More Intelligent Octopus Go Woes - 2 Homes

[pauloamore]

My IOG setup is as follows;

Home 1) Taycan setup as an EVE on home (Andersen A2 charger).
Home 2) A Myenergi Zappi registered as a device.

Each device is on a seperate non-connected Octopus account (i.e. i cannot toggle between homes on the Octopus app).

Home 2 has not been reliably charging to full AND I note that Enode profiles are being pushed to the car.
- I think these profiles are meant for Home 1. But even when I removed the car from Home 1, I still got Eenode profiles pushed to the car whilst charging on Home 2 which I think stopped charging during smart slots.

Can anyone give advice on why / how Enode would appear on the car at Home 2? And what if anything i should do about it?

with thanks in advance
p

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[Bennachie]

Let IOG talk to the evses and forget car settings

 

[D00notD00d]

Turn off ‘Smart Control’ in the Octopus App and just use the car/My Porsche profile and timer. Or if you must, your charger features.
When I first got my car around 17 months ago, Intelligent Go was unreliable, not charging at all, not reaching the target or charging past the target - e.g. ploughing on to 100%. Octopus were unable to resolve.
I recently retried it and the same problems were still there.

 

[pauloamore]

I have tried that.

But in Home 1, I don’t have a compatible EVSE. So rely upon the Porsche integration for smart charging.

And even when I removed the Taycan from home 1, I get an Enode profile appearing at home 2…. Weird right?

 

[D00notD00d]

If I understand correctly, the Home 1/Octopus 1 set up is reliant on use of the Andersen as a dumb charger, uses the car‘s charging scheduler and works ok.

The Home2/Octopus 2 set up is using your Zappi charger as the OI device but somehow, that integration is unreliably operating an Enode profile.
Either that’s a standard Octopus-Zappi integration approach for Taycan, or more likely, your car & Octopus-Porsche account integration was not fully deleted when you removed the Taycan as an Octopus device. You’d assume Taycan on Octopus is account & location specific but maybe that’s not rigourous/robust. Octopus support would have to check and fix that. Despite escalation they were unable to solve my unreliability.

The steps below match my set up and may also work for you. This set up removes any Porsche API, Kraken, OI Smart Control, Meter and Zappi function and connectivity external dependencies. Any or all of which could sometimes go wrong. I believe OI is still marketed as beta.

1. Configure your Home 2 Zappi as a dumb charger, so it knows nothing about Octopus, and is reliant only on the car scheduler. I assume there is a way to do this - I just use the supplied dumb Porsche charger.
2. Delete the ENODE profile from the car. Set up and enable your own General Profile and Timer values.
3. Delete the Zappi integration from the Home 2 Octopus account, so no devices are present. (To complete this you may need to provide a different charger, If so, select 32a Commando Socket. If necessary you may also have to add your car as the smart device, if so turn on Smart Control for the duration of the test charge then turn it off afterwards).
4. Try a test charge. When successful turn off Smart Control and repeat step 2.

Note without any Smart Control configured you’ll lose any reduced rate provision outside the 23:30-05:30 window.

There are comments around about needing to have Smart Control turned on to stay eligible for OI, but many here have turned it off because of unreliability. I turned it off for over a year, tried it again for a week recently, then turned it off again when I found it was still undependable.

A dumb charger is enough unless you have local energy as part of the mix. You can rely on the car scheduler.

 

[pauloamore]

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

"Either that’s a standard Octopus-Zappi integration approach for Taycan, or more likely, your car & Octopus-Porsche account integration was not fully deleted when you removed the Taycan as an Octopus device. You’d assume Taycan on Octopus is account & location specific but maybe that’s not rigourous/robust. Octopus support would have to check and fix that. Despite escalation they were unable to solve my unreliability."

It's exactly as you have understood. I'm amazed that an Enode profile can leak from one Home location to another. And doubly even when removed from the main home...

The unreliability of the IOG Porsche integration has started to grate (and my solution was repeated adding and removal of the car as a device). But now, at home 1, I can't re-add since the app cannot now see a smart meter.... Argh...

