I explained that consumers without an EV but with relatively high capacity batteries, solar panels, heat pump and an all-electric household might well be using similar levels of energy to others who had access to the EV tariffs. I suggested that he and his team might give consideration to a tariff similar to EV rates / times for those in such a position please. One can but hope…. Regards, Toodles.

Such ‘whoopsies’ are not what one wants if you would have no means of taking back manual control! Regards, Toodles.

I've seen that happening quite a few times for both GE and Tesla PW3. GivEnergy being limited to 6kw, is a good thing and protects the battery from overheating as well as the strain on the local cable infrastructure. If they start discharging at 4pm sharp you may still be forced to charge during peak hours. Frankly speaking, I don't know why anyone would want to discharge at 10kw+ the strain on the battery and infrastructure is not good. I bet if you check your battery temperature when it does 9kw+ as the PW3 does, it will very likely hit 70c to 90c, especially during those Summer times. GivEnergy has a Smart Tariff option you can enable (look it up in the app, they need the Octopus API details), which allows you to select a few options, one being never charge the battery when it costs above 30p let's say. As far as I tested, does override the OIF which means no charging during peak hours.

As far as I can see, the only people who’ll be put out by this are those trying to game the system; who want the extra discount on their rates (compared with non-intelligent Flux) but don’t want Octopus to have what they’re paying for through that extra discount.

Only to stop the most IT Illiterate people, and even that doesn't work if they use the GE Smart Tariff option (which would go away if/when GE are gone or stop cloud access), as it overrides OIF. But only when it acts against the basic setup, so charging at peak rate etc. See below, Kraken API is Octopus, and Smart Tariff is the GE overriding Octopus.

In my case OIF wanted to disable ECO Mode, which means that the battery wouldn't get charged from the Solar Panels outside of OIF allowed time slot. I get it, with OIF it doesn't really matter when you charge (except for PEAK) OR if it misses to charge the battery to 100% before 4Pm, which I've also had and so did my friend on PW3, only charging to 80% by 4Pm then discharging the whole battery before 7Pm, forcing the household usage to Peak electricity cost.

The other options to get around this would be to use either the GE official App or the Monitor for GivEnergy Inverter by Andrew Mille, Home Assistant etc, to set the schedule then unplug the Ethernet cable from the battery? I guess you could also block it in your Router setting if you can control DHCP settings. Same thing as unplugging the cable, just software based and I think you can still control it locally via the local apps, including the GE one.

Have a look through to see if they've considered the need for compensation if consumers' devices are controlled to an extent which exceeds the contract with the Agent.

There were only 31 submissions to the Governance consultation.

There's no breakdown of those respondents by sector.
However, I'd be unsurprised if the majority of the other 30 were from companies in the energy sector who wish to be licensed as an Agent.

Such ‘whoopsies’ are not what one wants if you would have no means of taking back manual control! Regards, Toodles.

GivEnergy allows you, the homeowner, to choose to relinquish control of your inverter and battery to Octopus in line with the conditions of their intelligent tariff. If you don’t want to lose that control, you can choose not to sign up to Intelligent Octopus Flux.

The strategy of a 3rd-party having (remote) control over devices in the home is in line with Government Policy.

It's understandable that two British companies would want to try out how this might work in advance of DESNZ allowing Elexon to issue the first licences for
their proposed Smart & Secure Energy System (SSES).

SSES depends on a consumer opting in to a particular scheme, just as Octopus are doing.

The 3rd-party Agent may or may not be your existing Energy Supplier.
But if you agree to the terms, then they have the capability to turn off whatever devices you have offered to be part of Consumer-Led Flexibility (CLF).

• heat pump
• EV charger
• home battery storage

Your electricity account then receives a credit for the time your device(s) have been off, plus a bonus for taking part.

That bonus, plus the Agent's management fees, plus Elexon's costs are to be funded by a levy placed on all electricity consumers.
Ie electricity prices will be higher for everyone when SSES 'goes live'.

Domestic devices which are to be accepted into the SSES scheme must have an on/off control mechanism to accept commands across the internet.

