Intelligent Octopus and 2018 94h i3

[Sarjoo]

Hello all

Was wondering if anyone has successfully managed to get their IO to charge on an octopus-driven schedule via their own app?
I have a 2018 i3 94Ah, and a MyEnergi Zappi, on the intelligent octopus tariff

I have tried to follow what seems to be the prescribed method;
disable schedules in the car/bmw-app and leave it as 'charge immediately'
activate the 'smart mode thing in the octo-app
set desired charge limit (80%, by 6.30am in my case) in the octo-app
Connect the car to the wall charger, octo app schedules the plan for the night ahead successfully.
Leave the car and hope for the best come the morning.

The problem I get is that the car gets sent a schedule by the octo-app it seems, but it looks different to what their own app claims the charge schedule for that night is, so then the car doesnt charge at all. Next morning, not charged.

Any golden set of steps someone has tried to works? Please advise!


Second question, where on earth in the BMW app can you set the charge limit so the car stops charging at about 80% for example? I cannot ee a way to do it. (I ask as I might turn of octopus smart scheduling and just let the car control it if I cannot fix the above!

 

[EvanstonI3]

Second question, where on earth in the BMW app can you set the charge limit so the car stops charging at about 80% for example? I cannot ee a way to do it. (I ask as I might turn of octopus smart scheduling and just let the car control it if I cannot fix the above!

It is not possible. You charge to 100%. This question comes up all the time.

 

[Sarjoo]

Second question, where on earth in the BMW app can you set the charge limit so the car stops charging at about 80% for example? I cannot ee a way to do it. (I ask as I might turn of octopus smart scheduling and just let the car control it if I cannot fix the above!

It is not possible. You charge to 100%. This question comes up all the time.

Thank you, thats interesting as I came across a bunch of sources that seemed to suggest the BMW app lets you control it, maybe its for other models not the i3 then. Thats not my main issue anyway, I'll be glad if I can get to the bottom of the schedule charging by intelligent octopus!

 

[ianjoyner]

I have tried to follow what seems to be the prescribed method;
disable schedules in the car/bmw-app and leave it as 'charge immediately'
activate the 'smart mode thing in the octo-app
set desired charge limit (80%, by 6.30am in my case) in the octo-app
Connect the car to the wall charger, octo app schedules the plan for the night ahead successfully.
Leave the car and hope for the best come the morning.

We have an i3 (2020 120Ah), Zappi and Intelligent Octopus Go. The steps above have been working fine, we don't have to do anything in the BMW app, Octopus seems to be linked to the BMW account and sets the schedules.

When I look at the BMW app, the schedules do appear wrong vs what the Octopus app shows, this is usually early in the evening when I'm looking, I assume Octopus updates them correctly closer to the actual start time, as the charge always seems to take place to match the Octopus schedule.

Even though the BMW app doesn't allow you set a target percentage, the target percentage in the Octopus app works great, I'm not sure exactly how it does this, but it seems to get it right to within 1%.

You can now link Octopus Intelligent to the Zappi, I haven't tried this, I believe you have to do one or the other (car or charger). It's a little different though in that you set percentage to add in the Octopus app rather than target percentage. I assume this is because with the Zappi integration Octopus can't see the charge percentage. I haven't had reason to try the Zappi integration as it's been working fine with BMW.

 

[Sarjoo]

I have tried to follow what seems to be the prescribed method;
disable schedules in the car/bmw-app and leave it as 'charge immediately'
activate the 'smart mode thing in the octo-app
set desired charge limit (80%, by 6.30am in my case) in the octo-app
Connect the car to the wall charger, octo app schedules the plan for the night ahead successfully.
Leave the car and hope for the best come the morning.

We have an i3 (2020 120Ah), Zappi and Intelligent Octopus Go. The steps above have been working fine, we don't have to do anything in the BMW app, Octopus seems to be linked to the BMW account and sets the schedules.

When I look at the BMW app, the schedules do appear wrong vs what the Octopus app shows, this is usually early in the evening when I'm looking, I assume Octopus updates them correctly closer to the actual start time, as the charge always seems to take place to match the Octopus schedule.

Even though the BMW app doesn't allow you set a target percentage, the target percentage in the Octopus app works great, I'm not sure exactly how it does this, but it seems to get it right to within 1%.

You can now link Octopus Intelligent to the Zappi, I haven't tried this, I believe you have to do one or the other (car or charger). It's a little different though in that you set percentage to add in the Octopus app rather than target percentage. I assume this is because with the Zappi integration Octopus can't see the charge percentage. I haven't had reason to try the Zappi integration as it's been working fine with BMW.

This is encouraging to know, I am not sure what to do next because every attempt to let octopus do its thing has resulted in an uncharged car then next morning. It sounds like what I am doing is correct and matches what works for you though, so maybe I should persist. I am fairly confident it has the right car at the right location and right zap configured up, but thats the only other thing I can think of!

