Greener Days EV Charging Octopoints

andyg9053

One thing to be aware of is during the day they sometimes change the slots given without notice. Doesn’t matter if your only trying to ensure you get the car charged by a set time, but if you are trying to abuse the system, you may catch a cold if you are charging batteries or other high use items during your allocated slots

born_again

andyg9053 said:

One thing to be aware of is during the day they sometimes change the slots given without notice. Doesn’t matter if your only trying to ensure you get the car charged by a set time, but if you are trying to abuse the system, you may catch a cold if you are charging batteries or other high use items during your allocated slots

It's not abuse to also use other electrical items while charging car. Or it would be stated in T/C 🤷‍♀️If octopus wanted they could take a average of your normal usage & charge that on top of car charging. Or simply say that it is charging car only at off peak rate, as they know the rate car is charging at. As they are controlling it.
But Octopus do not. So if we do what we want, then again it is not abuse of the tariff 👍

Yes sessions can change. But if you have a APP for car, then you get a notification when it stops charging. So you can alter your plans.

All part of the MSE game to save money 👍

QrizB

Bumping this thread (it seems vaguely relevant) to mention that Ohme have recently emailed me (and presumably other IOG customers) with new restrictions on when you can schedule your charging. Possibly to counteract some of the practices that have been mentioned in this thread.

Martyn1981

andyg9053 said:

One thing to be aware of is during the day they sometimes change the slots given without notice. Doesn’t matter if your only trying to ensure you get the car charged by a set time, but if you are trying to abuse the system, you may catch a cold if you are charging batteries or other high use items during your allocated slots

Yep, it's become a bit hard to play that game now this year. In Feb when it looked like my batts wouldn't get me through to 11.30pm (cheap rate), I've plugged in the car with a granny charger, and got charging periods before 11.30. Great.

Then tell the batts to charge during that time slot.

But then notice the batts discharging hard to charge the car, as the time slot has changed, and the period I was going to charge the batts, is now peak rate.
This happened several times, with multiple time changes, so I was chasing the cheap slots, whilst catching a cold, as you say.

Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

born_again

QrizB said:

Bumping this thread (it seems vaguely relevant) to mention that Ohme have recently emailed me (and presumably other IOG customers) with new restrictions on when you can schedule your charging. Possibly to counteract some of the practices that have been mentioned in this thread.

I got that email.
Yet still set time in OHME app to 16:00 leave time.
Yesterday 02/03/25 EV was charging on & off all day, thanks to Octopus provided slots, from 09:00 to 16:00. MAX not selected.

To me that email makes no sense, as you get far longer slots in a afternoon, that you do in a morning. 

Seen people moaning in groups that it is due to people abusing the system. But how can you? Octopus are the ones that provide the daytime charging slots.🤷‍♀️

To me this is OHME telling you that you can not have off peak charging after 11:00 to 04:00?
Clearly whoever wrote the email was not thinking clearly at the time.

Exiled_Tyke

Martyn1981 said:

andyg9053 said:

One thing to be aware of is during the day they sometimes change the slots given without notice. Doesn’t matter if your only trying to ensure you get the car charged by a set time, but if you are trying to abuse the system, you may catch a cold if you are charging batteries or other high use items during your allocated slots

Yep, it's become a bit hard to play that game now this year. In Feb when it looked like my batts wouldn't get me through to 11.30pm (cheap rate), I've plugged in the car with a granny charger, and got charging periods before 11.30. Great.

Then tell the batts to charge during that time slot.

But then notice the batts discharging hard to charge the car, as the time slot has changed, and the period I was going to charge the batts, is now peak rate.
This happened several times, with multiple time changes, so I was chasing the cheap slots, whilst catching a cold, as you say.

Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

I've not been trying to play the system but have suffered over the weekend with the the same issue.  Overnight the car charges at the same time I've set the house batteries to charge so there's no risk of discharging these into the car. however over the weekend I found the car charging at odd times. when I caught it I set the house battery to charge, not to play the system but the only way to avoid discharge.  It seemed that no sooner had I done this, that Octopus changed its mind and the car charging stopped so I hurriedly had to stop the house battery charging too.   

QrizB

Despite the Ohme email, and us always asking for the car to be ready for 0530 (makes programming the storage battery easier), this week we've had one occasion when IOG decided to charge at 2000+2100 and another today where we got a random top-up at 1000-1100!

I don't know quite what's going on here, but thankfully we've had plenty of sunshine and the Fogstar SOC has had enough headroom that being asked to prop up the Ohme without leaving us short.

SuzeQStan

You need a Henley block so the Sol battery never discharges to the EV charger

Exiled_Tyke

QrizB said:

Despite the Ohme email, and us always asking for the car to be ready for 0530 (makes programming the storage battery easier), this week we've had one occasion when IOG decided to charge at 2000+2100 and another today where we got a random top-up at 1000-1100!

I don't know quite what's going on here, but thankfully we've had plenty of sunshine and the Fogstar SOC has had enough headroom that being asked to prop up the Ohme without leaving us short.

I think the plenty of sunshine is the answer as to why we are getting some day time car charging from suppliers at the moment. As more PV gets deployed we may see more of this effect.  Cheap night rates assume (correctly) low night time consumption across the country and (now appears not to be the case) that cheap electricity mainly comes from wind. 

QrizB

SuzeQStan said:

You need a Henley block so the Sol battery never discharges to the EV charger

Ah, thanks for the idea! I can (probably) move the current clamp to achieve the same thing.