Intelligent Octopus EVERYTHING You Need To Know for vehicle integration! - Plug & Play #6
Вставка
- Опубліковано 17 лип 2024
- 🔌⚡ Are you an EV driver looking to switch to the Intelligent Octopus EV tariff? Or maybe you've already made the switch but need a helping hand to navigate the setup and make the most out of your new charging plan? Look no further! This comprehensive video is your go-to resource for everything you need to know about getting started with the Intelligent Octopus tariff via vehicle integration. 🚗💨
As EV enthusiasts ourselves, we understand the challenges and questions that come with adapting to a new EV tariff. That's why we've created this detailed tutorial to guide you through the entire process of setting up your Intelligent Octopus account, integrating it seamlessly with your electric vehicle, mastering the initial test charge, and answering all the FAQs you might have about using this dynamic tariff to your advantage.
In this video, we cover:
Step-by-Step Setup Guide: Get detailed instructions on how to sign up for Intelligent Octopus and ensure your account is perfectly set up.
App Integration Tips: Learn how to effectively use the Octopus app to monitor and manage your charging sessions, ensuring you're getting the best rates.
Vehicle Integration: Discover how to sync the Octopus app with your EV for a smoother, more efficient charging experience.
Navigating the Test Charge: We'll walk you through the test charge process to guarantee you're all set for optimized charging.
FAQs Answered: Have questions? We've got answers! From understanding peak and off-peak hours to troubleshooting common issues, we'll help clear up any confusion around the Intelligent Octopus tariff.
Remember, this video is purely educational. While we're passionate about helping fellow EV drivers make the most of their charging experience, we're not affiliated with Octopus Energy. Our goal is to share our expertise and insights to assist our community in navigating the Intelligent Octopus tariff with ease.
Whether you're just about to make the switch or need some assistance finalising your setup, this video is packed with tips and tricks that will undoubtedly make your transition smoother and more beneficial.
Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell to stay updated with more helpful content like this. If you have any questions or need further assistance, drop a comment below, and let's help each other out!
Timestamps -
00:00 Introduction
00:28 Before We Get Started
01:30 Getting Around The App
02:35 Instruction Screen
03:47 Base Set Up
05:40 Most Important Section
07:40 Quick Tips
09:23 Loads More Information
11:16 Set Charge Times
14:05 Making The Most Of It
Keep up to date on our other social media platforms 👇🏼
📷 Instagram - / vchrgd_technologies
📘 Facebook - / vchrgd.technologies
💼 LinkedIn - / vchrgd
🌐 Website - vchrgd.com/
#EVCharging #IntelligentOctopus #ElectricVehicles #EVtips #OctopusEnergy #SustainableDriving #EVTariff #ChargeSmart #IntelligentOctopusHelp #OctopusIntelligent #moneysavingtips
Really good this Alex!
Thank you, we try to help where we can! We’ll pass your kind words on to Alex as well ⚡️
thank you so much a fantastic video, had a few problems setting up my audi, But octopus help service were amazing and help me out a lot.
Hi @john1040 we’re really glad to hear that Octopus we’re so helpful, we’ve found with the Audis it can help to leave it charging for a bit longer, say 30 minutes before attempting the target charge. Hope you enjoy your cheaper charging ⚡️
Great video 🎉
Thank you @jordanbeech12 we just hope it proves useful as more people move towards smart tariffs
Thank you - you are the first person to say that you need to start the charge yourself. I thought Octopus Test involved them starting the charge!
Same here . I plan to move to iO in amonth or two so ill post back when that happens. (Ill be using my charger not the car)
Well here i am back again. And Octopus starts the test. You click "test" and then Octopus does its thing. At least for a charger . For a charger you essentially needs its login details same as youd need for a car.
Also you dont need to be on a standard tariff i moved from Go to Intelligent Go.
