Octopus Go & Intelligent Octopus Go - Still The Best EV Tariffs?

In this video I give the lowdown on two of Octopus Energy's most popular tariffs, Octopus Go and Intelligent Octopus Go. I also determine if they're still up there despite the growing competition - and whether I'd switch away...

Octopus Go:

Intelligent Octopus Go:

Mr EV’s video on Intelligent Octopus Go:

Chapters:

0:00 Intro
0:54 Octopus Go
3:16 Intelligent Octopus Go
7:04 Stop your Zappi charging your EV with solar
9:59 Competing EV Tariffs
12:09 Is Gary tempted to switch?
13:56 Outro

Corrections:

3:04 Octopus Energy has now increased the export rate to 15p - nice!

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#intelligent #octopus #go

[GaryDoesSolar]

* NOTES SINCE RELEASE *

So, no sooner had I published this video and Octopus Energy improved their Octopus Go tariff! Octopus Go now has the same export rate as Intelligent Octopus Go - namely 15p/kWh. Cool 😎

[jeffn]

Great tip on setting the Zappi to avoid solar charging Gary. Many thanks

[ytzsch]

To avoid battery drain, I have a sunsynk inverter and it has six time slots where you can set the desired battery level. For day time they are set to 20% but for the off-peak period they are set to 100% so will not discharge. For nights where I need to charge the EV, I plug in the charger, see where the intelligent go charge time slots are, and then set my battery time slots with grid charge to the gaps. This way the battery and EV are not charging at the same time to balance the load but they could happen at the same time. Generally the diswasher and washing machine are going too during off-peak. Nice :) I set the EV ready time to be 5:30.

[ionlywanttrains]

Very informative as usual.
For intelligent octopus there is a trigger set in the API when smart charging starts/stops. Don't worry, there is a plugin for Home Assistant which can read this for you, then you can set an automation to charge your home battery when the smart charging starts.
This works well.

[rongalbraith]

Like some others in the comments, I use Home Assistant to bring together my charging and Solar PV ecosystem, among other smart home functionality. My integration with Octopus is via my Zappi charger for the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff.

I use GivTCP for my Givenergy battery and inverter, alongside the HACS myenergi and Octopus Energy integrations.

There's a binary sensor, "Intelligent Dispatching" which becomes active during any Octopus scheduled charging windows, so if this is active outside of 23:30 to 05:30, I disable discharging from the battery during that window. With GivTCP the easiest way I've found to do that is to change the GivTCP Mode to "Eco (Paused)" and when the Intelligent Dispatching ends, it resets the mode to "Eco".


There's a lot more you can do, and I have a whole load more controls and automations configured but I hope this helps a bit.

[carlarrowsmith]

I switched to E.on next, the longer off peak period means that I have not needed to increase my 9.6kWh battery as it covers the highest usage of my ASHP. Also the export rate is better at 16.5p and it's a fixed tariff. Another reason to switch was the dreadful customer service from Octopus of late, I'm 158 days since my gas meter was removed and no final bill for it, 91 days since my switch to E.on and no final bill yet and no refund of credit. Emails and telephone calls made a few times but not resolved yet.

[althomas]

Great video Gary, I’ll adjust my solar settings to take advantage of the expert tariff on Intelligent Go! Thanks 🙏

[GarryCollins-xogk]

Great video. Switched to Octopus Flexible before having solar array and batteries installed. Can't now switch to a smart tariff because I don't have an up to date smart meter but Octopus seem to be unable to change meter because I live in Scotland!

[MrPhillipgraham]

Hi Gary, to avoid the EV draining the battery in those extra cheap charging slots try changing the battery settings in the zappi to 'limit to gen'. This will limit the output from the zappi to prevent unwanted draining of an AC coupled battery system. Or do you have a DC coupled system?

[euangoddard]

Thanks for the tip on the intelligent tariff. I switched at the weekend off the back of your video and can see it'll save us money from the get go!

[feled]

Bit off piste, I have solar/battery (Growatt) and am on Octopus Agile + fixed export. I've been quite happy with the tariff for the last year, but its up for renewal. Don't like that the daily standing charge has gone up by @10p/day, so thought I'd look at what the competition offers. But it seems to be difficult to find other suppliers offering similar tariffs without their own solar/battery installations. Is the a good set of links to other suppliers that I can use to get quotes?

[radiotowers]

Thanks Gary,
I always charge my battery for the full 6 hours overnight ( battery charges quicker of course but its all cheap rate in any case).
When I plug in and the Intelligent GO app gives me my charge times, any slots outside the overnight cheap rate times will then be programmed to my battery also as additional charge slots temporaily including the occasional "free" hours when everything goes on !, just remember to undo the extra times.
I do get the occassional glitch when my charging slots do not completely match the app times...and it flattens the home battery. This can happen if for whatever reason the Zappi loses wifi or the interent drops out and the car fails to charge as I initially thought.
Also remember Octopus will also credit you with Octopoints for charging when the energy is greenest.

[andrisromanovskis]

Hi, Gary! If I lived in the UK, I'd follow the advice from your vids to the letter. Actually I did it. My used electric Reno ZZZ is at home at last. The best thing – battery SOH is >96%.

[everythinghome]

Hi Gary - great video as usual 👌 And really interesting/great that Octopus have increased their export rate to 15p per kWh.
I do think that switching keeps the bigger energy companies like Octopus on their toes though and who knows may have even been part of their decision to increase the export rate.
Furthermore, OE have chosen the Winter to increase this rate with very little in the way of excess solar kicking around for most and who knows what they'll change it to next year, they've already made changes in April, July and October 24. With E.On the 6.7p per kWh import and 16.5p per kWh export rate are fixed for 12 months. Interesting times, all the best, Shan

[buncho]

To stop my house battery discharging when I charge the car using intelligent go and it picks random slots outside of the normal hours, I got an electrician to install a shelly-em with its ct-clamp on the car charger power cable in the fuse box. I then get Home Assistant to monitor the Shelly and if the car charges, it will immediately tell the inverter to stop discharging from the battery. It works extremely well.

[smartalec]

I’ve been doing lots of research into stopping battery charging the car. I’m having a 6.8kw pv system installed with Tesla powerwall 3. And you can use an app called netzero to automatically change the powerwall to 100% stand by when there’s a demand on the house in excess of 7kwh. Once it drops below that it can revert back to standard and keep the operation normal. Just need to check what combination of household appliances can run without meeting that threshold

[TheManor]

Great videos, Gary. I have an EV plus solar and a Powerwall 2. The solar installation is from 2015 and so I still get the benefit of a decent feed in tariff which includes a deemed export rate at 50% of generation and so currently export very little even in summer. I'm currently on Octopus Go but maintain my original feed in tariff for the genration and export payments. All the videos I see relating to solar, batteries and EVs relate to exporting rather than charging from solar. Any chance you could do a video weighing up the pros and cons of having a feed in tariff against sacrificing that for an export tariff? Quite happy for you to use my set up and tariff etc as a working example. Thanks and keep up the good work!

[ZachSolar]

Very informative video, Gary. I enjoy learning about how the utility providers work over there in the UK.

[paulhowells]

Very slick presentation as usual I have to ask are you employed by Octopus as they are the only company you seam to talk about. I have recently moved to eon next 7 hours to charge the battery and no punitive early evening charge, and the move from Octopus was painful I am still waiting for over £670 refund.

[Roozbeh]

Hi Gary, thanks for the video. I read in Octopus Energy website that "You'll need to pause any other charging schedules when connecting to Intelligent Octopus Go." Does this mean I can not charge my home storage batteries when I am also charging my EV at off-peak rates?