How to getthe best out of Octopus Flux

Ron-ski said:
I find it better to just charge between 2 and 5am, then run off the battery until solar takes over.
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i can probably do that at the moment, at least during the week... but in late autumn through winter into early spring there is no way my battery will reliably last to get me through from 5am through to after 7pm. esp at weekends.
 
Trying to confirm some details with octopus. They seem far less responsive/difficult to get hold off now. Don't suppose it has anthing to do with taking on millions of extra customers....
 
well it is official........ Goodbye octopus Go Faster.... you have done me proud for the last 2 years i could not have been happier. Hello Flux

my Go faster ended in 2 days anyway but given my amazing generation today and that my Flux backdates to midnight this morning i figured i may as well start with a bang on a really good day and see what kind of potential i am looking at in practice.

i cant speak highly enough of octopus (famous last words... disaster incoming). I am a little nervous. if Flux does not work out i cant get back onto Go... - i could have stayed on it as an existing customer but now i am off i cant get back on without buying a new car so i hope Flux works out.

edit...

oh no. i knew i should not have said anythign. i just checked... i am on Flux import............ but still on 4p SEG export....... i hope that does not stall as the only reason i went onto Flux was to get decent export pay.
 
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SoliD said:
Get on the phone to them. They moved me over immediately when I did.
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thanks.... just got off the phone..... apparently the import is automatic but the export is manual, so moving to Flux import was immediate but there is a delay on moving exports as there is a backlog.
a cynical person may think it is strange that the import which is going up 3x the price of my old import is happening far faster than my export which will go up 4 fold in my favour ;)

he said he cant give me a timeframe, could be days, could be weeks but it was not his department so he cant sort it :(
 
bigmike20vt said:
thanks.... just got off the phone..... apparently the import is automatic but the export is manual, so moving to Flux import was immediate but there is a delay on moving exports as there is a backlog.
a cynical person may think it is strange that the import which is going up 3x the price of my old import is happening far faster than my export which will go up 4 fold in my favour ;)

he said he cant give me a timeframe, could be days, could be weeks but it was not his department so he cant sort it :(
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Fwiw on Twitter they said this to me, switched to Flux as well today, and same scenario as you (import switched, export still on SEG).

"While we can't advise on a time, they are working around the clock to onboard everyone as quickly as we can. If you already have export with us, we will need to manually update your export tariff. This is done by our smart tariff team so there can be delay between the import and export being set up. The start dates on both tariffs will line up when we process your account."

So it sounds like they should backdate it to the date of the Flux switch.
 
HungryHippos said:
Fwiw on Twitter they said this to me, switched to Flux as well today, and same scenario as you (import switched, export still on SEG).

"While we can't advise on a time, they are working around the clock to onboard everyone as quickly as we can. If you already have export with us, we will need to manually update your export tariff. This is done by our smart tariff team so there can be delay between the import and export being set up. The start dates on both tariffs will line up when we process your account."

So it sounds like they should backdate it to the date of the Flux switch.
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ooo that will be nice if so. thanks,

i will say they did backdate my export payments when sorting out my SEG back in 2021. my system went live start of July but export paperwork not fully sorted till......... gut feeling september, but they gave me a whopping back dated payment for export (about £7 :D ) so maybe there is a chance.

EDIT... Breaking news! ;)

i just checked on the offchance and it seems at some point in the last hr i was moved onto octopus Flux Export.
 
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Reason I even setup the SEG to begin with wasn't so much for the payments it was so I would be ready to switch to a better export thing when it showed up. Some people didn't bother as it was only 4p but was more about being ready.
 
First day on Flux, weather was pretty awesome so I was doing some decent surplus generation.

Had 100% battery at 16:00 and still 3kW of generation or so, so just set it to export like crazy.

h5TkHm2.png

Standard Export: 7.45 kWh * £0.2252 = £1.68
Peak Export: 9.85 kWh * £0.3593 = £3.54
£1.68 + £3.54 = £5.22 total
 
@Ron-ski what are you finding works well for you here with Flux?

My generation capability and storage isn't as good as yours, so it's kind of "Flux light" ver. for me.

Does this sound sensible?

02:00 - 05:00 Charge to 100%
05:00 - 13:00 Let battery do whatever (solar hopefully keep it topped up).
13:00 - 16:00 Charge to 90%
16:00 - 19:00 Export as much as possible
19:00 - 02:00 Allow battery to run out and grid to take over

Charge slot 2 from 13:00 - 16:00 may seem counter-intuitive but if the sun is any good that day, the battery should be full or nearly so, and if not then it will top up from grid.

Then the almost immediate discharge kicks in from 16:00 - 19:00 (I'll space these out a little so they don't overlap).

The main goal with the discharge is to prevent grid import. By charging in the 3 hours leading up to this point I should be able to safely discharge for 3 hours without concern. This will likely leave the battery flat by the end, or nearly so.

On my system, discharge feeds the house load first, so that should prevent almost all grid import in the 3 hour window.

On a poor solar day I could eat some grid import and losses of efficiency, but I think the average day is starting to get good enough that this isn't a huge concern of mine.
 
In the end I decided to charge the battery between 2am and 5am, with my current settings it doesn't fully charge, and still won't when I add the second battery, currently charging is limited to 70A, I'll up that to 140A when the second battery is installed.

Then from 5am to 16:00, I run off the battery until the sun takes over, then the battery charges until its full, then it exports
At 16:00 I discharge until the battery reaches 60% SOC. Once I add the second battery I'll lower the SOC setting. The battery often stops discharging to the grid before 7pm, so I may get a tiny bit of grid draw at peak, looking at the other day it was 1.5p worth.

