Octopus Energy  

Developer: Neil K's Plugins
Category: Energy Monitoring
Github: Github Repo
Assistance: Get help!    Check the online documentation
Plugin ID: com.barn.indigoplugin.OctopusEnergy
Latest release: v0.2.15 released on Oct. 18, 2020 (this release is only compatible with Indigo 2022.2 and earlier)
Release downloaded: 0 times
Requires: Indigo v7.0.2 thru v2022.2
(Check the Releases tab below for older releases that may have different requirements)
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Octopus Energy Indigo Plugin

A plugin for Indigo Domotics that connects to the UK Energy Provider Octopus Energy & their Agile Tariff

Octopus Energy is a UK Energy Supplier that offers a number of Tariff's that appeal to Electric Vehicle (EV) owners, Tesla Powerwall owners (an Indigo plugin also is available for that) as well as those who may be able to shape their consumption by managing demand through home automation. This plugin was initially built to assess the viability of the Agile Tariff for my personal use. You will find more information at https://octopus.energy as well as their API (which this plugin uses) at https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/

The Agile Tariff is especially interesting as it offers a new electricity rate every 30 minutes, based on the then current wholesale rate for that 30 minute period. This "Plunge Pricing" results in a much lower kWh price for electricity for times outside of the 16:00 to 19:00 peak. You carry the risk if the price is higher during this period, but get the benefit when it falls lower. A price cap applies of 35p per kWh, and for example the average today as I write this is 5.292p. the minimum 1.764p and the maximum 19.656p. This compares with the fixed rate from my current supplier which is 15.4p. and again for today apart from 3 Hours the Agile rate would be below what I currently pay.

The really interesting thing is that this can also result in negative pricing, typically at times for example when it is windy during a period of low demand (UK has a reasonable amount of wind turbine capacity). At these times they will actually pay you to consume energy, these situations are relatively rare but it does mean you can charge you EV to store what will still be very cheap energy, even when the price is not negative. I will be using this to trigger charging my EV, using another plugin that can start and stop charging (Indigo has plugin's for a number of EV's, including in my case an I-Pace).

The plugin does not require you to make a switch to Octopus, to use it you can simply enter your postcode as the prices vary by region in the UK. The plugin can create a device that will show the current kWh price for you location (or indeed mutliple locations) , the daily standing charge, the maximum, minimum and average rates. All these device states can be graphed if you use one of the graphing plugins, you can trigger based on those values or thresholds. If you can measure your whole house demand (even manually using your smart meter in House display) you can project your savings.

The latest version of the plugin incorporates the consumption data capabilities of the API which allows you to track actual historical cost for each 30 minute period, this will only be possible for the previous 24 Hours as Octopus do not publish consumption data real time. The plugin also generates a daily electrical cost calculation by combining the rates from yesterday with your actual consumption during that 30 minutes. The plugin will optionally generate a daily CSV containing the rates for the current day, and a seperate action for yesterdays rates and consumption. The plugin works extremely well in combination with the Grafana plugin to allow extensive graphing. The latest version optimises the API access such that only 2 calls a day are made.

Comments and feedback extremely welcome, via the Indigo Plugin Forum at I am also issue tracking in this repository

Documentation at https://github.com/neilkplugins/Octopus_Energy-indigo-plugin/wiki

If you do choose to switch to Octopus then please use my referall code https://share.octopus.energy/cute-peak-364 , and we will both get a £50 credit on our accounts. Any I get will be donated to the Children's Oncology Suites at the Royal Berkshire Hospital's Lion Ward once they hit my account.

The plugin is not endorsed or supported by Octopus Energy, it merely is a use case of their API and is provided on an as is basis.

This plugin will not work with MacOS 10.13 or earlier

Release details
Released on: Oct. 18, 2020
Requires: Indigo v7.0.2 thru v2022.2
Downloaded: 0 times 
Changes in this release

This version adds support for retrieving historical consumption data from the Octopus API, as well as recovering from delayed API data in a more robust manner. Also adds states that indicate the best times to run a load at the lowest cost for a load lasting 1hr, 2hrs, 3hrs or 4hrs

Release details
Released on: May 13, 2020
Requires: Indigo v7.0.2 thru v2022.2
Downloaded: 0 times 
Changes in this release

Release Notes:

1) The max, min and daily average rates now reflect the current day in BST (or GMT if Daylight savings does not apply) 2) Calls to the API are now optimised and limited to 2 per day 3) A new device state indicates if the afternoon rate update has been applied (as the wholesale rates are published in CET, we have to wait until "tomorrows" rates are published in CET before we can determine the last hour of UK Local time which happens around 16:00. The api call automatically refreshes at 17:00 UTC/GMT or 18:00 BST to collect the extra data. 4) A new function exports CSV's for both today and yesterdays rates 5) A plugin level menu option allows you to dump a copy of the rates for all devices to the event log.

Release details
Released on: May 3, 2020
Requires: Indigo v7.0.2 thru v2022.2
Downloaded: 0 times 
Changes in this release

Release Notes:

Added write to event log when the rate is updated, useful to validate if all rate changes actually happened every 30 mins without needing the SQL logger

Added test that the CSV directory is writable (not just that it exists) in the plugin configuration

Added a defaulting option for CSV writing if the device property is checked but the path is null (defaults to the plugin prefs folder)

Improved error handling for API timeouts (discovered an uncaught error issue)

Reduced the default polling interval to 30s from 60. Some tariff changes were over 1 minute late. Should have a minimal impact to performance.

Release details
Released on: April 30, 2020
Requires: Indigo v7.0.2 thru v2022.2
Downloaded: 0 times 
Changes in this release

No new functionality, but the rate is pushed to the event log when it changes

Release details
Released on: April 29, 2020
Requires: Indigo v7.0.2 thru v2022.2
Downloaded: 0 times 
Changes in this release

Corrected icon naming and "first run" issue

Release details
Released on: April 29, 2020
Requires: Indigo v7.0.2 thru v2022.2
Downloaded: 0 times 
Changes in this release

This release has the base functionality and is tested. It supports the generation of multiple rate devices for different postcodes, and also will create a daily csv for the half hourly rates in a directory of your choice.

Requirements

This initial version may be for an audience of one, so while tested users may identify issues that were not exposed during testing.