Octopus Free Electricity session - reverse saving session

[johnwb87]

Just had email from Octopus about this.

It sounds like it is essentially a reverse savings session as it is only the additional usage that is free.

My first thought is to set a force charge during the window nicely in advance and see what predbat decides to do with that.

Any other thoughts?

[CJDumbleton]

More background information about free electricity sessions from Octopus here: https://octopus.energy/free-electricity/.

[gcoan]

I suggest the best way is to treat it as a zero price session, then Predbat will decide based on your solar forecast and predicted load as to whether it should discharge the battery or not.

In apps.yaml, add the following:

  rates_import_override:
    -  date: '2024-08-15'
       start: '13:00:00'
       end: '14:00:00'
       rate: 0
       load_scaling: 1.0

Increase load scaling if you expect to put the washing on, etc.

Unfortunately until Octopus provide an API for this, there isn't much automation predbat can do. I have a semi-automated solution which updates apps.yaml for you based on you setting the date and times in Home Assistant - see https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/3968-automating-octopus-power-up-events-into-predbat

[chris-y]

For Power-Ups there's a third party API here: https://github.com/8none1/octopus_powerups

They are working on one for Free Electricity.

Would be nice to get these integrated until Octopus have their own API.

See https://github.com/BottlecapDave/HomeAssistant-OctopusEnergy/issues/973#issuecomment-2307543203

[gcoan]

Interesting, I've asked what region he is in as to whether its the same as me. I'll set the sensor up and see how it compares to the sessions I get notified of

[chris-y]

Looks like there's a binary sensor coming for these...

https://github.com/BottlecapDave/HomeAssistant-OctopusEnergy/issues/973#issuecomment-2455370370

[gcoan]

I'm using the 8none1 rest sensor that gives me date and time of the free electricity session, and a separate sensor for power up events.

A series of automations and scripts (copies of which are on the givenergy community forum mentioned earlier) means I:

• get an alert when a new power up or free energy session is available
• can invoke a script to copy the date and time details of the event into Home Assistant helper entities
• then invoke a script that uses the Predbat manual API to instruct Predbat to treat the event as a zero cost price override

So basically two clicks on my dashboard and it all pops up automatically in my Predbat plan.

[gcoan]

Trefor has added support to Predbat for free electricity sessions based on the Octopus Integration, or screen scraping the Octopus website. Can close this now