Intelligent Octopus Go - just when I thought I understood!

Pickers

Pickers

Pickers

Soldato
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I'm so confused, I received my car yesterday and transferred to IO go. I got a smart charging schedule that was something like 1.30am - 6am. I asked for 35% charge to be added (car arrived at 50%).

At 11.30pm last night, the car starts charging and kept going until it hit full - so the smart charge window wasn't used and the battery was overcharged... Any ideas? I haven't created any charge schedule unless the car arrived with one pre-set.
 
yup, its cheap 23.30 - 05.30 regardless of whats using it, or if octopus bump charge it for you.

I've got it hooked directly to my phev leon and it doesn't work properly 99% of the time, then will randomly bump charge it when i don't want it to (solar and battery so generally i don't want it using the house battery during the day). I just use the scheduling on the car now and ignore the octopus control
 
Siliconslave said:
yup, its cheap 23.30 - 05.30 regardless of whats using it, or if octopus bump charge it for you.

I've got it hooked directly to my phev leon and it doesn't work properly 99% of the time, then will randomly bump charge it when i don't want it to (solar and battery so generally i don't want it using the house battery during the day). I just use the scheduling on the car now and ignore the octopus control
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So as Im also getting on this soon, what settings do you need to dial in to various devices - car, charging unit, phone app etc?
 
not sure I 100% follow you but i'll give it a go :)
We don't have a fast charger (our garage is on a low power spur from the house & not worth ripping up about 15m of patio & path to install a new line yet) so just using the granny charger that came with the car.
The car is setup to charge during the off peak hours and i've authorised the Octopus app to control the car via their app. Octopus is set to charge to 100% overnight (plug in hybrid so only about 12kWh in total)
Usually octopus doesn't get permission to do anything to the car so it ends up just being the car starting itself (unless we override on the car app)
 
danlightbulb said:
So as Im also getting on this soon, what settings do you need to dial in to various devices - car, charging unit, phone app etc?
Click to expand...
Depends on the car, some allow Octopus to access the car API to control charging, some don't so rely on charger API.

There are pretty clear instructions on the myenergi site if you have a Zappi.

My car Volvo doesn't allow any 3rd party access for control so I have to use the Zappi access, to use this you disable any car related control and give Octopus access to your Zappi charger account,. Octopus then controls the Zappi, its been flawless operationally, though it often tells me it has failed when I bump charge, it actually works if you wait a minute or so.

For my car Octopus did not have the right battery size for my car, so I didn't get enough slots, I set it up as a different car and it was fine.
 
There are problems with my OHME Home Pro as well. Before I had it and just used the 3 pin cable to charge the car controlled the charge and I had zero problems. Now Octopus say that their app should control the charge under Intelligent Go but the only problem with that is it's not compatible with the OHME Home Pro yet and opens the OHME app instead. If I am not careful like I wasn't for the first three charges, it charges the car to 100% every time regardless of what I tell it to charge to. I then figured out what was happening. The charger fails to read the charge level from the car despite giving the app access to Nissan Connect services. What I have to do every time I charge the car is unpair the car from the charger, plug the cable in and then pair the car again by entering the details and it reads the battery state. What a pain in the arse it is having to do that every time. I contacted OHME who got back to me a couple of days later saying that their app has problems with Nissan services at the moment and that they were working on it. In the meantime they suggested setting a percentage in the app so if I want it to charge from 50-80% set it to a 30% charge. What possible use is that if the charger doesn't know the size or state of the battery? I got the Home Pro because it was supposed to be compatible both with Octopus Intelligent Go and my Nissan Leaf but in reality everything is buggy as hell. Electric cars have been around for years now and there shouldn't be massive bugs like this still. How do they expect EV's to be picked up by the masses when things are so bloody awkward? People want to be able to just plug them in, set a charge limit and that's it, plug and play if you like!!
 