Thanks. Does the car or charger need to be connected to the WiFi for intelligent to work? I can’t figure out how octopus communicates with the car
Top Vid and impressive beard!😜
Thanks! 😁
I can't get past the connect to device stage with my 2024 model 3. It's really frustrating!
Hi,Just came across your informative video on intelligence octopus.
Having been a Economy 7 user for years, my smart meter has two meter readings for on/off peak times,but since moving over to Intelligent a few days ago only the peak rate meter records energy use.
Not sure if that's correct or what,so does the app sort out were my off peak energy is being used?
Worth noting that the smart meter isn’t intelligent / sophisticated enough to distinguish between the low rate 7.5p and the higher rate. First charge on my Q4 at the weekend and it was showing £9 on my meter at 9am. My Ohme app showed the charge at £1.67. DM’d octopus and they mentioned the issue about the meter, so something to consider. They also confirmed I was on the intelligent rate and not to worry about the smart meter readings. I’m still learning and still a bit confused about the Ohme app as that seems to override the octopus app (beta) but my Audi’s MMI also wants the charging schedules submitted through it. From what I can gather so far, it’s best to schedule everything via the Ohme app. Any advice would be appreciated.
Hi @jonesboy201 this is a fantastic point, and a great commentary on the wider capabilities of smart tariffs vs. smart meters. As you say, the smart meter itself is preconfigured with times and prices that reflect the standard tariff rates, and your off-peak savings are then issued as a credit against your bill. this isn't uncommon in the world of smart EV tariffs currently but it would be great for customer clarity to see some development in the smart meter space as well. Regarding your vehicle integration, I believe the best practice advice from Ohme is to either have the vehicle OR the charger integrated with your Intelligent tariff, but not both. From their website "There are two ways to integrate with the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff, with your car or with your charger. For everyone with an Ohme charger we would recommend integrating with your charger via your Ohme account. If you would prefer to integrate with your car, your Ohme account will need to be unlinked from the charger to ensure Ohme doesn’t interrupt the charge." this would make sense, because one of the de facto EV charging recommendations is to never have a schedule set on both the vehicle and charger, as they will more than likely conflict. Perhaps it would be good to test whether unlinking the vehicle from Octopus and running the whole integration throguh your charger yields a better result. And of course we'd love to hear whether this helps at all :)
Hi
I carried out the setup procedure this morning, and all seemed to go well.
The Smart Charging schedule has been added to my Octopus Go app as follows:-
01:00 - 01:30
01:30 - 02:00
02:00 - 06:00
When I plugged my car into charge this afternoon (13:00) the car charged for over and hour, and did not stop. I had to stop the charge myself. This was charged at peak rate.
I managed to talk to Octopus, who firstly didn't call back as promised, and secondly don't know why it's doing that.
Any idea if I could fix this myself?
I have a 2015 Nissan Leaf and I use a granny charger plugged into a standard 3 pin socket on its own circuit, octopus told me that I could go on their intelligent tariff. So I get a smart meter fitted only to be told that i nedd a EV charger. Ive been sending emails to them but their not answering my questions. From your video ive gathered that i can set up the tariff through the EV charger rather than the car, is this correct as the info screen in the Leaf doesnt work properly. I am trying to find out what EV chargers will work for me. Thanks for your video it sheds some light on the issue.
Hi @paul1322 thank you for your comments and questions and we hope you’ve had a lovely Easter weekend! Provided your vehicle won’t have any issues with scheduled charging, which some of the older Leafs can do (they tend to go to sleep if left not charging for a long time) then you should be able to use a smart charger with the Intelligent Octopus integration. As Ohme we’re around when the older EV’s had this scheduled charging issue and are a robust and all around pretty reliable piece of kit, our recommendation would be to speak to them and see if you can arrange an installation quote, but yes without the vehicle integration available you’ll need to get an integrated charger. We hope this proves useful and good luck on your journey to affordable charging ⚡️
Hi love the video how would this work with as we have 2 electric cars a Tesla and a zoe
Hi @darrenkent9946 firstly thank you for the kind words 😃 In answer to the question ‘Can I charge 2 cars on Intelligent?’ Octopus’ guidline is as follows “No, you can only have one car connected to Intelligent Octopus Go smart charging at a time. If you have a second electric vehicle, then you can charge during this 6-hour off-peak window by manually setting it to charge at these times.” So you would most likely integrated with the Tesla and get your times, and then for the Zoe, set your charger up on a schedule from 23:30-05:30 and switch this on when you’re charging the Zoe, and make sure it’s switched off for the Tesla.
