What's not clear to me yet is that does this truncate the daily overnight period. Say you plug in at 6pm and octopus have already charged the car for 2 hours before the cheap rate starts do you no longer get the full period that night? Hope that is not the case since we are brimming the house battery every night (as well as 2 cars).
I think it's now pretty clear. They are treating car and house separate.
No change to overnight on the house
Limit to 6 hours in every 24 for your car, which may or nay not align with the house.. If it doesn't you get more cheap slots for the house but no more car charging.
How can they differentiate between house and car? Yes I know the car (or charger, whichever is connected) can report when it is charging but that's not billing standard data. So my question remains if the car's 6 hours is up part way through the cheap over night house slot then what happens. Does the car stop charging at that point (by command) or does you then start getting charged more.
2nd question would be what happens if I plug in when it's very low after a long trip, say 5%. The app is configured to go to 80%, I don't need the car at 80% for a few days so would be happy for it to charge whenever over that timeframe. 5-80% is going to go over 6 hours so I'm then going to get charged more because I don't have a way to say that I don't need it to be ready at 80% for several days. I can't tell the car to only charge to 50% on day one as battery care resets the target level after every charge segment (for the same reason I have to disable battery care completely if I want to go over 80%).
Edit;
Have now seen the blog entry (linked above, missed that yesterday) and both questions are answered. Data from the connected device will be used to separate house from car and the app will be updated to allow more control for the second question.
Surely plug it in over-night on cheap tarrif and just grab all the hours that are available to you.
You're not really supposed to do that on the IOG tariff. The idea is to leave it plugged in and the tech works out when to charge.
Right I suppose it's a choice to suit your needs.
I just want to wake up with a full charge or a nearly full charge at my end.
That said I've had a dumb charger for years so there's a barrier to entry for me.
Personally, from an environmental perspective (which was one of my reason to go EV) - I like the fact that with smart charging I'm making my needs as flexible to satisfy as possible. If there is bags of energy available at a non standard time - might as well get it in my car
Get it - but there's so much debate here about what's going off just seems a weight on the consumer to organise their life around a tariff - all I'm saying is I can't get beyond plugging it in overnight when it's clearly cheap/low demand and waking up full etc. (which won't suit everyone of course.)
It's feels they've created a problem to a solution that was already working okay. The reliance on apps for everything is both a benefit and a curse.
(I totally get some people work nights and need their car at different times. )
How much is this tariff? I was a customer with octopus at work but ditched them because of their frustrating charge shaping on direct debit and not so suitable tariff choice.
I
That said I've had a dumb charger for years so there's a barrier to entry for me.
Ours is effectively dumb now as the smarts were killed by a platform update. The car connects though which is enough.
all I'm saying is I can't get beyond plugging it in overnight when it's clearly cheap/low demand and waking up full etc. (
You can do that on this tariff.
That said I've had a dumb charger for years so there's a barrier to entry for me.
Ours is effectively dumb now as the smarts were killed by a platform update. The car connects though which is enough.
all I'm saying is I can't get beyond plugging it in overnight when it's clearly cheap/low demand and waking up full etc. (
You can do that on this tariff.
It's feels they've created a problem to a solution that was already working okay.
But some people were rinsing it and filling home batteries and running a launderette while charging their car, usually by throttling the charger so it takes longer. Hence the increased integration of the charger. A few ruin things for the rest.
And as for 'living your life around a tariff' - that's a little melodramatic. I plug in, tap the app to say how much charge I want and when. Not hard.
Just imagine having to travel to a whole other place and decide how much fuel to put in and do it right there and then! Madness!
Hope that is not the case since we are brimming the house battery every night (as well as 2 cars).
Forgive my ignorance, but how do you charge a house battery? If it's no different to putting an immersion heat on and not smart at all you'll still be able to charge it between 2330 & 0530 regardless of when IOG chooses to plan the 6 hours of charging.
The 2 cars thing will become an issue for more households. 6 hours is sat 180miles in the summer and less in the winter. There will be some use cases that won't be enough. My other thought over it is 3phase. If you are lucky enough to have 3 phase at home does that mean you still get 6 hours...but now at 22kwh?
