Octopus intelligent

Reed_Richards

My EV was a former Motability Scheme car, although only 3 months old when I bought it as a second owner.  It must have been averaging about £100 miles per week, which I guess is a respectable mileage if you're not doing many long journeys.  I don't know why the previous owner kept it for such a short period but I got the benefit of a very reasonably priced car that was nearly new.

@Silverbird65, if you go out for a drive in your new EV and buy yourself a coffee, then it's quite likely the coffee will cost you more than the cost of fuelling your EV for a week, whatever tariff you are on.  

mikecham

Using Tesla 3 with Intelligent Go.
In Octopus App my car is scheduled charging outside of 23.30-05.30 using cheap rate 7p/kwh.
Will my entire house be at cheap rate or just the car.
I am getting different answers from Octopus !!!

QrizB

mikecham said:

Using Tesla 3 with Intelligent Go.
In Octopus App my car is scheduled charging outside of 23.30-05.30 using cheap rate 7p/kwh.
Will my entire house be at cheap rate or just the car.
I am getting different answers from Octopus !!!

Entire house. It's stated as such on Octopus's website and is what I've experienced under similar conditions.

(If you force a charge, rather than letting the app schedule it, then you'll be paying peak rate for all of it.)

Edit to add: see for example the pricing graph on this post:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81214478/#Comment_81214478

kingstreet

Be careful to check the schedule regularly as it often changes several times.

The energy to the house is only cheap when the car is actively charging. For example, if the car is actively charging from 14.00 - 14.30 it will apply. If it then stops charging at 14.30 and starts again at 15.00, the energy to the house will be at peak rate between 14.30 and 15.00. 

MWT

kingstreet said:

Be careful to check the schedule regularly as it often changes several times.

The energy to the house is only cheap when the car is actively charging. For example, if the car is actively charging from 14.00 - 14.30 it will apply. If it then stops charging at 14.30 and starts again at 15.00, the energy to the house will be at peak rate between 14.30 and 15.00. 

Just to be clear, the car doesn't have to charge for the whole 30 min period, some smart charge sessions can be as short as a few mins, but the whole 30 min period will be at the low rate.

... and the schedule can change right before a planned slot, I've almost never seen a schedule execute exactly as originally planned, and multiple changes at very short notice have become a lot more common in recent weeks.

born_again

kingstreet said:

Be careful to check the schedule regularly as it often changes several times.

The energy to the house is only cheap when the car is actively charging. For example, if the car is actively charging from 14.00 - 14.30 it will apply. If it then stops charging at 14.30 and starts again at 15.00, the energy to the house will be at peak rate between 14.30 and 15.00. 

Even if it does, then you are still on a winner paying off peak rate, instead of peak rate for the periods.👍 

kingstreet

MWT said:

kingstreet said:

Be careful to check the schedule regularly as it often changes several times.

The energy to the house is only cheap when the car is actively charging. For example, if the car is actively charging from 14.00 - 14.30 it will apply. If it then stops charging at 14.30 and starts again at 15.00, the energy to the house will be at peak rate between 14.30 and 15.00. 

Just to be clear, the car doesn't have to charge for the whole 30 min period, some smart charge sessions can be as short as a few mins, but the whole 30 min period will be at the low rate.

... and the schedule can change right before a planned slot, I've almost never seen a schedule execute exactly as originally planned, and multiple changes at very short notice have become a lot more common in recent weeks.

Yeah. Just to make life even more interesting, if the car charges for any part of a half hour period, the electricity to the rest of the house is also cheap for the whole of the half hour.

Given the number of fifteen minute slots starting to appear in my schedules I'm wondering if there might be a change on the way.

MWT

kingstreet said:

Given the number of fifteen minute slots starting to appear in my schedules I'm wondering if there might be a change on the way.

The dynamic nature of the IOG scheduling has increased significantly, but I wouldn't expect any fundamental change as the whole settlement system is based on half-hour periods. 

Here is a small segment from a recent charging session:

As you can see, several of those slots only charged the EV for 2-3 mins during the half-hour, and those slots all appeared a couple of mins before the start time of the slot. 

Schedule decisions have certainly moved a lot closer to the start times meaning that automation is almost a necessity if you aim to schedule home loads to take advantage of the low-rate (or to stop your home battery discharging if you have one).