We hope this proves useful and the link to Octopus FAQ’s is here for reference: octopus.energy/intelligent-go-faqs/ of course if your charger is compatible with Intelligent Octopus then you can charge either on the schedule as Octopus will control the charger itself ⚡️
Hi. I am of an age so would like your thoughts. I am contemplating joining Octopus. I have just had Solar fitted with batteries. My car is the Kia Shortage PHEV and I have a home charger (myemergi zappi). On checking, the website states everything is compatible. With all the different tariffs available, my primary question is - which tariff would you recommend? Many thanks
Hi @RobertWayland-zj3qu thank you for putting you question on here, it’s a very good one. Now the thing is, it’s going to depend how often you’re charging your Sportage from empty to full, as you only have a 13.8kWh battery capacity, if you’re only doing relatively low mileage and not charging frequently then the big thing to consider is that all of these tariffs have a higher day rate for electricity. As you’re able to charge your vehicle to full in approximately 1 hour 45 minutes, each of the tariffs has more than enough time allowance at the off-peak rate (shortest is 4 hours). So the question really is, how much electricity does your house use each month and how much of that is your vehicle taking/how often do you charge. If you’re not charging often then you may find that the increased day rates and standing charges actually make your electricity bill go up. But if you charge every day and have an average energy consumption otherwise then your car is a very much a large part of this and an off peak tariff will be beneficial. What we recommend is that you look at your energy bill to see how much electricity your home uses and then calculate how much your charge the vehicle in an average month, subtract the vehicle usage from the total energy usage and then you’ve got the basic numbers needed to make a decent comparison. From here you can then take an EV tariff rate, say Intelligent Octopus, and multiply the off peak cost by the amount of energy you put into your car + the amount your house takes in the off-peak period) then add this to the peak price multiplied by the energy your home uses in the rest of the day. Personally though because you have solar and batteries, I would look at Intelligent Octopus or EoN because they have long off-peak windows that you could use to charge you batteries in the winter months, and then you can charge your car on solar in the day for free and top up your batteries at night.
It’s a challenging one as the PHEV has a small capacity, but the solar + batteries mean that you could find a nice way to make the most of a long off peak window. Depending on your battery storage capacity in the home of course.
We apologise that this isn’t a simpler recommendation but we want to ensure you factor every element of your home energy network into the decision. And hope that this is at least slightly useful.
Hi,
I’ve been with octopus intelligent for a week weeks. I carried out the sign up and it works fine but when I plug it in after a day out it charges up straight away until the next morning. I can see the schedule on the app but it won’t stop the charge. Any thoughts?
Hi @justhallam, when you get your schedule for the evening have you tried refreshing the screen a few times to see when the latest update received by the Octopus app from the car was? Alternatively we would recommend trying to start the charge and then wait a few minutes before opening up the Octopus app. Failing this, it’s worth giving Octopus a call so they can check the API connection to your vehicle as well.
Please let us know how you get on and what make and model of vehicle you have as we’d love for other users to potentially benefit from your experience ⚡️
Me and my wife are both about to get our first EVs on Friday. We've also got the Hypervolt charger being installed the same day. I'm currently with Octopus and will be moving to Intelligent Go. Do you know if I just connect one car via the Octopus app and the other through the Hypervolt app? Will I still get the cheaper rates when not using Octopus app?