Limit to 6 hours in every 24 for your car,
Limit to 6 hours from noon to noon, AIUI.
Ohme to rush out an app fix to allow you to limit charging at 6 hours. What could possibly go wrong?
The 2 cars thing will become an issue for more households. 6 hours is sat 180miles in the summer and less in the winter. There will be some use cases that wont be enough.
Wouldn't you just suck it up and pay the higher tariff if you need more charging in a 24hr period? Isn't that basically how both smart and dumb tariffs work - there is an amount of cheaper rate electricity available to encourage charging when wider usage is low/green generation is high - but it's not an unlimited benefit.
Even on full price tariff, EV still much less than ICE per mile and you would really be getting a blended rate as I assume you'll max out cheap tariff
That said I can see the benefits eroding over time with cheap rate windows getting smaller/price increasing as more move to using EVs and charging during cheap periods
Forgive my ignorance, but how do you charge a house battery
Just set a charge schedule in the app. So yes very much like setting an immersion on a timer.
Re the Ohme throttling thing, it looks like Octopus didn’t know about this, or at least they’re claiming not to? So maybe there aren’t as many people actively gaming the system as they thought.
It certainly happens to me a lot - never a problem however it would make the 6 hr limit change from being a slight annoyance into making the IOG tariff simply not competetive against a simple tariff with a fixed number of cheap hours per night. I do occasionally want to charge from a near empty battery to more than the half full that 6 hrs could give but to be fair that’s probably once or twice a year, normally after a long enough trip to be coming home near empty I’d be having a relatively light driving day the next day.
That said I can see the benefits eroding over time with cheap rate windows getting smaller/price increasing as more move to using EVs and charging during cheap periods
Exactly this.
It's the usual bait and switch model.
We're all being encouraged to do something and as more of us change to EVs etc it will flip the other way.
Yes we could all use less energy but it's on the government to invest and find a solution to make life better not worse. We as consumers don't really have much of a choice.
The competition for EV type tariffs is riseable. They're all roughly the same with ever so slight complications.
A total mess as usual.
I think the noise around the changes to IOG is largely just that, noise, tbh. I had to switch from IOG to regular Octopus in the summer when I changed from a compatible car to a non compatible one. Charger is an Easee One, which always was non compatible.
I used to plug the previous car (i4 40) in early evening whenever it was down at around 40-50% and it would reach the set 80% sometime during the night. Now with an EV3, and similar capacity 80 something kWh battery, I do exactly the same. The 5 hrs off peak from 0030 to 0530 can add up to 40% to the battery, though I have set to stop at 80% or 0530, whichever comes first.
in the 5 months I have had the EV3 there have been 2or 3 times, after getting back from a long drive, when it’s been down at less than 15% charge, which has then gone up to, say 50% for the next morning. If I needed it to be more than that on that day I would override the 0530 stop, or let it start before 0030, and accept that I would be paying for up to 5hrs charging at full rate on top of my 5hrs cheap rate rate, amounting to around a tenner extra for the peak 5 hrs.
In reality, I rarely use over 40% of the battery (around 120-140 miles) on a regular day, so end up plugging it in every night for a few days to get it back up to 80% for 0530 after a couple of days.
Try to be slightly more precise with your language if you are going to get prickly.
I've reviewed the thread and am confident that my explanation was clear, which included a worked example. I'm sorry if you didn't get it.
Ohme to rush out an app fix to allow you to limit charging at 6 hours. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, quite. It's also much less flexible than the current system, in terms of managing grid demand. Last night, charging was throttled back to 4kW which was only possible by widening the charging window to eight hours.
I guess one option could be to utilize the IOG cheap tarriff when it's offered outside the FIXED cheap rate (through your charger) , then plug in before bed via the 3pin, for 6 overnight hours at 3kw??
DrP
That would in theory work. It's only worth it if you've already had several hours scheduled before you go to bed.
You wouldn't even save my theoretical £3 as you're charging at less than half the rate.
Since it's only needed in days where the car needs charging back to back for big drives then for me it's more hassle than it's worth. We don't have a granny charger and it would take 4 years to pay back.
