Forcing batteries to charge - Octopus Energy Power Ups

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Paul Beskeen asked Sep 14, '23

Forcing batteries to charge - Octopus Energy Power Ups

My UK electricity provider Octopus Energy are providing ad-hoc free energy periods. These are typically only notified a day in advance. So the game is to store/use as much electricity during that period as you can. https://octopus.energy/power-ups/ If you are in the East of England area I would recommend signing up, nothing to lose!

I have a schedule set for my usual Octopus GO cheap rate tariff, but don't see an obvious way to temporarily enable battery charging other than to add a temporary charge schedule via:

Settings->ess->scheduled charge levels

Is there any other way? I can imagine this being a useful manual control, for example if you were in a mobile setup and want to immediately add charge when you dock/park, or if you knew of an impending power cut...

Thanks, Paul.

battery charging ESS

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) answered · Sep 14, 2023 at 12:50 PM

Hi @Paul Beskeen,

The fastest way to manually charge the batteries from the grid in an ESS system is to use the controls section on the dashboard of VRM, or enable the phone widget.

Then you can change the setting to keep batteries charged with a couple of taps.

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marv2097 answered · Feb 02 at 09:39 AM

I use the home assistant Octopus addon which may shows your current rates from the API.

I am on the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff. Its similar to the power ups but give you cheap rates at 7.5p during the day if the car needs it to charge. To avoid the battery discharging into the car I use the Octopus API plugin to detect if we are in a 'dispatching' window and put the multiplus in 'pass-thru' by limiting the inverter output to 0w.

https://github.com/BottlecapDave/HomeAssistant-OctopusEnergy

It provides boolean sensor called 'Intelligent Dispatching' which can be used in automations. You may be able to do something similar by querying the rate and if it drops < 0 then change the ESS mode to always charged.

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Modifications Space

Node Red Space

Answer 1 · 2023-09-14T07:30:32Z

Michelle Konzack answered · Sep 14, 2023 at 07:30 AM

Does Octopus Energy not provide an API?

Than it is easy done with your Cerbo GX and NodeRed.

HOW are you notified?

By EMail?

Then you need a computer with an EMail parser to get the schedule for the next day and of course NodeRed on your Cerbo GX where you can do the rest of the stuff to charge your batteries for free.

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Answer 2 · 2023-09-14T12:37:00Z

Paul Beskeen answered · Sep 14, 2023 at 12:37 PM

Ha, was hoping for a std UI feature I had missed as it seems such a basic & useful feature to have.

Yes, notified by email. I have been putting off Node Red / Home Assistant to keep my life relatively simple. I know I will cave in at some point!

Also yes on the API:

https://octopus.energy/blog/agile-smart-home-diy/

https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/

Cheers, Paul.

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Answer 3 · 2023-09-14T13:20:57Z

Paul Beskeen answered · Sep 14, 2023 at 01:20 PM

There you go!

Thanks Guy.

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented · Sep 14, 2023 at 02:16 PM

I am also lobbying for a single button tap to charge the batteries to 100% and then automatically return to Optimised mode, but that might take some more time :)

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Answer 4 · 2024-01-31T14:05:44Z

richenergy answered · Jan 31 at 02:05 PM

I just set a timer in say schedule 2 in the ESS scheduled charge and when finished swap it back to my Dec, Jan defualt or not if the sun is powering.

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Answer 5 · 2024-01-31T14:25:10Z

dan-caws answered · Jan 31 at 02:25 PM

I use home assistant and node red for this.

From the emails it creates a calendar event into homeassitnat, then on the event start node red triggers my charge, (it also charges the car, turns on the immersion, the fan heaters in my office if cold, and a host of other fun things when free)

If you want further details let me know. (also let's get ready to turn everything on today at 20:00!

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Answer 6 · 2024-02-02T12:52:01Z

richenergy answered · Feb 02 at 12:52 PM

my Octopus email went in the junk folder...............

So i missed the power up. So I would like to get details of homeassistent please (Currently on a Pi4 with an SSD) (and sorting spam issue first with BT server) I have the large OS installed and havnt had a moment to look at Node red as yet, that would be very helpfull.

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daza commented · Feb 02 at 05:42 PM

@Craig Chamberlain has helped me out but for the life of me I can’t get it to discharge the battery automagically but it signs up to the saver sessions automagically

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richenergy daza commented · Feb 02 at 06:55 PM

Ok thanks. Hopefully mail sorted so it doesn't go into JUNK added as safe so I don't miss another.

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Answer 7 · 2024-02-15T11:39:39Z

andrew-penny answered · Feb 15 at 11:39 AM

I have integrated the Octopus Agile tariff into my home assistant which controls my Victron inverter.

The initial point i had to solve was how to force the Victron to charge, which i think is best done by dictating the Minimum state of charge, after working that out myself, i noticed it mentioned by Victron also. That state of charge can be written by Home Assistant to the Modbus register in the Victron. So you`d write either 0 to allow discharge or 1000 to force charge to slave 100 address 2901.

Next point was to determine the best time to charge, based on the forecast prices, these you can get from the Octopus API, then process them in Home assistant using some rest sensors and a bit of JINJA2.

Last point was to integrate my EV charger with the Victron so that the house battery doesn't charge the car, which i used an integration to monitor the EVs API through home assistant, then used an automation to write the current state of charge value to write to the minimum state of charge value so that it neither charges or discharges the battery whilst the EV is charging. I think this last point can probably be better done with a current monitor on the EV circuit as I`m not keen on relying on community volunteers to keep integrations working as things are updated.

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