To prevent a householder bypassing that 'smart switch' and running the device during an off-period, readings are also taken from your Smart Meter.

DESNZ reckons that the scheme will be attractive to device manufacturers, who will start selling SSES-ready appliances in Britain.
They also anticipate other (European) countries wanting to join in, and use the Smart Control system under licence.

You may or may not agree with the SSES strategy, or the DESNZ expectations of it's popularity.

But GivEnergy have obviously decided that they need to have SSES-ready controls available on future products,
which is why it's advantageous for them to be tying up with Octopus at present.

I have INTELLI-FIX-12M-25-08-29 and Octopus only insisted I would connect the car. 

But I wonder if they would allow me to stay with this if I install an ASHP.. In any case, it is only a 12 month tariff

One thing worth noting with GivEnergy, in comparison to all other batteries, GiivEnergy allows suppliers to lock out the user indefinitely.

Not accurate, I’m afraid, @drei. GivEnergy allows you, the homeowner, to choose to relinquish control of your inverter and battery to Octopus in line with the conditions of their intelligent tariff. If you don’t want to lose that control, you can choose not to sign up to Intelligent Octopus Flux.

This is not big bad Octopus and big bad GivEnergy imposing some sort of Orwellian dystopia on you; it’s an update to your system based on your choice, and it’s simply configuring that system to ensure Octopus get their side of the bargain too.

Once a lock has been initiated, you cannot remove it and gain access to your system unless the supplier or GiVEnergy remove the lock.

This demonstrates the restriction isn’t forever, and also that you have two different routes for regaining control - just not whilst signed up to a tariff that specifically prohibits it.

As far as I can see, the only people who’ll be put out by this are those trying to game the system; who want the extra discount on their rates (compared with non-intelligent Flux) but don’t want Octopus to have what they’re paying for through that extra discount.

I personally hate the idea of my energy supplier deciding when to charge or discharge my battery. That’s why I choose not to sign up to IOF. Similarly, in order to retain control of when I do or don’t charge my EV, I avoid signing up to Intelligent Octopus Go.

This is a new feature introduced this year (2025).

There is to be a new All-in-One inverter/battery combo, which is yet un-named.
The battery capacity is to be 13.6kW (from which we can infer that it has 16 cells, rated 280Ah),
and the inverter will be rated 12kW for input (charging) and export.

That's a major change of design.
Until now, GivEnergy's inverters have only delivered half-power for export/discharge.

There is presently no facility to operate these units in parallel, but that is being worked on.
(12kW offers 50A at mains voltages, which will be sufficient for many houses if you don't have an electric shower).

However, there will be a facility to increase the storage capacity by adding up to four DC-modules.
But note that GivEnergy have adopted a 'high-voltage' architecture. The more storage modules you have, the higher the voltage they present to the integral inverter.

The new All-in-One will have six MPPT inputs for solar panels,
each of which will be capable of operating from 90v - 600v, which roughly equates to 3-panels up to 15-panels.
That's a wider range than most other inverters.

For comparison, The Sunsynk ECCO inverters (3.3kW, 5.5kW and 16kW) have MPPT inputs operating between 150v - 425v.

Gateway-2 is a new development from Givenergy which allows in-home appliances to be activated according to If-Then-Else rules which are entered via the App.

It's up to the user to decide what gets connected, which could include:

• an existing (old style) non-Smart EV charger
• an immersion heater to use electricity from solar panels once the battery has reached a certain State of Charge (SoC)

The Gateway-2 also allows the user to define two categories of appliances which will be supplied from the All-in-One storage battery:

• Those essential devices which will supplied from the battery in the event of a power outage (internet, boiler, lights etc)
• Those devices which will be supplied from the battery whilst it still has more than 50% charge available

That all sounds very much like the Tesla Powerwall 3, but with slightly higher figures so the GivEnergy always comes out top in a game of Top Trumps (although I note the PW3 MPPT DC voltage range starts a little lower at 60-480V). I'm not complaining, strong competition pushes forward product development and we all benefit.