I think the noise around the changes to IOG is largely just that, noise, tbh.
I'm not sure what qualifies as "noise". What makes me unhappy is being expected to start charging my car without knowing how much it's going to cost, because the charging schedule is outside my control.
Don’t think you’re being expected to do anything, why not just manage your own expectations and charge from 0030 to 0530 at cheap rate and only charge in that time window ? 5hrs charging adds a big chunk to any car on a 7.5 kWh home charger.
What makes me unhappy is being expected to start charging my car without knowing how much it's going to cost, because the charging schedule is outside my control.
They've said they will be updating the app to allow you to stop charging at 6h, so your unhappiness should be confined to those times when you arrive home with a low battery and need it back to a high charge the next day. For most people that's not a very regular occurrence, so not much will change.
They've said they will be updating the app to allow you to stop charging at 6h, so your unhappiness should be confined to those times when you arrive home with a low battery and need it back to a high charge the next day. For most people that's not a very regular occurrence, so not much will change.
Not sure that is an improvement :-). I'd like to know how much I'm getting and what it will cost. I don't see what's so strange about that!
There's a lot of noise about charger throttling too.
Not all 7kw chargers deliver the full 7kw. Ohmes are reported down to 3kw.
Now you ought get 6 hours flat, if the charger drops to 3 you only get 18kw in your slot.
It sounds like energy limited rather than time limited would be more relevant.
Re the Ohme throttling thing, it looks like Octopus didn’t know about this, or at least they’re claiming not to? So maybe there aren’t as many people actively gaming the system as they thought.
It certainly happens to me a lot
I assumed it was Octopus throttling it, as I have a Hypervolt 3 and this happens to me too.
We don't have a granny charger and it would take 4 years to pay back.
Pay..you kids and your instant gratification needs..... 😉
DrP
Ive seen that also with my hypervolt
It sounds like energy limited rather than time limited would be more relevant.
That's what led to this situation - people spinning out the time to reach a certain energy in order to get their house on a cheap rate.
Don’t think you’re being expected to do anything, why not just manage your own expectations and charge from 0030 to 0530 at cheap rate and only charge in that time window ? 5hrs charging adds a big chunk to any car on a 7.5 kWh home charger.
You're not supposed to do that. The point about the intelligent tech, and the reason it's cheaper than their standard EV tariff, is that they can vary the timing and charging power.
There's a lot of noise about charger throttling too.
Not all 7kw chargers deliver the full 7kw. Ohmes are reported down to 3kw.
Now you ought get 6 hours flat, if the charger drops to 3 you only get 18kw in your slot.
It sounds like energy limited rather than time limited would be more relevant.
never had this with our OHME charger (we get over 7kwh) so I would guess it’s the energy company rather than the charger.
And regarding the two car issue further up, we are a two EV car household and it’s not been an issue for us. We get 3hrs a night so about 22kwh or around 100km per night which suits us fine, we just make sure there is a car always plugged in each night and use the weekend, when we use them less, to top them right back up. So we start each week with about 400km each and top up 100km every second day then right back up on our days off. Occasionally we have topped up a wee bit outside of or cheap rate of 8cent and had to pay 20cent which I hate doing being a tight arse. It works fine for our driving.
You're not supposed to do that.
if you are on standard Octopus, rather than IOG, that is exactly what octopus advises you to do.
Yes, but the extra discount on IOG is because they get to control when so your not supposed to do that (iirc you have to have a certain number of smart charges or they will push you back to the non smart tariff).
Yes, and I was suggesting it earlier in the context of just using the standard Octopus deal and being in control of what charges when/expectation management.
Evidently Phil from Octopus said it wasn't them and they were investigating chargers with Ohme. Then lots of folk with other chargers reported seeing similar behaviour.
This has just popped up, with an interesting reply from some who claims to know the workings!
https://www.reddit.com/r/OctopusEnergy/s/mvfZWe8QUj
If true the 6 hour limit will need some scrutiny - 6 hours at what rate?
Limit to 6 hours in every 24 for your car,
Limit to 6 hours from noon to noon, AIUI.