On my last attempt to let it do things its way on Saturday night, as per my steps from before, the car charged during the daytime on the Sunday NOT at night in the schedule it had created on octo, and not in the different schedule it had sent to the bmw app, and certainly not anywhere near the actual cheap time window!

In another odd observation, ,my car was at 100% last night, this morning it's on 75%, so somethings been talking to the car and draining power in doing so....someone told me Hyundai's had an issue where their batteries were being fully depleted by IO as it kept turning their cars on and off all night long, I wonder is this a similar pattern. Its the first time I have noticed this though on the i3

 

[Sarjoo]

I have tried to follow what seems to be the prescribed method;
disable schedules in the car/bmw-app and leave it as 'charge immediately'
activate the 'smart mode thing in the octo-app
set desired charge limit (80%, by 6.30am in my case) in the octo-app
Connect the car to the wall charger, octo app schedules the plan for the night ahead successfully.
Leave the car and hope for the best come the morning.

We have an i3 (2020 120Ah), Zappi and Intelligent Octopus Go. The steps above have been working fine, we don't have to do anything in the BMW app, Octopus seems to be linked to the BMW account and sets the schedules.

When I look at the BMW app, the schedules do appear wrong vs what the Octopus app shows, this is usually early in the evening when I'm looking, I assume Octopus updates them correctly closer to the actual start time, as the charge always seems to take place to match the Octopus schedule.

Even though the BMW app doesn't allow you set a target percentage, the target percentage in the Octopus app works great, I'm not sure exactly how it does this, but it seems to get it right to within 1%.

You can now link Octopus Intelligent to the Zappi, I haven't tried this, I believe you have to do one or the other (car or charger). It's a little different though in that you set percentage to add in the Octopus app rather than target percentage. I assume this is because with the Zappi integration Octopus can't see the charge percentage. I haven't had reason to try the Zappi integration as it's been working fine with BMW.

Ah one other thing which might help, are you doing any particular in the myenergi app, on the EV section, I see a bunch of charging mode, and boost settings stuff, not sure if thats interfering in any way. What settings do you have there?

And likewise in your bmw app, have you simply set it to 'charge immediately' and have you turned off any pre-conditioning so that the car is warm and ready to go in the morning (does this interfere?)

 

[BLINGMW]

I don't know what this octopus thing is. But if you want the car to not get to 100%... let's say you normally leave at 8AM. Set the "low cost charging" to start at say, 5AM. Then set your departure time for 9AM. The car will start to charge before 5 if needed to meet the target, then you always leave before that, so it never makes it. Obviously this doesn't work so great if you don't have a somewhat regular departure time.

 

[mojo]

I don't know what this octopus thing is. But if you want the car to not get to 100%... let's say you normally leave at 8AM. Set the "low cost charging" to start at say, 5AM. Then set your departure time for 9AM. The car will start to charge before 5 if needed to meet the target, then you always leave before that, so it never makes it. Obviously this doesn't work so great if you don't have a somewhat regular departure time.

That won't work with Octopus, because that particular supplier remotely modifies the timed settings in the car. You are supposed to set the car to "charge immediately", because if you set it to anything else, Octopus will just overwrite it. And unfortunately at present if you set "preconditioning" ON, Octopus will turn it OFF when they send their schedule to the car.

This may seem an odd way to do it, but the main reason (as I understand it) is because 1) the BMW API for an i3 does not allow you to remotely stop charging and 2) the internal charging logic in the i3 allows it to override any Time of Use charging period if it calculates that the battery won't be 100% charged by your set departure time. Essentially they are trying to make the best of a poorly-designed API.

 

[Sarjoo]

I don't know what this octopus thing is. But if you want the car to not get to 100%... let's say you normally leave at 8AM. Set the "low cost charging" to start at say, 5AM. Then set your departure time for 9AM. The car will start to charge before 5 if needed to meet the target, then you always leave before that, so it never makes it. Obviously this doesn't work so great if you don't have a somewhat regular departure time.

That won't work with Octopus, because that particular supplier remotely modifies the timed settings in the car. You are supposed to set the car to "charge immediately", because if you set it to anything else, Octopus will just overwrite it. And unfortunately at present if you set "preconditioning" ON, Octopus will turn it OFF when they send their schedule to the car.

This may seem an odd way to do it, but the main reason (as I understand it) is because 1) the BMW API for an i3 does not allow you to remotely stop charging and 2) the internal charging logic in the i3 allows it to override any Time of Use charging period if it calculates that the battery won't be 100% charged by your set departure time. Essentially they are trying to make the best of a poorly-designed API.

