charging at, to minimise their costs?
This would truly allow user controlled smart charging, like being able to configure your charger to only charge at super low prices (e.g. 2p/KWh) if the available charge within the battery is above 50%.
I know it wouldn't be for everyone, but I'd personally prefer a tariff where I get exposed to the wholesale prices plus the energy suppliers margin, at which point they can offer me the cheapest prices by not having to expose themselves to any pricing risk, and I can optimise my home to take advantage of that variable pricing.
Thanks for the comment! It sounds like you're describing Agile Octopus, where prices change every 30 mins based on the whole sales prices (octopus.energy/smart/agile/). I've been tempted to give Agile a go, but so far I haven't had enough time to investigate if it's possible to automate car charging / house battery charging at the cheapest rates.
@@ianburgess525, oooh, I didn't know this existed! Thanks so much for the link 🙏
HI Ian thanks again for your in depth video👍very helpful. My Zappi now installed and tariff changed to Intelligent Octopus. I assume you do not have the Tesla Precondition or charging schedule set in the Tesla app now? as I guess the Tesla will start Precon when the Octopus schedule starts!
Thanks for the comment! Correct, I don’t have any scheduling setup in the Tesla app at all for the car. Instead Octopus and myenergi control the charging schedule.
how much was the charger & install please Ian?
My charger was installed about 3 years ago, so prices may have changed since then. If I remember correctly, it cost about £1000 installed.
This was great, was hunting around for how to do this, the last be was great as I’ve just done the same thing. GCSE maths hard at work! Thanks again.
This now makes Zappi charging a Jaguar i-Pace a lot more reliable with Intelligent Octopus Go, too. Interestingly, I had the same car integration problem you had with your Tesla; sometimes it just wouldn't work. And it was never a great thing anyway because it could take a long time to stop the charge after you plugged it in (an advertised up to 30mins of expensive electricity - utterly stupid and unfit for purpose as that could be the same cost as 2hrs at night - to avoid that I always had to use the car app to 'stop' charging as soon as I plugged in and then hope that Octopus would un-pause it when it wanted to charge later at night - sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, who knows why?). Apparently the Jaguar integration with IOG now no longer works so it's great that myenergi and Octopus have sorted out an interface. As you say, the big difference is that you have to work out how much you want putting into the car (unless you don't mind it fully charging or reaching whatever the max is that the car has been set to charge to every night) because neither the Zappi, nor Octopus communicates with the car anymore. They now have no idea how charged the car battery is before charging or while charging but obviously it will stop charging when the car refuses to take anymore. You tell the Octopus app which model of car you have I expect solely so that it can calculate the kWhr quantity it needs to try to feed it for the % top up you specify. By telling it what car you have, you are telling it the total capacity of your battery.
Because of the expensive plugging in hassle and inability to use solar, I hardly ever used to let IOG control the car charging anyway; I used to set the car to manually charge using the Smart setting on the Zappi, though you are not really supposed to under the IOG tariff. Technically, I think you only had to let IOG take control once a month to satisfy the IOG tariff agreement but I doubt Octopus were going to complain to anyone anyway. It was just cheaper and easier not to, and meant you could use solar to charge the vehicle. Now, I shall see how this new method goes. I don't like charging the car to 100% unless I really need to in order to maximise battery life (yes, I know there are differing opinions on this and 100% means different things on different cars - Jaguar say that 100% is not 100%; it's actually a bit less in order to stay on the safe side of not overcharging the battery, but not so with other models as I understand it).
This has been helpful Ian. Thank you!
Really helpful as trying in integrate our new Zappi with Octopus 😵💫. It worked one night then not the next! Think you’ve helped sort it, thank you 🤩
Sounds overly complex to me just use Go and then you can interact more directly and still at a low tariff.
That solved everything, THANK YOU!
Thanks for the comment! Great to hear my video helped. 😀
Octopus limits what they call eligible cars. They select irrational criteria and then say no. Bad deal. 😢
Tell that to JLR owners
Thanks for the info Ian 👍
I have been using the Zappi integration since early March when JLR restricted access to the API for my i-Pace and I failed to notice the "Charge to add!" This explains why all my charges so far have taken me up to 100%.
Funny, I have emailed Octopus but they didn't mention it, you would think they would know that the data field changes on the devices tab?! 🤔
Looking forward to trying it properly now.
Cheers
Howard
I successfully charged my i-Pace this morning by only adding 20% charge 👍
Thanks this was really helpful.
I'm new to this whole thing, and I was thinking I need to use my solar to charge my car. but, if I charge my car overnight at 7.5p/Kw and sell at 17p/kw when i'm generating, isn't that silly. Use the overnight to fill the car and my home battery and get paid for my generation during the day. this isn't gaming the system it's helping. take energy when the system needs to off load and provide energy when the system needs it. It is a hard one for me, a socialist at heart to get my head around, but in sync with the MD of Octopus it's all about making theenergy market fair and work for the users. (sounds like a tory. sorry, but it does make sense.)
I agree completely. When I originally had solar installed the export rates were rubbish, so it made complete sense to try and use everything I generated. As you point out though, recently that has changed and it's now possible to sell for twice as much as you can buy for overnight. Changing my approach to charge everything overnight and then sell as much as I can during the day has taken some getting used to!
An admirable concience. However when you sell solar, the energy company makes money for no investment or purchase of energy.. By selling your energy at 17p /kWh your neighbour will buy it for standard rate (approx 24p /kWh ) and thus the energy company makes 7p/kWh for no investment or energy generation purchase whatever. Don't forget, you also pay the energy company standing charge (50p'ish per day) so the first 3 hours of exporting solar generation has to pay this off before you start getting any financial return on generation. You however have invested at some expense to install solar panels and it will be some time before your 17p /kWh will pay back (if ever) this cost. In the evening the national load is low but wind turbines still run and at periods of low demand the competitive energy market prices drop such that the energy companies can still profit by selling to you at 7p/kWh in the small hours. They make money on every kWh. It is 'free' market capitalism. There should be no guilt here!
Does anyone know if this works with the Tesla granny charger please?
If you setup the Tesla integration, then Octopus should communicate directly with the car to control when charging happens. That should mean that it will work with the granny charger (although I haven’t tested it myself).
@@ianburgess525 It does.. I was on the 9p 4 hour tarrif, I realised yesterday I didn't need a smart charger to switch to IO tarrif. I got about 9 hours charging last via granny handled by the octopus app, about 90 miles range added. There are not many people that need a dedicated charger IMO when average mile is about 20 miles day, a granny is enough for most people. Model 3 LR here.
Not sure why you would want solar divert as IOG export rate is 15p and charging over night is only 7p. So you are losing money by using solar divert.