UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

Posted on
Sun Mar 15, 2020 6:31 am
neilk offline
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Joined: Jul 13, 2015
Location: Reading, UK

UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

Has anyone moved to Octopus Energy and used their Agile or Go tarrifs. Thinking of making the change to Agile and scoping an Indigo plugin. Basically the publish the half hour energy rates for the next day at around 4pm. The pricing is based on demand and peaks early evening but for the rest of the time it is way cheaper. The idea would be to have a device to show the current electricity price in kWH and then build logic to shape demand. In very rare circumstances (excess of wind generation) they even pay you to take energy off the grid.

First use case would be to trigger car charging based on price thresholds as well as looking at other big demands and controlling it. Octopus allow people to split a finders fee of £100 for new introductions if this is something people are interested in. The Go tarrif gives a low rate in the early hours, without the risk of actual wholesale pricing that comes with Agile.

It also reports usage and gives great graphing potential via their api.

I also have a reasonably functioning Jaguar I-Pace plugin that would also work for any modern Jaguar or Land Rover, I just need to do a little tyding but it is pretty much beta ready now. It already can control charging, gelocates the car, reports tons of data about EV and ICE cars.

https://octopus.energy

Posted on
Sun Mar 15, 2020 3:04 pm
durosity offline
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Location: Newcastle Upon Tyne, Ye Ol' England.

UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

I almost went with them when I switched a few weeks ago but ended up with OVO as the wife kinda insisted on a “big name.” (in fairness her sister did get massively stung a while ago when switching to a company that collapsed.. she’s still trying to get her money back from the mess that caused)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Computer says no.

Posted on
Sun Mar 15, 2020 4:08 pm
neilk offline
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Joined: Jul 13, 2015
Location: Reading, UK

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

I know the big boys are more worried about these guys than some of the others. I haven’t decided to go with them yet but v1 of the plugin will create a device showing the relevant hourly rate in your supply postcode.

Their API looks cool to pull gas and electric meter reads, but I cannot test that until I switch.

I had Eon install a smart meter in January and they still cannot collect the meter reads or show me usage in the App.

Thinking I can create triggers to charge the car only when the rate drops below a threshold.

Posted on
Mon Mar 16, 2020 3:37 am
siclark offline
Posts: 1960
Joined: Jun 13, 2017
Location: UK

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

Definitely interested, although not sure how much I could use it. Although as I have a high resting use, ie always on servers, it would be nice for them to get a much lower per hour cost, and could then look to tweak electric floor use to those lower costs, especially in the mornings.

Posted on
Wed Apr 08, 2020 5:03 am
noel1983 offline
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Joined: Oct 17, 2014

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

I'm with them on the go faster tariff (4 or 5 hours at 5.5p from 2030 every night)

Considered Agile but the effort in tracking etc wasn't worth it for me despite the appeal of having days like the 5th April where they were paying customers to use electricity!\

Love the idea of their being an Indigo plugin for this :)

Posted on
Wed Apr 08, 2020 7:34 am
neilk offline
Posts: 714
Joined: Jul 13, 2015
Location: Reading, UK

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

Noel - I am progressing this, I have the python to collect from the API

- Your region identifier so it collects the correct tariff based on postcode
- it will create an indigo device that has the current Kwh price, as well as the 30 minute pricing for the current and previous days

My plan as I have not switched then is to graph the pricing and create test triggers based on price

You will be able to use this functionality without being an Octopus customer, and if you can track whole house usage you can calculate your actual pricing

Phase 2 when I switch to Octopus will require your customer API key and will capture meter reads via the Octopus API, I will not be able to build that yet as I have a problem with my smart meter, but I maybe able to prototype for you (it will work with any Octopus tariff) as long as you have a smart meter. That is why I will be tracking the previous day pricing as I understand that is how the consumption data is supplied, not real time.

I am pretty close, the main plugin has the configuration built, I just need to get my logic to map UTC to GMT and BST as I am a hour out, and I need to test the refresh process to handle what the API delivers depending on the time you run it. Hopefully will get a beta up over the weekend for the phase one functionality. People could use that to asses the potential of the Agile tariff. I would have been paid this week to charge my I-Pace, and that plugin is already working.

Neil

Posted on
Sun Apr 19, 2020 5:52 am
neilk offline
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Joined: Jul 13, 2015
Location: Reading, UK

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

I have got an early but functional version of this going at https://github.com/neilkplugins/Octopus_Energy-indigo-plugin

It is extremely simple, and does not require you to switch or to be an Octopus Energy customer, it simply creates a device that gives the currently applicable cost for a kWh in pence for the current 30m period. I was massively over complicating things by trying to track all 48 periods in the device, but realised I could use Dave's MatPlotLib plugin to do my logging to CSV's

It also creates devices for the max. min and average rates and also exposes the currently applicable daily standing charge (mainly because you can)

You can trigger off the rates using standard functionality.