But for sure, your advice is valid. Just not what its meant to be, though as you write, it is Beta and Octopus actually list VAG group vehicles to suffer charging problems.

 

[gramorris]

I don’t know if this will help you with your overcharging issue @D00notD00d but I discovered that setting the charge in the Octopus app is just indicating how much you want to the planner. So if you put 85% in then Octopus plans to send 8.5kw (assuming a 100kw battery) - not intelligent at all as Octopus doesn’t know the car’s state of charge. Setting the limit in a car profile is the way to stop the charge at a certain limit.

Generally these technologies are not smart and definitely do not interoperate well. Hopefully this will change with tech like Matter but we’re a way off as most of the tech is relying on flakey startups or very legacy home heating companies.

I’ve got Home Assistant running to, amongst other things, enable me to stop the car charging off our home battery rather than the grid. But also the idea that electricity could be sold to the grid at a higher rate than it could be bought wasn’t considered 18 months ago when our system was installed so I’ve got kit I’ve turned off.

 

[D00notD00d]

When I was using OI Smart Control I couldn’t understand the profiles and timers it was sending to the car. But I didn’t get the impression that it was ignoring the car’s SOC. It would sometimes undercharge, mostly overcharge by a few % and occasionally ignore a 80% requested charge limit and continue to 100%.
Next time I charge I’ll let OI take control and monitor if the profile and timer values and charging plan it sets match your understanding.

 

[D00notD00d]

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

"Either that’s a standard Octopus-Zappi integration approach for Taycan, or more likely, your car & Octopus-Porsche account integration was not fully deleted when you removed the Taycan as an Octopus device. You’d assume Taycan on Octopus is account & location specific but maybe that’s not rigourous/robust. Octopus support would have to check and fix that. Despite escalation they were unable to solve my unreliability."

It's exactly as you have understood. I'm amazed that an Enode profile can leak from one Home location to another. And doubly even when removed from the main home...

The unreliability of the IOG Porsche integration has started to grate (and my solution was repeated adding and removal of the car as a device). But now, at home 1, I can't re-add since the app cannot now see a smart meter.... Argh...

But for sure, your advice is valid. Just not what its meant to be, though as you write, it is Beta and Octopus actually list VAG group vehicles to suffer charging problems.

I recall the behaviour of the web browser app, the IPad app and iPhone app was different, they seemed to be at different versions. You could try a different platform. But your comment about Octopus not recognising your Smart Meter may fit with Octopus asking me to book an appointment to install a Smart Meter when I already have one which which met their requirement last year.

Or alternatively - until I retried OI recently I used the IOG tariff for over a year with no devices recorded. Unless something has changed, if you can achieve that, you may be able to just ignore Octopus entirely and rely on a plan from either your charger or the car.

 

[Jin]

I may be in the minority but I’ve been using IOG integration with the zappi with my Taycan for about a year with no major issues.

I have zero profiles on the car and never seen an enode profile sent to it. It sounds very odd that you do see that when plugging in at home 2.

I’ve charged a 2 different Taycans on my charger with this set up with no issues. I select the %age of charge I want delivered and IOG gives me my slots.

The myenergi forums are pretty useful and do get some helpful employees chipping in too.

the thread there is huge now but a post here might get some attention

https://myenergi.info/intelligent-octopus-on-zappi-v2-with-eco-t9698.html

 

[pauloamore]

Update....

My smart meter was detected by Octopus a few days later and the Porsche integration re-stablished.

Put on charge overnight at 76% and awoke with only 83% despite having 6 hours of low cost charging and slots assigned.

Again, unreliable.

As those above have stated, would be better to remove the profile and just use the EVSE timer...

 

[D00notD00d]

@pauloamore
As adding the car as an Octopus device was troublesome, rather than delete it, you could just turn off Smart Control, which in fact removes all Octopus control over charging. The setting is buried. From the Octopus app profile icon in the top left hand corner, Devices\Device Settings\Intelligent Octopus Go\Accounts - toggle Smart Charging off. You’ll probably need to undo the Octopus ENODE profile and timer on the car.

 

[Bennachie]

Let Octo control the evse..............................'empty the car'

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