The thing about not stopping charge remotely, that holds true from the bmw app as there doesnt seem a way to stop it (if thats what the api restriction is causing), but octopus is able to stop a charge it seems after plugging the car in, if it starts charging a little while later I see a 'charge is paused' message on the bmw app because I suspect, octopus has told it to via the api?

The good news though folks is for the last 3 days the IO stuff has been working and charging th car to 80% each night whenever it deems fit. The downside is I cannot use pre-condition to have the car warm in the morning as it seemed to interfere with IO I guess, as I couldn't get IO to charge the car for the first few days as per the original post on this thread.

I am wonder though, if I were to need an adhoc charge during the day, if I plug the car in and tell the octo app to "bump/boost" the charge will it knacker my now-successful overnight IO stuff.

 

[mojo]

It's difficult to know for sure, but my experience with Octopus has been that once you get it working for the first time, it generally keeps going OK. I've only had to "bump charge" once so far, and it didn't cause any problems at all for subsequent overnight smart charging sessions.

Having said that, possibly the biggest cause of any issues is the poor reliability of the BMW servers (and associated network) that provide remote access to the car. These seem to have poor availability - so for example today, all of the UK's MyBMW app users have lost the ability to see where their car is (it just shows "GPS not enabled in vehicle", even though GPS is enabled in the car).

As far as I can tell, a fault like this will completely disable Intelligent Octopus Go, because one of the first checks that they do is to ensure that the car is at its "home address" (so that they don't intervene and try to set schedules when you are plugged in at a public charging point).

[Edit: seems that the GPS problem does NOT disable the Octopus charging mechanism, thankfully!]

 

[Sarjoo]

It's difficult to know for sure, but my experience with Octopus has been that once you get it working for the first time, it generally keeps going OK. I've only had to "bump charge" once so far, and it didn't cause any problems at all for subsequent overnight smart charging sessions.

Having said that, possibly the biggest cause of any issues is the poor reliability of the BMW servers (and associated network) that provide remote access to the car. These seem to have poor availability - so for example today, all of the UK's MyBMW app users have lost the ability to see where their car is (it just shows "GPS not enabled in vehicle", even though GPS is enabled in the car).

As far as I can tell, a fault like this will completely disable Intelligent Octopus Go, because one of the first checks that they do is to ensure that the car is at its "home address" (so that they don't intervene and try to set schedules when you are plugged in at a public charging point).

[Edit: seems that the GPS problem does NOT disable the Octopus charging mechanism, thankfully!]

I concur, once IO works it keeps on working it seems from experience also. I did that bump charge and it didnt prevent the scheduled stuff the next night at all, so all is good for the now. Its just a shame it took a good number of days for IO to be settle and get into its groove (even though I was doing it right.)

I almost gave up, but the steps others were doing to make it work, already aligning with what I was doing, encouraged me to persevere and eventually it came good. Thanks all.

 

[ianjoyner]

I concur, once IO works it keeps on working it seems from experience also. I did that bump charge and it didnt prevent the scheduled stuff the next night at all, so all is good for the now. Its just a shame it took a good number of days for IO to be settle and get into its groove (even though I was doing it right.)

I almost gave up, but the steps others were doing to make it work, already aligning with what I was doing, encouraged me to persevere and eventually it came good. Thanks all.

Glad to hear it's up and running, I didn't get a notification for your earlier reply for some reason. Ours is continuing to work well. The Zappi needs to be in Fast mode, we were caught out by this once when myenergi support pushed a software update (for another issue) which caused the Zappi to restart and it defaulted to Eco+. This stopped Octopus from setting the schedule, I guess because the charge didn't start when the car was plugged in. Found that you can set the Zappi to remember its current mode when restarting to stop this happening again.

 

[Sarjoo]

Glad to hear it's up and running, I didn't get a notification for your earlier reply for some reason. Ours is continuing to work well. The Zappi needs to be in Fast mode, we were caught out by this once when myenergi support pushed a software update (for another issue) which caused the Zappi to restart and it defaulted to Eco+. This stopped Octopus from setting the schedule, I guess because the charge didn't start when the car was plugged in. Found that you can set the Zappi to remember its current mode when restarting to stop this happening again.

I'll check my mode is also set to fast, pretty sure it is.

Incidentally, after weeks of no issues, last night the IO didn't manage to do its thing, it seems to have been rattled by me manually changing the BMW app to 'charge immediately' again when I was out shopping as I needed to top up the charge ( it wouldn't charge otherwise when out and about, since IO had left the charge mode as 'planned' or equivalent) - seems now IO is not behaving again lol

Am sure its just a temp glitch because I am doing exactly as done before, car set to charge immediately, oct app set the charge to 80% by set time of morning etc etc. Lets see!

