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Octopus Cosy & Octopus EV + bidirectional smart tariff, together. What, eh?

 
Electricity, Tariffs, Monitoring & Providers
Last Post by Batpred 5 months ago
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 AllyFish
(@allyfish)
Prominent Member Contributor
Joined: 3 years ago
Posts: 518
Topic starter 05/08/2025 9:57 am  

Well, Mrs F and I have got ourselves on Greg's pre-order waiting list for the BYD Dolphin + Zaptec Pro Bi-directional Charger & smart tariff.

https://octopusev.com/resources/news/octopus-and-byd-make-waves-with-all-inclusive-car-and-v2g-charging-bundle.

£300 a month. Seems a good deal. The Mrs can purchase through her employer's salary sacrifice scheme as well.

My wife and I both WFH and the vast majority of our car use is shorter local journeys from home. Her 62 plate Suzuki Swift car is getting old and a little pricier each year to keep roadworthy. So a shared EV as our next daily makes sense, with my t-rusty, old & smelly 63 plate Nissan N-Trail SUV reserved for long hauls, family hols towing the trailer tent or taking the E-bikes out on the bike rack, & tip trips.

The Dolphin EV will mostly sit there on the drive, plugged into the 'grid-of-things' which is exactly what Octopus want, so they can charge and discharge it remotely with vehicle to grid [V2G] bi-directionality. Hopefully leaving us enough ziggies in it to get out and about! The value proposition to Octopus is using our leasehold car as a BESS, so they can make money out of it. The value proposition to us is a shiny new EV with a very attractive and affordable monthly lease via salary sacrifice and free ziggies [i.e.: inclusive in the lease cost] to use it.

But wait, we already have solar PV + BESS + Cosy + ASHP heated all-electric house. Surely the two can't be compatible? There's only one DNO connection to the house, and only one SMES2 smart meter in the box outside. How can they know what's being charged & when? The car, our BESS? Well, they say they can. Maybe the Zaptec Pro charger has some clever electronics inside, or even some internal energy metering and monitoring?

Our BESS is a modest 13kW, which works for us charged 3x a day on Cosy, we don't have enough BESS capacity to leverage a really low overnight EV tariff that would last through the following day, nor the option of increasing it. We would have to disable the export on the solar PV. We get that, and as we don't export much anyway, We're OK with that.

So how can we keep Cosy tariff, which saves us a fortune in winter, shifting almost 90% of our import to low rate, and also have a V2G third party managed BYD Dolphin BESS sat on the drive, with the electric to charge it included in the leasehold? It's a question I've put variously to Octopus Energy and Octopus EV. I await a definitive answer as they bounce this issue, and us, between themselves. It all sounds too good to be true, and the cynic in me, etc....


This topic was modified 7 months ago 3 times by AllyFish

   
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 Old_Scientist
(@old_scientist)
Honorable Member Member
Joined: 2 years ago
Posts: 370
05/08/2025 11:14 am  

The current FAQ says it's not compatible with existing solar or battery exporting:

https://octopusev.com/power-pack-bundle/terms

At the moment this product will only be available for people who do not already export to the grid (e.g. from solar or battery)

but you've already identified that. How will you prevent any excess solar from being exported?

I remember reading about this at the time it was announced. Some members on another forum compared the deal to other comparable leasing deals for the same vehicle, which were coming in at around £280/month, so the £20 saving can buy you ~160kWh of electricity per month at Cosy cheap rates.

How much solar export are you giving up? Add that into the mix (at 15p SEG), and where does that leave you in cost terms?

I love the idea of V2G and I love the fact Octopus are pioneering the technology, but this particular package just looks far to limiting for someone like yourself with existing solar and BESS.

Following your journey with interest 😀 

 


Samsung 12kW gen6 ASHP with 50L volumiser and all new large radiators. 7.2kWp solar (south facing), Tesla PW3 (13.5kW)
Solar generation completely offsets ASHP usage annually. We no longer burn ~1600L of kerosene annually.


   
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 Judith
(@judith)
Honorable Member Member
Joined: 2 years ago
Posts: 493
06/08/2025 9:45 am  

I look forward to reading how these issues are resolved. We’ve never bought a new car, nor leased one so it’ll not be a good fit for us.

But it’ll be a good fit for many. Shame it’s only available on BYD! 


