Intelligent Octopus Setup

[Deasea]

In case it might be of use to other switching to IO (apologies to those who may be familiar with the process already):

I have a Hypervolt 2.0 charger & an Enyaq iV80 and 'switched' to IO from Octopus Go Faster (now discontinued) a couple of days ago as my contract was ending.

I checked with both Hypervolt & Octopus that IO would work with both - this was confirmed so I went ahead with the switch.

I ensured that no schedules were set on car or charger. The Hypervolt charger was set to 'plug & charge'. The charger was connected to car & charging - with space for the test charge.

On the IO app I started the process and entered the car, then the charger. On the charger screen I selected Hypervolt and it gave me a second screen with '7kW' but not the charger model of '2.0'.

Initially I did not click on 7kW thinking it wanted the model number. This resulted in another screen basically saying Octopus would try to support the charger in the future and would come back to me - I can't remember the exact wording but it was something like that - and the process stopped.

I then repeated the process and clicked on the 7kW tab and the charger was accepted.

I continued through the steps and selected for IO to connect with the Enyaq. At this point it took me to another screen where I had to log into my Skoda account and 'accept' the T&C's for IO to use the Skoda info to control the cars charging.

The process stumbled a bit at this point. I was not given an 'accept' button to click on as I had expected. What I did receive was an email from Skoda with a copy of the T&C's. The screen then said something about waiting 5 minutes for the information to load, or something similar.

I waited 5 minutes - and then did it again. Eventually I got through to the test connection which seemed to go okay. I received confirmation that this was successful.

On the Octopus app i then saw a 'map' for that nights charging - 3 or 4 charging blocks of half an hour between 11.30 & 0530. I did not make a note of them.

I checked the car and the charging had stopped. I left the car overnight to see what happened. In the morning I saw that I had received a notification that IO had been unsuccessful in controlling the charge - but the car had charged to the 80% i had set. The 'map' had disappeared from the app screen.

I then logged in to my account on the main Octopus website and selected the 'My Energy' tab from the homepage. I tried to find details of the times etc of when the car had charged but could not find less than the daily usage in kWh, which was of no use. I then rumbled round in the website and on the homepage I scrolled down to where it had my electricity & gas meter details side by side below my address and saw 'View Meter Reading History' just above 'Spin the Wheel of Fortune'.

I clicked on the meter reading history tab and saw that I could see the electricity use in half hour blocks but sadly the information seems to lag a day or so behind so no information was available for the overnight period I had wanted to view.

I have now been back on to the Octopus website this morning and repeated the process and can see that the car did in fact charge over 3 separate half hour periods. I can therefore only assume that the notification that IO had been unsuccessful at controlling the charge was an error.

I intend to repeat the charging this time taking a screenshot of the 'map' to see if it does marry up with the periods that the car charges taken from the website a day or so later to test the assumption that any 'unsuccessful' notification is an error message and that IO is in fact working correctly.

Hope it may help.

[BeauBeau]

Thanks for such a detailed account @Deasea - gives me hope that it's just a matter of repeated tries

[Decide]

Just an fyi - I get the "unsuccessful in controlling the charge" every night and the charging has always been ok.

The only issue I have is it is regularly a couple % below target, but I can live with that.

PS This is using a granny cable

[Ric]

Another day, another IO mystery! I'm set up with IO and my zappi charger. If I plug the car in, set the charger to 'fast' , IO sets a schedule and I get the 'charge delayed' message on the charger and can see the overnight schedule on the Octopus app. So all is well and if I leave things alone, the car charges overnight. But here's the question ….

If, during the day the sun comes out (I know, unlikely but sometimes it does) and I want to make use of my solar panels to charge the car, and set the zappi to 'eco +', it starts to charge and then, after some time stops with a 'charge complete' message …. with the car far from the 80% set (today, it stopped at 62%).

So IO gurus, what am I doing wrong and is there a way of 'cancelling the mapped schedule (other than just unplugging the car so it doesn't happen)?

Ric

[Pksk]

Ric. In the octopus app click your avatar icon in the top left, then Devices tile. Then click intelligent Octopus. Scroll to the bottom and toggle off Smart Charging. You can toggle it back on from the Devices page when you want IO to control your charging again.

[Ric]

Brilliant and thanks. If only they'd told me that! Shows the true value of a forum like this.

Ric

[jimmyb78]

Ric. In the octopus app click your avatar icon in the top left, then Devices tile. Then click intelligent Octopus. Scroll to the bottom and toggle off Smart Charging. You can toggle it back on from the Devices page when you want IO to control your charging again.

Ah that's how you do it! I'd tried it with a bump charge with no luck. Lots of solar coming up this week so very useful to know.

Thanks very much

[anglefire]

I'm trying to get my Enyaq onto IO - and its just not working. I have sent an email to Octopus - though they won't reply now obviously.

I have a Zappi - which is on the list of chargers - and can add the car to the Octopus account, but either starts the charge then it fails or doesn't even start.

I have done a charge from the Zappi (Its untethered so a 3rd party cable) and that works ok.

Any thoughts?

[KBEE]

It’s annoying, but I found it took me 4 or 5 attempts to get it to complete the test charge. Once it did that, it’s been fine.

I never knew why it failed - the error messages were totally unhelpful - and I never changed anything the time it finally went through. It just - eventually - worked.

Good luck!

[Dad]

@anglefire. I’m not sure about Zappi but based on Ohme:-
1. Have you configured IO to the Zappi or the Enyaq? Ours is configured to the Ohme.. not the car.

2. Any previous charging schedules on the car itself or the charger can interfere (even if the times look like they won’t) so we deleted them all and just set up a single schedule on the charger for 11:30 to 05:30. When you are removing old schedules and creating one new one .. ensure the car is NOT plugged in at this point. This caused me issues at first attempt. Car must be unplugged otherwise it seems you are unintentionally sending data to IO which screws it up.

3. When above is done, when you then plug your car in to the charger do you get a notification on your phone to say IO smart charging schedule is calculated for tonight ( or something like that)? We do with Ohme.

Some owners have also reported that charging automatically starts as soon as you plug the car in (hence you need to stop it) but we don’t have that issue.

Good luck! Once you get it sorted it’s great!