When it works, it works (all the time).... until u fiddle it and knock it out a little, it seems to stop working again hmm.
(Might be linked though to the fact that the smart meter seems to be no longer connecting to send half-hourly readings to octopus.)

 

[Clanduncan]

Another thing to consider, after a recent experience of mine, is as and when you change app passwords. I did this as part of a new phone and changed all my passwords. The MyBMW app worked fine, so too did the IO app, well to all appearances anyway. However, IO suddenly stopped detecting my car at all, and I resorted to my car charge timer, or the PodPoint timer (if I wanted less than a full charge). After resetting my car gps, reinstalling apps, and a couple of weeks to & froing with Octopus support Octopus decided to delete my car from the app. This forced me to relink the app to the car, part of which made me realise the problem. I had changed the bmw app password, and relinking the two was the solution. I've now put forward an app change request to Octopus to amend the app to allow relinking without first deleting the car 'device'.

Everything is working fine now with the tariff, and I normally leave my car with whatever time schedule the IO has set. When out and about I 'charge immediately', and I leave that as is afterwards. IO will see the car next time I plug in at home and change this to a timed schedule within a few minutes, so I'm not particularly worried about the odd few minutes at a higher rate.
Apart from that there are the occaisional hiccups with IO not being able to control my car, despite receiving a charge schedule. Weird.
The tariff is not without hiccups, but mostly it's worked fine for me.

 

[BrianM]

FROM MY EMAIL TO OCTOPUS:

To try and firmly establish the malfunctioning nature of the Octopus Intelligent software, I have created a video blog of last night’s charging session(s).

If you would please take a look and then confirm to me, and you may be able to convince your software engineers, that all is not well….

Here’s a video of the process of me “zero setting” the car (BMW i3): "Zero setting" i3
Then looking at your App / MyBMW app / phone notifications, immediately after:


Then, the morning after :

And the next morning, back in the car:
Morning after video, showing nonsense scheduling

And (finally) BMW App screenshot

 

[shoei600]

I too had significant problems with Octopus. The Octopus blurb claims they do not interfere with any necessary settings but I found every time they have any dialogue with the car they will change the 'pre-conditioning time to some random day/time like 2am and it will be different every time. So there was no point trying to get the car and battery ready for 7am as it would have been changed when the charging period stopped.

I reported it through their customer support many times and only once got a response simply claiming they will pass it on to the engineers. They are not interested and their customer support is appalling, I have had to take them to the Ombudsman before (and won every complaint).

Nothing changed with this bug in months so I switched off 'smart charging' completely in my Octopus app. Instead my charger is scheduled to switch on and off at times matching the cheap electric rate so it will just fully charge from 23:30 each night and is complete before 06:30 - even fully for a 120h battery.

It's in their interest to schedule the demand on the grid more than mine and if they can't be bothered, that's up to them.

 

[mojo]

So there was no point trying to get the car and battery ready for 7am as it would have been changed when the charging period stopped.

You seem to be misunderstanding how Octopus works. When you use their Intelligent Octopus Go tariff, you must use their app to set the time when you want the car to be ready to go. The reasons why are explained earlier in this thread - they have no choice but to do it this way, because BMW's charging app interface is flawed.

If you try to set a departure time in the car, Octopus will just overwrite it (they have to, because otherwise the car will typically just start charging immediately).

 

[Clanduncan]

Also, GPS location within the vehicle must be on, for the tariff/app scheduling to work at all.

I too see random schedule times reported back to my bmw app, and also the occaisional 'could not control your vehicle'. These I just ignore, as the schedule sets uniquely each time, and car charges just fine. The percentage asked for and given is not too accurate, but time/practise will let you set levels you are comfortable with.
The only issue I had was when I changed phones, and changed app passwords. Then it took me some time to work out I'd broken the app control link myself. Octopus removed my vehicle from the app (but I now know you can do that youself) and when I relinked the vehicle and app it worked fine again.

 

[Goldfish120]

GPS not on is a show stopper. Try turning that on

 

[shoei600]

You seem to be misunderstanding how Octopus works. When you use their Intelligent Octopus Go tariff, you must use their app to set the time when you want the car to be ready to go. The reasons why are explained earlier in this thread - they have no choice but to do it this way, because BMW's charging app interface is flawed.

If you try to set a departure time in the car, Octopus will just overwrite it (they have to, because otherwise the car will typically just start charging immediately).

Hi Mojo,
I believe we are talking about two different things. Octopus 'ready for x' is about when the battery will reach the set level % which is not the same as the BMW pre-conditioning time which will get the battery and cabin up to comfortable temperature ready for driving, not about charging. I may be wrong and I'm not suggesting you are wrong, I've only had the car a few months and are still learning its features, but I haven't seen any such description from Octopus of the latter either. Everything works perfectly as I currently have it (once smart charging was disabled).
Thanks.