Ohme to rush out an app fix to allow you to limit charging at 6 hours. What could possibly go wrong?
I'd read it was 11pm - 11pm but 🤷♂️
Question: When you ought the Ohme system did you know that the charge rate could vary?
Seems like you'd actually be better off with a granny charger some of the time!
I'm interested in this because, as and when I get an EV, I'm wondering about chargers. They seem to be really expensive now to then point that they might not be worth it unless you do a reasonably lengthy daily commute - which I don't.
The car I would be buying is on the Octopus list so I don't really need a smart charger so I'm wondering whether to start with a commando socket (if I can get a 32A feed to where I would like it) so it would always charge at full power. I could then have a simple system that would tell the rest of the house when the car was charging on IOG and switch on other stuff at the same time.
Unfortunately all chargers now have to have the ability to restrict charge , to help grid , it’s part of the government rules
Just read this on the Octopus Energy forum (which is obvs red hot on this subject ATM). Never knew!
I had a local electrician around on Saturday. I'm trying to access the Energy Saving Trust Grant of £350 so have to use one of their approved installers. I Project EV Apex tethered. Cable run is long as it comes out of the wrong side of the house and will need to be brought right around, going to be about 20m of cable. Electrician estimates (pending detailed quote) about £1800 inc VAT. Seems steep but I've not done this before and I have only limited choice. Thoughts on this?
If its way too high I can go for Podpoint / Octopus install but will still require extra cabling and labour, plus I will loose the grant, so unlikely to save and potentially a lot more hassle dealing with a national.
Try ChargedEV - one of the national chains doing EV charger installs but on the EST approved list. I struggled with a local supplier either being way more expensive or just not interested. Is hat 20m of trenching or just 20m of cable pinned around the house or just buried at the bottom of the wall?
If its way too high I can go for Podpoint / Octopus install but will still require extra cabling and labour
Ignoring Octopus' complete inability to actually give me an appointment to install the charger I've ordered, if the cable run was longer than 10m it only added £100 onto the price so it would've been £1149 for me if I needed a cable run that long.
My Ohme charger automatically sets the slots and charging speed
Eh? No.. Octopus sets it - they are the supplier, they know when the electricity is cheap, Ohme don't. There may be some IT cock up causing issues however.
Now you ought get 6 hours flat, if the charger drops to 3 you only get 18kw in your slot.
The charger shouldn't be dropping to 3, that's the point - Octopus are doing their best effort to charge your car during the available time which will mean adjusting the power to fit that schedule.
Is hat 20m of trenching or just 20m of cable pinned around the house or just buried at the bottom of the wall?
No trenching, just pinned
Quote is now in, £1,542 (Charger, £473, Cable £119, odds and sods £lots, Fit, Test and Commission £720) VAT then on top of everything
Having been on the wrong end of a burning Project EV charger and their utterly shit technical support (across several issues) I strongly suggest you look at a different make.
They're beyond useless.
or 5,745kWh of charging at £0.27p/kWh on a granny charger at standard rate!
What's the lifespan of a charger?!
5745kwh equals roughly 2 years for the average driver....YMMV
At the end of that 5745kwh at standard rate of course you would have spent £1149 more on electricity than you would have done if you have been charging it at the 7p kw tariff. Though obviously you could have been on that tariff and got some of your charging done overnight cheaper too.
I know there will be a variation of quality of household electrics but.......holiday cottage (short term let) insurance pretty much blanket bans the use of charging EVs from standard 3 pin domestic sockets. I'm sure there is a lot of worst-case scenario going on there and it's easier to ban everything than make exception based on specific circumstance. However.......what's the story with domestic household insurance and granny charging as a long-term solution? I've no idea as I've never researched it. But, it would be 'unfortunate' to save a few bob and get stung with an uninsured house fire.
Eh? No.. Octopus sets it - they are the supplier, they know when the electricity is cheap, Ohme don't. There may be some IT cock up causing issues however.
Ohme gets the info from Octopus and sets the slots and charging power accordingly. It's done though the Ohme app.
The charger shouldn't be dropping to 3, that's the point -
Well no, because as you say, Octopus gives the info to Ohme.
