Intelligent Octopus Question

bagpussofsussex

Hi all,

I just noticed that intelligent octopus have added a couple more car makes as beta options for IO. 

We have one of these makes and a home charger so I'm considering changing over. We are currently on octopus go, and have solar panels and a battery. We are set up so that we use any solar energy first, then any power in the battery, then draw from the grid as needed. We charge the car and the battery overnight, we get 12p/kWh from 00.30 to 04.30. 

IO would offer 10p/kWH from 23.30 to 05.30, with the day rate for energy remaining the same as we're currently paying so it would appear to be a no-brainer. What I can't find info on is whether the cheap rate with IO is just for the EV charger, or if all our energy use in the cheap window would be at the cheaper rate. Can anyone help with this please? 

At this time of year the generation from the solar panels is minimal and the battery/night rate is where the domestic savings are coming from - although getting the EV doubled our household consumption. 

MWT

bagpussofsussex said:

What I can't find info on is whether the cheap rate with IO is just for the EV charger, or if all our energy use in the cheap window would be at the cheaper rate. Can anyone help with this please? 

Yes, all energy used during the low rate period is at the same price.

Also, if IO assigns you a charging slot outside the normal low rate period then all other energy used while the car is charging in that that slot will also be at the low rate.

This is explained on the 'Intelligent' web page...

https://octopus.energy/intelligent-faqs/

[Deleted User]

I haven't taken a great deal of interest in this as neither my EV nor EVSE is compatible.

When I last read the FAQs, I got the impression that it isn't 6 hours of cheap energy. For example, if no EV charging schedule is set then all the energy used would be at the peak price. Have I got this wrong?

MWT

[Deleted User] said:

I haven't taken a great deal of interest in this as neither my EV nor EVSE is compatible.

When I last read the FAQs, I got the impression that it isn't 6 hours of cheap energy. For example, if no EV charging schedule is set then all the energy used would be at the peak price. Have I got this wrong?

Yes, you've got that wrong

bagpussofsussex

It used to be just three brands of car (Tesla, VW and Ford) but they've just added Kia and Audi which opens it up to us...

So 23.30-05.30 would be 10p/kwh, but if they gave us a charging slot starting at, say, 22.30, then 22.30-05.30 would be at 10p, for both car and house? 

At the moment we're charging car and battery in the 00.30-04.30 slot but it's not fully charging the car in that time, the house is running on solar/battery until early evening before we move to grid at 43.4p/kWh. Haven't had our first bill to see what the cost difference is compared to the octopus variable rate we were on previously. 

Moving the battery charging to finish at 05.30 would make a bit of difference as well as we'd move to grid a bit later in the day, especially at this time of year....

MWT

bagpussofsussex said:

So 23.30-05.30 would be 10p/kwh, but if they gave us a charging slot starting at, say, 22.30, then 22.30-05.30 would be at 10p, for both car and house? 

Not quite...

The additional charging slots are discrete, they do not simply change the start of the low rate period, so they only impact the half-hour segment they are in.

So you might get 30 mins at 22:30 and the the next slot might be within the normal low rate window.

Similarly your charge period can be made up from multiple separate charging sessions, some as short as 15 mins, or it could be one contiguous period.

On-the-coast

For my region (South), and my usage, the sums still don't add up.

• Unit rate (23:30 - 05:30): 10.00p/ kWh
• Unit rate (05:30 - 23:30): 43.37p/ kWh
• Standing Charge: 42.86p/ day
• Prices include VAT.
• Intelligent Octopus is an electricity only smart tariff.

outside of the cheap time it's about 10p/KWh more expensive that the SVR, not the same.
OK - maybe i could still save money - but only if i made full use of that cheap timeslot every day - which i cannot based on my typical mileage.

MWT

On-the-coast said:

For my region (South), and my usage, the sums still don't add up.

... a lot depends on your EV mileage...

If you are a high mileage driver then your daily recharging is probably your largest load and will be several times the amount you use in the rest of the house each day, so it makes sense...

If you are a low mileage driver only needing to charge once a week at most then this may not be for you if you have limited ability to time-shift other large loads or do not have something like night storage heaters to make use of that low night period.

Obviously, if you do not even have an EV then this isn't a tariff you can access anyway.

If you can combine EV + Solar + battery storage then this can obviously be a great tariff as depending on demand and your battery size, you can reduce or even completely eliminate your use of higher-rate electricity...

On-the-coast

MWT said:
... a lot depends on your EV mileage...

agreed,
i was really just querying some of the comments above that said that the standard rate remained the same - which is what made me go and check (again) whether Intelligent Octopus was suitable for me.  Sadly no.

MWT

On-the-coast said:

MWT said:
... a lot depends on your EV mileage...

agreed,
i was really just querying some of the comments above that said that the standard rate remained the same - which is what made me go and check (again) whether Intelligent Octopus was suitable for me.  Sadly no.

It should be the same as the current E7 tariff for your region though?  ... can't really compare to a single-rate tariff.

bagpussofsussex

My last bill on the octopus standard variable tarrif was 33.63p/kWh. This is comparing octopus Go to Intelligent octopus (I'm in the south east) 

Octopus Go
unit rate (00.30-04.30) 12p/kwh
unit rate (04.30-00.30) 43.4p/kwh

Intelligent Octopus
unit rate (23.30-05.30) 10p/kwh
unit rate (05.30-23.30) 43.4p/kWh 

Bearing in mind that it's November, we are currently charging the EV and battery at 12p, the house is running through the day off the small amount of solar power plus the battery, and we're drawing from the grid from approx 5-7pm onwards - with two people working from home. We are *just about* managing to get the charge we need into the EV for the mileage done, but a bit of a wider window would be better. 

During the summer we'll review whether we need to charge the house battery depending on how the solar panels do. 

I was just finding the IO blurb a bit complicated - clearly not intelligent enough 😂