It is alpha, and some ugly bits inside that I will refine, but it does work. It has the UI for the API key and account, but that is currently not used and will come when I can actually switch. Use at your own risk but at present it seems to be stable.

A proper plugin sub forum will also follow.

Posted on
Wed Apr 29, 2020 1:37 pm
petematheson offline
Posts: 847
Joined: Sep 14, 2014
Location: Southampton, UK

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

Hey Neil, I'm just looking to switch over to Agile actually, great timing!

Now I just need to be able to trigger my Tesla PowerWall to charge / stop charging to make a beast out of Agile & your plugin :)

Installed the plugin but immediately getting this:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "plugin.py", line 64, in runConcurrentThread
KeyError: key pollingFrequency not found in dict

Octopus Energy Error plugin runConcurrentThread function returned or failed (will attempt again in 10 seconds)

I've left the polling frequency at the default of 60.

Posted on
Wed Apr 29, 2020 2:33 pm
neilk offline
Posts: 714
Joined: Jul 13, 2015
Location: Reading, UK

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

Pete - great news that it could be useful to somebody else, I was thinking it might have been for an audience of one. Sorry for the issue, I hadn't spotted any downloads and did some work to the plugin config definitions and it could be one of the interim releases was out of whack. I literally just published the release version and pushed it to the plugin store pending approval. In the first instance could you upgrade to that one.

https://github.com/neilkplugins/Octopus_Energy-indigo-plugin/releases/tag/0.1.0

The other thing to try is just to open and save the plugin config again. If that doesn't work then I will try a totally clean install at my end to figure it out, I will get it sorted for you asap.

Neil

Posted on
Wed Apr 29, 2020 2:35 pm
neilk offline
Posts: 714
Joined: Jul 13, 2015
Location: Reading, UK

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

I am more than happy to look into any functionality that you need for the power wall as well, that is another really cool use case.

Neil

Posted on
Wed Apr 29, 2020 3:25 pm
neilk offline
Posts: 714
Joined: Jul 13, 2015
Location: Reading, UK

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

petematheson wrote:
Hey Neil, I'm just looking to switch over to Agile actually, great timing!
Installed the plugin but immediately getting this:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "plugin.py", line 64, in runConcurrentThread
KeyError: key pollingFrequency not found in dict

Octopus Energy Error plugin runConcurrentThread function returned or failed (will attempt again in 10 seconds)

I've left the polling frequency at the default of 60.


I have managed to replicate this by doing a full clean install. If you try the version now in the plugin store then you may still get this error for the first execution, but then it clears. Trying to figure it out now !

Posted on
Wed Apr 29, 2020 4:02 pm
neilk offline
Posts: 714
Joined: Jul 13, 2015
Location: Reading, UK

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

petematheson wrote:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "plugin.py", line 64, in runConcurrentThread
KeyError: key pollingFrequency not found in dict

Octopus Energy Error plugin runConcurrentThread function returned or failed (will attempt again in 10 seconds)

I've left the polling frequency at the default of 60.


Sorry for the issue here, I have actually posted a fix now to the plugin store http://www.indigodomo.com/pluginstore/232/ that corrects this issue (I will investigate further, but it only shows up if you do a totally clean install, lesson for my next plugin to test that as well). I also correct an issue with the icon naming so we get a nice icon in the plugin store. I will now setup the appropriate plugin sub forum.

Posted on
Thu Apr 30, 2020 5:59 am
petematheson offline
Posts: 847
Joined: Sep 14, 2014
Location: Southampton, UK

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

Awesome thank you! Works perfect now.
Commented on the other thread but from what Glenn has said, it's possible to add in what I need to his PW Plugin so I'm hopeful that might get an update soon :)

Posted on
Fri May 01, 2020 1:33 pm
ChiefMonk offline
Posts: 26
Joined: Nov 28, 2014

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

We are in process of building a house and planning Powerwall.

This would be perfect for us, but will be a few months before we get to try it out in anger.

Just thought you would lie to know that the group has expanded by 100% :)

Chris

Posted on
Fri May 01, 2020 2:24 pm
pocster offline
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Joined: Nov 15, 2014

Re: UK members - Octopus Energy (especially EV drivers)

ChiefMonk wrote:
We are in process of building a house and planning Powerwall.

This would be perfect for us, but will be a few months before we get to try it out in anger.

Just thought you would lie to know that the group has expanded by 100% :)

Chris
+1

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