Octopus Power Ups and Free Energy Sessions

Changes to free electricity sessions for intelligent customers.

Got an email yesterday from Octopus, seems we are now getting an hours free electricity (doesn't include car charging or IOF battery charging) as well. You don't have to plug your car in, but if you do you'll get an hours free charging, but that may take place later.

We heard you, and we’re changing things up for customers on Intelligent Octopus Go and Intelligent Octopus Flux.

You’ll still get your hour of free Intelligent charging, same as before. But from the next session on, we’ll make any extra household power free as well.

Here's how free sessions will work for you from now on:
• Plug your car in and stick to your Intelligent schedule to get an hour’s free charging credit. Don’t worry if your car doesn’t charge during the session – more on this below – as long as you’re plugged in, you’ll get the credit.
• For the rest of your home, fill your boots! All the electricity you use above your normal household consumption will be free.
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I got the same email. Participation must have been massively down for them to row back on this.
 
I got the same.

Yeh I participated in one but it totally wasn’t worth it. The savings from the free charging were almost completely nulled by the loss of solar export. I think I gained 2p.

So even with this change, if I am due to>3.5kwh of solar during the hour, it’s never worth participating. That said as we get into winter, that will change.
 
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There's a session tomorrow from 2-3pm by the looks. No email yet but its showing in the app.
 
Forecast is for sunny intervals, so doubt I'll be able make much use of it, car won't be home either.
 
Agile is paying us today, with negative rates until 4pm.

Every light is on, every battery is charging, all appliances are on washing/cleaning cycles, garage florescent tubes on and air conditioner is trying to cool the outside world down to 16degsC.

Epic Lolz.
 
Not sure how much free electric I'll use, solar was generating 10kW just now, will drop off a bit come 2pm, think I should have discharged more battery earlier and perhaps not charged so much over night.

Been a while since I participated in a free electric session.
 
Ive managed to get my battery down to 28%, so will charge the car and those. Im producing 6kW at times though, so it won't make much.

When I plugged in Octopus gave me a 13:30 to 18:00 window, but ill be stopping it at 15:00.
 
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Topped the battery up to 80% but stopped just now as sun is out today and peaking to 15 nearly 16 kW right now
 
Charged the car, had a shower, ran the hoover round, ironed my work shirts and pre cooked tonight's dinner.
That should be a little chunk saved
 
Well, I'm not doing that again. Plugged in and it started charging immediately, using my export for 20 minutes, before stopping after just 5 minutes in the free hour. I managed to run a few things, but again with 5-6kW of solar I only used about 3.5kWh. Hopefully I'll get the hours charging credited as they say, otherwise I'm probably down.
 
Wasn't very successful here either, I managed to import 1.35 kWh between 14:00 and 15:00, but still ended up exporting 2.67 kWh in that hour.

I was at some points getting 12kW of solar, I dumped some of the battery between 12:00 and 13:35, but due to solar just couldn't export enough of it, and only got down to 80% SOC. Then during the free hour I was charging from the grid, but still had a huge amount of solar, at a couple of points I had 255 amps flowing into the batteries, thats around 14.5kW. The batteries can easily handle it, but the rest of the system (cables and isolators) probably got a bit warm and the main fuse is only 250 amps, although that won't blow until significantly higher, circuit breakers could trip if they got too warm, the main rack one is 250 amps.

Conclusion, this time of year its simply not worth the risk, I'd have to discharge the batteries a lot more, and then for a solid hour charge them at pretty high rates, basically for pennies, not worth it.
 
Ron-ski said:
Wasn't very successful here either, I managed to import 1.35 kWh between 14:00 and 15:00, but still ended up exporting 2.67 kWh in that hour.

I was at some points getting 12kW of solar, I dumped some of the battery between 12:00 and 13:35, but due to solar just couldn't export enough of it, and only got down to 80% SOC. Then during the free hour I was charging from the grid, but still had a huge amount of solar, at a couple of points I had 255 amps flowing into the batteries, thats around 14.5kW. The batteries can easily handle it, but the rest of the system (cables and isolators) probably got a bit warm and the main fuse is only 250 amps, although that won't blow until significantly higher, circuit breakers could trip if they got too warm, the main rack one is 250 amps.

Conclusion, this time of year its simply not worth the risk, I'd have to discharge the batteries a lot more, and then for a solid hour charge them at pretty high rates, basically for pennies, not worth it.
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I discovered there's a hard limit of 6kW charging on mine when using excess DC. I dont know why as it should be a max of 48A at 320V (15.3kW), so somethings wrong there. I managed to get down to 30% SOC beforehand, but due to the sunny conditions, most of what went in was from the PV rather than the grid. I was banking on the car charging for the hour, but it only did it for 5 minutes!

Pretty much a waste of time at this time of the year.
 
Waste of time. I plugged the car in at 14:03 and it wanted to charge via solar. Then it said at 14:30 it would go on boost. 14:30 comes and it changes its mind and stay on solar and says at 15:00 it will go boost which is what it does...

Not worth the time messing about in the end.
 
Did anyone's car actually charge who has solar then? Seems like a good way to avoid paying 15p when electricity is cheap...
 
reef said:
I discovered there's a hard limit of 6kW charging on mine when using excess DC. I dont know why as it should be a max of 48A at 320V (15.3kW), so somethings wrong there. I managed to get down to 30% SOC beforehand, but due to the sunny conditions, most of what went in was from the PV rather than the grid. I was banking on the car charging for the hour, but it only did it for 5 minutes!

Pretty much a waste of time at this time of the year.
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My battery charging from the Victron connected solar doesn't go via the inverter, its straight onto the DC system, only the SolarEdge system and any grid charging goes through the Victron inverter, so in theory I could push 8kW from the Victron inverter to the batteries, plus however much solar is coming in on the 11.5kWp of panels.

The highest peak today was at 14:09, 14.86kW overal and 11.01kW from the victron connected panels, luckily I only set a maximum of of 2kW to pull from the grid.

Car wasn't at home, so couldn't try that, but perhaps plug the car in on the granny charger and schedule it to charge on the car for the hour ;) presuming there isn't too much solar.
 
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reef said:
Did anyone's car actually charge who has solar then? Seems like a good way to avoid paying 15p when electricity is cheap...
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Mine did the same as yours so stayed on charge until 4 to ensure I got 1500 to 1600 which they said they would pay for.
Im now thinking along the lines of you, at times I had over 8kw coming in between 1405 and 1600 so I’m not really up. Yes, I perhaps helped the grid but it’s not worth it during summer with medium to large solar arrays.
I was probably up about 30 pence.
 
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