Hello @jono8094, that’s a great question and yes as Octopus Intelligent can only integrate with one vehicle, you’ll need to use the Octopus app to schedule your charge for one, and set up the Hypervolt App to schedule your charge for the 11:30-5:30 window. Now one thing to consider here is that ideally Octopus will control the vehicle it’s integrated with and this works best when there’s no schedule set on the charger, so you may find that you end up disabling the schedule and then enabling it again before you plug your second vehicle in.
This is also covered under the FAQs section on the Intelligent page (just to give you a bit of confidence in it):
octopus.energy/intelligent-go-faqs/#:~:text=Can%20I%20connect%20more%20than%20one%20car%20to%20Intelligent%20Octopus%20Go%3F&text=No%2C%20you%20can%20only%20have,to%20charge%20at%20these%20times.
We hope this helps and good luck with your new tariff and great choice of charge as well ⚡️
Thanks so much for quickly getting back to me. That's how I thought/hoped it would work. Can't wait for the new cars, I'll be like a kid on Christmas Eve tomorrow 😂👍
That’s amazing to hear. We’re excited for you! 😃 and we’d love to hear how you get on after you’ve got everything set up! Drive safe and have fun.
Octopus sends my q4 a timer for 6 day in advance and doesn't charge unless I go into car turn timer off and starts charging straight away?
Hi @johnmayors2062 that's an interesting one and thank you for sharing your experience. Out of interest have Octopus given you any insight into this? It sounds as though somewhere in the API integration, vehicle or app settings there is a time shift. We're assuming that the departure time and charge limit are all set up to your needs. Now it's definitely critical to not have the schedule set on your car's system or on your charge as Octopus should be in full control of this, and we do know that charging often starts for a short period of time before Octopus stop it and take control, usually giving the 'A charging plan will be made shortly after you plug in' message, for this to work effectively we recommend that your charger is already offering power to the car before you open up the Octopus App, and then refresh the devices screen until you get your times for the day. We'd love to hear more and hopefully your experience can help others who may be seeing the same issue.
I’m having a nightmare getting Intelligent Go to work properly with my iX1. There’s gone sort of compatibility problem between Octopus/BMW/BP Pulse charger. The intelligent Go system only sets up two half hour sessions overnight, which is useless.
BP are useless.
BMW can’t help.
The Intelligent Go system even prevents a manually set charge, do I think I’ll have to go back just to Go.
Octopus are “looking into it”
Hello, we're sorry to hear that you're having issues with Octopus issuing scheduled times as well as with BP & BMW offering support times, it sounds like this could be very frustrating. Are you receiving the limited scheduled times on Octopus every single time you plug in, regardless of the battery level on the BMW? Regarding the manually set charge, is this being blocked when you tap 'Bump Charge' in the Octopus app? I would imagine the BP Pulse charger is operating without any schedules set currently? In which case it should be offering power to the vehicle, which Octopus should then be telling when to 'accept charge' so to speak. As such if the scheduled blocks are being sent incorrectly it definitely sounds like an Octopus issue, however the only avenue we could think of is whether the charger limit in octopus has been set to 100%.
We'd love to see if there's anything we can do to support you, but it sounds like you've already tried quite a few avenues. Do also remember that if you were to move back to a standard off-peak tariff like Go, that there are now some great Off Peak tariff alternatives from companies like Scottish Power, EoN Next, Ecotricity and British Gas that all offer very competitive rates and for longer charging windows in many cases.
Thanks for the reply.
The BP charger is set to provide charge 24/7 when demanded, so that’s OK.
Regardless of the battery level in the car, Octopus only offer 2 or 3 half hour slots over the whole night, which isn’t enough to charge the car.
Their system interferes with the BMW App so much that the scheduled departure time might be next week, not tomorrow morning.
I just can’t work it out.