pastymuncher said:
There are problems with my OHME Home Pro as well. Before I had it and just used the 3 pin cable to charge the car controlled the charge and I had zero problems. Now Octopus say that their app should control the charge under Intelligent Go but the only problem with that is it's not compatible with the OHME Home Pro yet and opens the OHME app instead. If I am not careful like I wasn't for the first three charges, it charges the car to 100% every time regardless of what I tell it to charge to. I then figured out what was happening. The charger fails to read the charge level from the car despite giving the app access to Nissan Connect services. What I have to do every time I charge the car is unpair the car from the charger, plug the cable in and then pair the car again by entering the details and it reads the battery state. What a pain in the arse it is having to do that every time. I contacted OHME who got back to me a couple of days later saying that their app has problems with Nissan services at the moment and that they were working on it. In the meantime they suggested setting a percentage in the app so if I want it to charge from 50-80% set it to a 30% charge. What possible use is that if the charger doesn't know the size or state of the battery? I got the Home Pro because it was supposed to be compatible both with Octopus Intelligent Go and my Nissan Leaf but in reality everything is buggy as hell. Electric cars have been around for years now and there shouldn't be massive bugs like this still. How do they expect EV's to be picked up by the masses when things are so bloody awkward? People want to be able to just plug them in, set a charge limit and that's it, plug and play if you like!!
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The issue is intelligent.
The vanilla octopus go is just set hours per day so no communication with octopus needed.

Issue is so many options possible depending on setup. Car, charger and Octopus/other energy supplier.
One tinkers with something rest may not work, especially car manufacturers.
 
Pickers said:
So its not expected to charge at 11.30 regardless? Maybe my first night I just got unlucky!!
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If your smart plan doesn't start at 23.30 it wouldn't normally start at 23.30.

If the Octopus side can't contact the charger/car properly then it will start at 23.30. Mine seems to fail to talk to each other once every couple of weeks.
 
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Siliconslave said:
yup, its cheap 23.30 - 05.30 regardless of whats using it, or if octopus bump charge it for you.

I've got it hooked directly to my phev leon and it doesn't work properly 99% of the time, then will randomly bump charge it when i don't want it to (solar and battery so generally i don't want it using the house battery during the day). I just use the scheduling on the car now and ignore the octopus control
Click to expand...

Yup, i usually charge the car early and set an early departure time so i can get a cheap rate through the evening when im actually using electronic devices. I've had cheap rates as early as 18:30pm and all the way through until the car is fully charged.
 
Minstadave said:
If your smart plan doesn't start at 23.30 it wouldn't normally start at 23.30.

If the Octopus side can't contact the charger/car properly then it will start at 23.30. Mine seems to fail to talk to each other once every couple of weeks.
Click to expand...
Gotcha - might need to call octopus tomorrow then as every night I get put onto smart charging at 23.30
 
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pastymuncher said:
How do they expect EV's to be picked up by the masses when things are so bloody awkward? People want to be able to just plug them in, set a charge limit and that's it, plug and play if you like!!
Click to expand...

You are using a BETA tariff still, if you want to do what you are asking just leave it to charge from 23:30 until 05:30 job done, if you want to have it charge intelligently, where it reduces your electricity costs, then you need to be slightly more forgiving at the moment.

Just for reference I have zero issue with my Ohme, and use Intelligent to the fullest extent I can and have half a dozen charge schedules set in the app for various times, and I limit the charge using the in car function rather than trying to pair it with ropey manufacturer software.
 
That's not the problem though as it does charge intelligently and I have even had a couple of bonus slots as well. The problem is that the charger doesn't talk to the car so it never knows the state of the battery and charges it to 100% everytime instead of the 80% I set it to. To get around this I have to unpair the car, plug it in and then pair it with the charger again and it will then talk to the car. If I just plug it in they won't talk to each other. This is 100% a OHME problem as they admitted it to me last week and suggested I use it as a dumb charger for the time being.
 
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