Intelligent Octopus
Discussion
recalluk said:
Anyone else having issues with IO registering the car being plugged in tonight, plugged in and over an hour and still no slots....
I've experienced this a couple of times. My advice would be to Account & Settings -> Devices -> IO -> Scroll to the bottom, and then toggle Smart Charging off, then back on again. It seems to help kick it into life. 
Nice 🙂. One other thing I discovered on Reddit, you can switch the gas to octopus tracker while keeping the electricity on agile, you may be able to do that with the EV tariffs too. Gas tracker is currently about half the price of the standard tariff and given the direction of wholesale gas prices along with moving into summer, don't see it going up soon.
Obviously I could be wrong and it spike up but then I think it is straightforward to switch back, though they don't like you doing that too frequently I gather.
Obviously I could be wrong and it spike up but then I think it is straightforward to switch back, though they don't like you doing that too frequently I gather.
LordGrover said:
I was on Intelligent Octopus Go for a couple of years and recently switched to Agile. According to Octopus Compare its saving me c. 30%; which is nice.
Octopus Compare doesn't take into account the off-peak rates that Intelligent gives you when you charge outside the 23:30 to 05:30 period.Therefore you could be paying vastly more on Agile compared to Intelligent as those times you charge outside that off-peak slot that Octopus Compare knows about, if you are paying any more on Agile than 7.5p it is likely Octopus on Intelligent would have only charged you 7.5p and certainly not the peak 30p rate that Compare is misleadingly showing in its calculations.
PF62 said:
LordGrover said:
I was on Intelligent Octopus Go for a couple of years and recently switched to Agile. According to Octopus Compare its saving me c. 30%; which is nice.
Octopus Compare doesn't take into account the off-peak rates that Intelligent gives you when you charge outside the 23:30 to 05:30 period.Therefore you could be paying vastly more on Agile compared to Intelligent as those times you charge outside that off-peak slot that Octopus Compare knows about, if you are paying any more on Agile than 7.5p it is likely Octopus on Intelligent would have only charged you 7.5p and certainly not the peak 30p rate that Compare is misleadingly showing in its calculations.
The average on my recent Octopus bills using IO is about 13p.. And I don't do mega miles, about 10k a year. We normally plug our EV in early evening Octopus typically gives a charge plan starting immediately - so all our dinner cooking, washing, TV watching etc tends to get done during cheap hours.
I appreciate that the Octopus comparison can't factor in cheap rate hours that aren't guaranteed, but unfortunately not being able to do so does make it useless, or even worse it makes it likely it's going to push a lot of people onto a more expensive tariff than they should be on.
TheDeuce said:
I appreciate that the Octopus comparison can't factor in cheap rate hours that aren't guaranteed, but unfortunately not being able to do so does make it useless, or even worse it makes it likely it's going to push a lot of people onto a more expensive tariff than they should be on.
What makes this worse is that it isn't an *Octopus* comparison as the app has nothing to with Octopus. It is an independent app developer making money from subscribers by providing them with misleading information that is costing the people using it money.
And sure it is difficult for the developer to know when the cheap Intelligent hours are when someone is not on that tariff, but at least the app could explain its workings and that it isn't accurate - but then it wouldn't get people paying for it.
TheDeuce said:
Indeed. According to LordGrovers screen grab, the average on Agile they pay is 16.61p
The average on my recent Octopus bills using IO is about 13p.. And I don't do mega miles, about 10k a year. We normally plug our EV in early evening Octopus typically gives a charge plan starting immediately - so all our dinner cooking, washing, TV watching etc tends to get done during cheap hours.
I appreciate that the Octopus comparison can't factor in cheap rate hours that aren't guaranteed, but unfortunately not being able to do so does make it useless, or even worse it makes it likely it's going to push a lot of people onto a more expensive tariff than they should be on.
I suspect that Octopus (and the app) makes the "reasonable" assumption that you have a 7.4kwh charger and their scheduling works. IO gives 6 hours by default, or 44kwh per night. Say you have 75kwh battery and charge from 20-80%, that is 45kwh, so pretty much should be entirely charged by the 6 hours you get free and give you around 120-150 miles per day!The average on my recent Octopus bills using IO is about 13p.. And I don't do mega miles, about 10k a year. We normally plug our EV in early evening Octopus typically gives a charge plan starting immediately - so all our dinner cooking, washing, TV watching etc tends to get done during cheap hours.
I appreciate that the Octopus comparison can't factor in cheap rate hours that aren't guaranteed, but unfortunately not being able to do so does make it useless, or even worse it makes it likely it's going to push a lot of people onto a more expensive tariff than they should be on.
Realise there are ways of lengthening the charge (e.g. turn the charger down to 6 amps) and tell it you need to be charged by 11pm, but do feel that if you were to write an app, you probably should assume Octopus are minimising the charging outside of the night hours. I think the "problem" or "feature" is that Octopus aren't really calcing their slot generation in the most efficient way, or perhaps there is other stuff going on behind the scenes (managing short term power load etc) and they don't care.
One other effect that I'm curious to see is using Agile with an Ohme charger, which is meant to let you charge whenever the rate drops below Xp. Still waiting for the car to turn to see how effective that is but the thought of Octopus sometimes paying me to charge my car is quite appealing!
Does anyone know if IO price coming down in April or are they sticking with the current levels, which maybe is their way of balancing the cost out?