2kW + Growatt & 4kW +Sunnyboy PV on south-facing roof Solar thermal. 9.5kWh Givenergy battery with AC3. MVHR. Vaillant 7kW ASHP (very pleased with SCOP 4.7) open system operating on WC


   
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JamesPa
 JamesPa
(@jamespa)
Illustrious Member Moderator
Joined: 3 years ago
Posts: 4475
06/08/2025 10:08 am  

Posted by: @judith
↑

We’ve never bought a new car, nor leased one so it’ll not be a good fit for us.

Agree.

 

To me it misses the obvious fit namely 'second' cars, more likely to be secondhand.  Still it's a start!


4kW peak of solar PV since 2011; EV and a 1930s house which has been partially renovated to improve its efficiency. 7kW Vaillant heat pump.


   
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Majordennisbloodnok
 Majordennisbloodnok
(@majordennisbloodnok)
Famed Member Moderator
Joined: 4 years ago
Posts: 1693
06/08/2025 5:13 pm  

Posted by: @old_scientist
↑

The current FAQ says it's not compatible with existing solar or battery exporting:

 

OCTOPUSEV.COM "https://octopusev.com/power-pack-bundle/terms"
Power Pack Bundle Eligibility
Octopus Electric Vehicles - home of electric vehicle leasing for personal or business, and the electric car bundle, including charging and cheap renewable electricity to help you on your journey to electric.

 

At the moment this product will only be available for people who do not already export to the grid (e.g. from solar or battery)

...

I've certainly seen that on their Ts & Cs page but in their FAQs they specifically state that you CAN export, but have to have a fixed-rate export tariff with Octopus (i.e. no competitors and no Octopus Outgoing Agile).

Intelligent Drive Pack FAQs | Octopus Energy

I did look further into the Intelligent Drive pack when @agentgeorge posted a similar topic, and I found there are a few more strings attached to the scheme than were ideal for my wife and me ( https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/forums/postid/47476/).

It certainly could be a good scheme for some but it's not as clear cut as some other Octopus initiatives I've seen tackling different needs.


105 m2 bungalow in South East England
Mitsubishi Ecodan 8.5 kW air source heat pump
18 x 360W solar panels
1 x 6 kW GroWatt battery and SPH5000 inverter
1 x Myenergi Zappi
1 x VW ID3
Raised beds for home-grown veg and chickens for eggs

"Semper in excretia; sumus solum profundum variat"


   
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 Eliuccio
(@eliuccio)
Trusted Member Member
Joined: 1 year ago
Posts: 52
11/08/2025 6:14 pm  

@old_scientist me too. Just installed my new heat pump and I am on cosy but I am not making the most of my solar panels and my Growatt batteries don't seem to be compatible with Octopus intelligent tariffs. As my partner just bought a second hand EV I am considering installing a charger. This seems to be an incentive for Octopus to make my batteries compatible with intelligent Go... 🧐



   
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 AllyFish
(@allyfish)
Prominent Member Contributor
Joined: 3 years ago
Posts: 518
Topic starter 22/10/2025 1:40 pm  

Well, it sounded all too good to be true. And it was.

After several months hanging on the waiting list, I finally poked Octopus into giving me an update. Turns out the Power Pack Bundle eligibility criteria have changed, contradicting what Octopus EV had earlier stated in writing to me.

Fail #1: We cannot have existing solar + battery and an Export tariff, but we would need a G99 (go figure than one!).

Fail #2: We must have a 100A main fuse, well ours is 80A. so that's that.

And it's being slowly-oh-so-slowly rolled out, and not for now in our DNO area. So we're off the waiting list.

I think this was a case of Greg Jackson standing on stage rolling out a product that was literally years away from launch and for which Octopus had barely started work on. We'll buy or lease an EV next Spring, probably not from Octopus EV, I've been less than whelmed with them from the get go, they right hand didn't know what the left was doing. 



   
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Batpred
 Batpred
(@batpred)
Prominent Member Member
Joined: 1 year ago
Posts: 746
22/10/2025 11:41 pm  

Thanks for sharing this, it is clearly disappointing, BYD is exactly what I thought would be ideal...

But better for Octopus to pull out than to sell you something that you would be unknowingly beta-testing. 

Reading the thread, I was wondering how the DNO would be notified and how was this v2g short-circuiting the process. 

My electrician plugged a couple of RCDs on the car charger circuit, so another thing to consider. He also did not notify the DNO. 

I wonder if everybody getting on this trial will need to get an MCS installer? 


8kW Solis S6-EH1P8K-L-PLUS hybrid inverter; G99: 8kw export; 16kWh Seplos Fogstar battery; Ohme Home Pro EV charger; 100Amp head, HA lab on mini PC


   
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