I am loathe to leave Octopus as they’ve been very helpful on the whole and moving companies is a nightmare.
@@vchrgd I have had a DM from Octopus today. They seem to think that my car is an X1, not an iX1. Presumably, they assume that the X1 must be a PHEV as the battery capacity the think it is, is only 14kWh, not 65kWh in the full BEV iX1.
Let’s see what they come up with tomorrow.
That's really interesting to hear, we're assuming that when you did the vehicle integration it was set up as the iX1 and not the X1? Is it worth trying to forget the current 'device' and redo the connection test with the iX1 selected again and see if it yields better results? Or are you going to wait and see what Octopus say before making any changes on your side (this is what we'd probably do to be fair)?
@@vchrgd I just followed the Octopus instructions. I’ll have to look into forgetting the car and the re-registering it.
Any plans for yoir charger to be compatible with Octopus Intelligent?
Unfortunately whilst we’d absolutely love to be integrated, we don’t have a timeline for VCHRGD Seven to be directly Integrated with Intelligent Octopus, either through our app or any of our partners (ie Powerverse, Monta etc) we’ve been in discussion with Octopus for a while now, but they are prioritising integrations with other manufacturers, and we’re dependent on them to enable the API for our chargers. Whilst we’ll continue to work to deliver this for our customers, we can’t make any commitments on timescales for this.
We’re very much advocates for choice and believe that there’s no best charger, just the best charger for you! If the Intelligent Octopus integration and tariff access is critical for you; then I would recommend one of our competitors. Generally speaking Ohme have been integrated the longest, with Zappi and Wallbox integrating more recently. If you have solar then Zappi is a great option, otherwise Ohme are a good company too.
One thing that’s important to note, is that smart tariff integrations aren’t in the hardware but the back-end that runs the app via the cloud. So if, in the future, one of these partners did strike up a partnership with Octopus then the charger would become compatible.
We’re sorry it’s not a more definitive answer, but we don’t want to set expectations or commitments when we haven’t been given a timeline yet.
Hi, I'm with Octopus and can't get past the virtual key stage, I'm getting sick to death of tesla blaming Octopus and Octopus not doing anything about it after numerous calls. Any ideas before I get rid of this car? Can't be doing with Octopus being so useless.
Hi there @warrendartspollitt3076, sorry to hear you’re having issues with the virtual key stage out of interest is your vehicle a pre-2021 reg Model X or Model S?
No, it's a 2020 performance model3, I've actually got the schedule up from Octopus but it won't start the charge as per the schedule, so I'm just charging on tesla app for the mo.
@@warrendartspollitt3076 ok so you’ve tried running through the test charge and connecting without the virtual key? Is the main issue that the charging doesn’t start correctly overnight or that once it starts it won’t stop? More typically with Teslas we see that the issue is once starts the octopus schedule doesn’t take effect and stop the charge. In these instances some customers have found that by removing all schedules and starting the charge, then pausing it via the Tesla app, it will then start once the Octopus schedule takes effect
Octopus refuse to let us join IO because they don't like my ev. 😂
Oh dear 😬 sadly if they’re not on the vehicle integrations list and you already have a charger installed then you can’t access the tariff. But if you have yet to get a charger then you could go with Ohme, Wallbox or MyEnergi and still benefit from IO
Am I thinking this right either your car has to be on the list or you have a compatible charger .
@@darrenmarshall4454 there’s 3 options really, you can have a compatible EV (allowing you to have any charger you want), you can have a compatible charger (allowing you to have any EV you want) or you could have both a compatible EV and charger, which will have no adverse effects and you would likely configure the charger as the primary controller for the schedule as this is arguably simpler, more flexible and more reliable.
@@vchrgd No, my charger is fully compatible; they object to my EV.
@@lharris828 we’d be very interested in learning more about this so we can add the information in the comments for other users, would you be up for doing us a huge favour and emailing sales@vchrgd.com so we can learn a bit more please?