At the end of the day, the difference between 13p and 16p over a year at 4000kwh is pretty small, the big difference is not paying the 28p per KWh.
iom_dave said:
TheDeuce said:
Indeed. According to LordGrovers screen grab, the average on Agile they pay is 16.61p
The average on my recent Octopus bills using IO is about 13p.. And I don't do mega miles, about 10k a year. We normally plug our EV in early evening Octopus typically gives a charge plan starting immediately - so all our dinner cooking, washing, TV watching etc tends to get done during cheap hours.
I appreciate that the Octopus comparison can't factor in cheap rate hours that aren't guaranteed, but unfortunately not being able to do so does make it useless, or even worse it makes it likely it's going to push a lot of people onto a more expensive tariff than they should be on.
I suspect that Octopus (and the app) makes the "reasonable" assumption that you have a 7.4kwh charger and their scheduling works. IO gives 6 hours by default, or 44kwh per night. Say you have 75kwh battery and charge from 20-80%, that is 45kwh, so pretty much should be entirely charged by the 6 hours you get free and give you around 120-150 miles per day!The average on my recent Octopus bills using IO is about 13p.. And I don't do mega miles, about 10k a year. We normally plug our EV in early evening Octopus typically gives a charge plan starting immediately - so all our dinner cooking, washing, TV watching etc tends to get done during cheap hours.
I appreciate that the Octopus comparison can't factor in cheap rate hours that aren't guaranteed, but unfortunately not being able to do so does make it useless, or even worse it makes it likely it's going to push a lot of people onto a more expensive tariff than they should be on.
Realise there are ways of lengthening the charge (e.g. turn the charger down to 6 amps) and tell it you need to be charged by 11pm, but do feel that if you were to write an app, you probably should assume Octopus are minimising the charging outside of the night hours. I think the "problem" or "feature" is that Octopus aren't really calcing their slot generation in the most efficient way, or perhaps there is other stuff going on behind the scenes (managing short term power load etc) and they don't care.
One other effect that I'm curious to see is using Agile with an Ohme charger, which is meant to let you charge whenever the rate drops below Xp. Still waiting for the car to turn to see how effective that is but the thought of Octopus sometimes paying me to charge my car is quite appealing!
Does anyone know if IO price coming down in April or are they sticking with the current levels, which maybe is their way of balancing the cost out?
At the end of the day, the difference between 13p and 16p over a year at 4000kwh is pretty small, the big difference is not paying the 28p per KWh.
This is nothing unusual, loads of member here report endless extremely generous 'extra' hours. I've had 15 hours straight before..
Octopus push out as much cheap rate power as they can so long as there is an oversupply of renewable energy into the grid - which is very often the case these days, we have a lot of renewable energy generation. Previously that energy was either wasted directly by ceasing generation or compensated for by traditional power stations backing off their supply to the grid, which is extremely inefficient.
Ramming as much cheap power into EV's and any other large batteries as possible is by far the best use of it, it can then be used at times when the renewable infeed is lower and they don't wish to encourage too much EV charging.
So far Octopus have tracked the downward trend in power prices for the peak rate, whilst leaving the off peak rate unaffected - at least in my case, I assume others are the same although there is some variance in rates depending on when you signed up I think. They don't need to offset a loss for selling cheap, they're buying that energy cheaply for the reasons above, to stop it simply being wasted.
TheDeuce said:
PF62 said:
LordGrover said:
I was on Intelligent Octopus Go for a couple of years and recently switched to Agile. According to Octopus Compare its saving me c. 30%; which is nice.
Octopus Compare doesn't take into account the off-peak rates that Intelligent gives you when you charge outside the 23:30 to 05:30 period.Therefore you could be paying vastly more on Agile compared to Intelligent as those times you charge outside that off-peak slot that Octopus Compare knows about, if you are paying any more on Agile than 7.5p it is likely Octopus on Intelligent would have only charged you 7.5p and certainly not the peak 30p rate that Compare is misleadingly showing in its calculations.
I was never happy to 'game' the system with IO as I have an i3 which doesn't play well with IO scheduling. I like cabin pre-condition for departure which I lose if I let IO take control, so I typically scheduled within the six hour slot, and there's not a lot I can time shift as I'm fairly low usage apart from the car.
LordGrover said:
I've just had the bill which handily shows a direct comparison which confirms a saving, though not as much; average 13.88p IOG vs 12.27p Agile.
It is a saving, but it seems a lot of hassle being on Agile with the high price spikes to save £60 a year, assuming the predicted usage n the bill is correct.LordGrover said:
Hassle?
I can't be arsed to load shift or anything if that's what you mean? I simply charge the car in a low rate window as before, but now have a little more flexibility.
Yes hassle. I can't be arsed to load shift or anything if that's what you mean? I simply charge the car in a low rate window as before, but now have a little more flexibility.
The hassle of either checking that day's Agile rates to see when you might be stung by high prices, or just rolling the dice and hoping you will be lucky.
LordGrover said:
You realize it's not ad-hoc and completely random; the 'high' rates are 16.00-19.00 weekdays.
Otherwise, it's much of a muchness apart from the typically lower rates over night.
The graph you have posted does indeed show that the highest price band for Agile is the period from 16.00-19.00. What is also shows is that the price on Agile very rarely gets to the same price as the 7.5p/kwh as Intelligent Octopus. We discussed the Agile vs Intelligent Octopus spreadsheet on page 19 of this very thread and myself and others noted that the spreadsheet gave inaccurate daily predictions of savings. In my case these savings would have actually turned into extra costs were I to move to Agile. I suspect this is the case for most users as the spreadsheet does not take account on the daily calculations of the actual off peak usage on Intelligent Octopus. Otherwise, it's much of a muchness apart from the typically lower rates over night.
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