The above is working well for me, I'm always left with enough to run through to 2am without drawing from the grid, between 2am and 5am I always draw just under 15kWh

I like to keep some back, just in case there is a power cut (its very rare but would be so frustrating to have empty batteries!), and I think once efficiency losses are taken into account its mere pennies that I'll be making/losing per kWh. Import day rate is 34.18p, and export peak is 36.85p. Even at 90% efficiency that 36.85 becomes 33.165p, which is less than the day rate, so I don't think its worth emptying the battery on the peak export and importing later.

My last weeks electric has cost me -£20.81
 
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Ron-ski said:
In the end I decided to charge the battery between 2am and 5am, with my current settings it doesn't fully charge, and still won't when I add the second battery, currently charging is limited to 70A, I'll up that to 140A when the second battery is installed.

Then from 5am to 16:00, I run off the battery until the sun takes over, then the battery charges until its full, then it exports
At 16:00 I discharge until the battery reaches 60% SOC. Once I add the second battery I'll lower the SOC setting. The battery often stops discharging to the grid before 7pm, so I may get a tiny bit of grid draw at peak, looking at the other day it was 1.5p worth.

The above is working well for me, I'm always left with enough to run through to 2am without drawing from the grid, between 2am and 5am I always draw just under 15kWh

I like to keep some back, just in case there is a power cut (its very rare but would be so frustrating to have empty batteries!), and I think once efficiency losses are taken into account its mere pennies that I'll be making/losing per kWh. Import day rate is 34.18p, and export peak is 36.85p. Even at 90% efficiency that 36.85 becomes 33.165p, which is less than the day rate, so I don't think its worth emptying the battery on the peak export and importing later.

My last weeks electric has cost me -£20.81
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Makes sense, you're lucky you can store so much, or reach that point easier due to the extra generation.

On this end if it's not a decent sunny day, the solar just sort of keeps the battery going without dipping into grid much. If it's miserable it will drain away.

What I could do is look at setting the battery charge limit to 0W for 16:00 - 19:00 so that it's physically unable to charge, whilst not exporting. This should then either feed house load or the solar will, and any excess solar would default to export.

The challenge with anything I do is automating it, and having control. I face a few issues you may not.

Battery charge/discharge max rate is 2.6kW.
Timed export run disables Eco mode and doesn't turn itself back on afterwards.
Can't set export to SOC % only duration.
Options can be controlled via HA but they only apply if the inverter is reachable on the WiFi. Dongle temporarily down? probably will fail to run.

For a lot of my options, especially time sensitive ones, this does add more risk that something doesn't apply when it should. Timed Export should stick once it's set, but I would likely need to run an option to enable Eco mode again afterwards.

Preventing battery charge with 0W max limit would need to be run and then un-done with two actions.

The GE kit is good and there is a lot of stats and options, but some things don't necessarily work how you want them to.
 
Could put the reserve rate to 50% to limit your discharge @HungryHippos but you'd obviously need to adjust this after and be reliant on the solar being enough to power your home until its changed so you don't draw from the grid.

Like you I'm manually doing it currently which is annoying but it's just the turning on and off of eco for me when battery is full ie prior to 4pm then turning it on again at 7pm. Can do it all from app now which is beneficial. But I will be looking to get it set up in HA when I eventually get it sorted. (waiting on a mare to give me a pre set up HA).
 
SoliD said:
Could put the reserve rate to 50% to limit your discharge @HungryHippos but you'd obviously need to adjust this after and be reliant on the solar being enough to power your home until its changed so you don't draw from the grid.

Like you I'm manually doing it currently which is annoying but it's just the turning on and off of eco for me when battery is full ie prior to 4pm then turning it on again at 7pm. Can do it all from app now which is beneficial. But I will be looking to get it set up in HA when I eventually get it sorted. (waiting on a mare to give me a pre set up HA).
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OK! on reflection I think this may be best:
  • 02:00 - 05:00 - Timed Charge 100% SOC Target
  • 05:00 - 14:00 - No specific control
  • 14:00 - 16:00 - Timed Charge 50% SOC Target
  • 16:00 - 19:00 - Timed Discharge
  • 19:00 - 02:00 - No specific control
From an HA point of view this is done as follows:
  1. Sometime between 19:00 - 02:00 configure Timed Charge for 02:00 - 05:00 (100%)
  2. Sometime between 05:00 - 14:00 configure Timed Charge for 14:00 - 16:00 (50%)
  3. 19:00 - Enable Eco Mode
The logic here is that the Timed Discharge (not the same as Timed Export - Timed Discharge forces battery to power the house) can remain enabled and configured always, and will always run from 16:00 - 19:00 even if I don't continually try and set it up. This will stop the batteries charging in this window, and focus the batteries + solar on house load, excess gets exported as I understand it.

This Timed Discharge executing turns off Eco Mode, so I need to enable Eco Mode again at 19:00. Eco Mode will remain active until the next Timed Discharge the following day at 16:00 so only needed once.

Timed Charge overnight is important as it loads up cheaper energy to protect against a poor day of Solar power.

Timed Charge in the afternoon is important because 50% battery is enough to carry me through 3 hours of peak usage + potentially needing to cook food. My baseline usage without solar is about 10% battery per hour, so 50% or so should be minimum I'd want.

Whilst Reserve is nice in theory, it means I'll never properly use the battery below that level without adjusting it. This afternoon Timed Charge window will act as a reserve in effect.

Doing the above prevents loading the battery up more than needed, and prevents exporting at a cost neutral basis at the peak time, so should save some battery cycles as well. 50% charge may well be typically met on any given day without the need for any grid import as well.

Thoughts? opinions?
 
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