OKAY everything seems good MP2 with CERBO GX and at the moment 4 US5000 batteries (soon to be 6) AND a Hypervolt Home Pr 3 EV charger and I am now on the Octopus iGO tariff
I have scheduled the 6 hour overnight cheap energy charging for my EV and System Battery Charging.
BUT Octopus do cheap energy during the day as well, and I would like to use that to not only (maybe charge my car) but charge the US5000 Batteries.
BUT how do I discover when Octopus are giving me cheap energy during the day and have the MP2 to start charging?
I was thinking a CT on the feed to the charger and to use that to sense when Octopus are selling cheap energy. BUT then my car will always need the battery to be needing charged and for the HV HP3 charger to be charging and I cannot see how that can be achieved, day in day out.
THOUGHTS IDEAS???
Hi David,
Carrying on the conversation here⌠For the Octopus integration, I strongly recommend getting âHome Assistantâ setup as this will help you link everything together to get some awesome home automations going for your batteries (and many other smart home devices). Let me know if you have Home Assistant already or a mini pc, docker instances, raspberry pi etc.. that you could use to run Home Assistant.
should I purchase the home assistance wee box thing Home Assistant Green Smart Hub Nabu Casa??
If you donât have a spare raspberry pi or mini pc then it could be a good simple solution to get setup quickly. Not sure of your technical/IT skillset, so might be worth watching a YT vid or two on setting things up ahead of buying just to make sure you are comfortable with it first. Then we can jump into integrations and creating some automations.
Small Systems and Mainframe Engineer and Network specialist with lots of Fibre Optic experience and latterly an ITC Consultant still with many RUSTY Programming skills BUT THEY WERE ONLY THERE SO I COULD PROVE to the software people that there was a software fault not a hardware one as they always insisted that there was. Latterly ITC Senior Project Manager one of the UKâs TOP Mr Fixits for totally screwed up ITC Projects and then along came Y2K 
Obviously hands on skills are a bit rusty now and I prefer having things done for me BUT finding quality people (tradesmen) now is a total nightmare. (I wont talk about the complete and utter nightmare of having my {designed by me} wooden garage built). Having my really good high quality electrician NOT LISTEN TO me when I said that the MP2 NEEDS a TOTALLY ISOLATED AC supply for AC IN and even drawing up a simple wiring diagram WELL!!! he did it HIS WAY!!! and we know if you read back my posts here the problems that this caused. Replacing MCBOâs with MCBâs ONLY fixed the CBâs tripping {as we had a neutral fault} obviously the MP2 was still non functional, and it took some more head scratching and thinking until the issue was eventually resolved.
SO yes I am somewhat capable, I designed, and gathered all the bits together from all over the UK and installed my BSS {US5000âs are bluddy heavy} but that was a simple LEGO build and following others) but this would be a totally new expedience for me, the Home Assistant Green Smart Hub Nabu Casa, are cheap from China and not expensive on eBay
I am having fun setting up MP2 schedules to charge the BSS batteries but that will become tiresome for sure
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I sadly missed that Home Assistant Green Smart Hub Nabu Casa on eBay but I am watching a few mini pcâs
If youâre eager to get going you could always download vmware workstation and run that on your pc with the Home assistant vmware image, then you can start to tinker with integrations and get a feel for everything. You can then migrate everything across to your mini pc when it arrives.
Since I really ONLY want to automatically charge my batteries when energy cost are low (not automate my whole house) would investigating using DESS not be a sensible option?
DESS wont know when Octopus give you the cheap rates (outside of the normal 23:30-05:30), so you can only really implement it for the fixed times. If thatâs enough then sure it will be fine for DESS / fixed scheduling. However if you want to charge the batteries each time your on the cheaper rate then you will need some automation which I am only aware of using via the likes of home assistant. Iâm sure there are other ways to implement this but HA seems to be the way most are doing it.
Also DESS seems to be more around self consumption AND selling back to the grid so not sure if the latter is something your actually wanting to do?
OK thanks again MY Drive is to run the house on my BSS and Charge the batteries as cheaply as possible (free when the sun shines and my FIT system produces a decent amount of energy).
Once I have my partner onboard the plan is for us to build a BIG shed (I need that to empty the old 80 year old {sized for something like an Austin A30} garage so that it can be demolished and then garden landscaped so that we have vehicle access to the new garage). This shed will have a slopping south facing roof at a 20/25 deg slope. BUT the roofing material will be the largest solar panels I can find 700W, or more and I will size the shed and the roofing structure to fit the panels I will purchase. With a bit of luck I can install at least six and maybe eight and then âmostlyâ run the house on solar during the day and with the extra energy charging my batteries for running the house during the non sunny and dark oâclock hours.
ATM I am not thinking of energy export and ATM my 3.7 kWh FIT system generates about ÂŁ550 per year. Obviously IF I have an additional 4.2 or even 5.6 kWh of solar then that situation changes massively. I was thinking NO roofing sheeting and just fix the solar panels onto the roofing joists with the joists positioned of course to support the solar panels. Then the shed will have solar heating as well, as there will be nothing between the bottom of the solar panels and the interior of the shed.
I just had a LONG conversation with Octopus (sadly the person I spoke with did not fully understand the iGO tariff and the fact that these during the day Low Cost off-peak energy schedules were NOT ONLY to charge the car but were available for the house to use as well. What they did admit was that the App driven by the Mini was NOT accurate so that is very disappointing. BUT I had already realised this by doing my own calculations, (kWh used times .07p) did not match the cost shown on the app 
BUT there is another issue that Octopus are hopefully investigating as I sent them a long email explaining where I saw some problems. Once i get a reply I will explain what these problems are and hopefully what Octopus are going to do to fix these issues.
FUN and GAMES Continues
complete nightmare trying to do that
Got a HA Yellow coming this week then the fun will really start