Good Idea. I need to try this on my HA.
I already have Intelligent Octopus integration up and running 
This is one of the first truly smart automations I have come across. Yes we all trigger lights with sensors or turn the Christmas lights off at 10pm but this is real 
I previously had two date helpers setup for the start and end of saving period and had automations trigger based on those times which turned off/on several things (primarily the car charger). Thanks so much for the pointer that the Octopus integration has functionality to automatically sign up to saving sessions and also a boolean sensor to trigger the turning on/odd of devices.
Not as advanced as your setup but take out a few more manual steps which is great.
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Thank you! I’ll definitely give it a Go!
Thanks for starting me off looking into automating all this. I’ve set up the same auto-optin that you linked to and added a mobile device notification so I’m made aware when it’s opted in just so I can verify. Hope it’s ok to share my automations here.
I use the Solax integration through pocket WiFi module so set up my automation using the visual editor. After my first session all worked great except I forgot to change my export control to discharge at full power so wasted a while at 750Wh rather than 7.5kWh. The second session then didn’t stop at my desired SOC and drained my battery down to 10%, which then put my batteries in idle so couldn’t switch back to discharge without making several option edits till it came back alive. Thankfully was out for my work Xmas party so saw the battery charge hadn’t started (never up that late haha) and could get it working again.
I have 3 automations in total and I’m certain there will be an easier way, but this is what I’ve done below. I’ve added comments to explain what the devices are as may be different on yours.
Start battery export when saving session starts/changes to on:
alias: Saving Session Force Discharge
description: During Saving Session force discharge
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.octopus_energy_[Octopus_ID]_octoplus_saving_sessions
from: null #this is from any state ignoring attribute changes
to: "on"
for:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 0
condition:
- condition: numeric_state
entity_id: sensor.solax_battery_capacity
above: 39
action:
- device_id: c03651dc448c1d5a0d49acf33a955d40 #Solax Inverter
domain: select
entity_id: 641e93ec4878af470616100bc2048620 #Change SolaX Charger Use Mode option
type: select_option
option: Manual Mode
- device_id: c03651dc448c1d5a0d49acf33a955d40 #Solax Inverter
domain: select
entity_id: c68c9148a102e04155c2bd49ccf7fc4b #Change SolaX Manual Mode Select option
type: select_option
option: Force Discharge
- device_id: 63b5116d046a355f7fd67fa98a5fcaa1 #My phone
domain: mobile_app
type: notify
message: Mode changed to manual and batteries exporting to grid
title: Batteries exporting
mode: single
Stop export when savings session changes to off. I’ve been caught out by it changing from on to unknown to off so used the 'Any state ignoring attribute changes:
alias: Savings Session Ended
description: Saving Session ended, return to self-use
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- binary_sensor.octopus_energy_[Octopus ID]_octoplus_saving_sessions
from: null
to: "off"
for:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 0
condition: []
action:
- device_id: c03651dc448c1d5a0d49acf33a955d40 #Solax Inverter
domain: select
entity_id: 641e93ec4878af470616100bc2048620 #Change SolaX Charger Use Mode option
type: select_option
option: Self Use Mode
- device_id: 63b5116d046a355f7fd67fa98a5fcaa1 #My phone
domain: mobile_app
type: notify
message: Returned to self-use mode, batteries no longer exporting
title: Batteries no longer exporting
mode: single
And finally to stop export if battery drops below 30% as this will get me to the end of day. This is personal preference as you might want to make as much £’s from the session and just use the rest of the day from the grid but I like to keep some aside.
alias: Saving Session Stopped <30
description: Saving Session ended due to battery capacity
trigger:
- platform: numeric_state
entity_id:
- sensor.solax_battery_capacity
for:
hours: 0
minutes: 0
seconds: 5
below: "31"
condition:
- condition: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.octopus_energy_[Octopus ID]_octoplus_saving_sessions
state: "on"
action:
- device_id: c03651dc448c1d5a0d49acf33a955d40 #Solax Inverter
domain: select
entity_id: 641e93ec4878af470616100bc2048620 #Change SolaX Charger Use Mode option
type: select_option
option: Self Use Mode
- device_id: 63b5116d046a355f7fd67fa98a5fcaa1 #My phone
domain: mobile_app
type: notify
message: Returned to self-use mode, batteries no longer exporting
title: Batteries under 30pc no longer exporting
mode: single
2 Likes
This is something I want to achieve with Intelligent Octopus and my new Luna2000 Inverter (I think). Charge the house batteries, during the extended off peak car charging windows.
Thanks for posting.
Hi Kamil,
Thanks for your work on this. Can I please ask, as someone who doesn’t code YAML, how do I use the following code snippet?
{{ 'yes' if (upcoming_event != None and upcoming_event.strftime('%j') == now().strftime('%j')) else 'no' }}I tried adding it as code pasted into the “Confirm State” condition in one of my automations but it barfed at the code. What am I missing?
@Whoarewe, probably best to try it out in the Template editor in Developer Tools. It should then tell you what might be wrong…
I did that just now and it says “‘upcoming_event’ is undefined”
Does this mean I need to wait for another Octopus saving session to be announced in order to troubleshoot this?
great job! I’m a bit concerned about the force charging the battery for the event. Does it have any financial profits to do that during day time, and if yes, then what tariff are you on?
thanks for everything!
Did you know what is the setting for the charging limit?
I have 6kw of inverter but 3kw from grid… if i set to recharge from grid i got a little too much power
I have to limit the charging from grid at 1/1,5kw…
Typically Octopus pays £2.25 per kWh for exporting during a saving session, so it will be very profitable to top-up your battery beforehand. E.G. if a saving session lasts for 1 hour and your inverter can export at 5kW then you want at least 5kWh in your battery at the start of the session. Your 5kWh export then earns you £2.25 x 5 (£11.25) which is way less than you paid to import that 5kWh.
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There is a saving session today (17/01/2024) and I have just borrowed your automations and will keep a close eye on them, thank you.
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I wonder if you might be able to help me. We had a saving session yesterday, and my template, designed to work out how many hours until the start of the saving session, didn’t work.
I tried to use the following template code:
{{ (state_attr("binary_sensor.octopus_energy_[ac_no]_octoplus_saving_sessions","next_joined_event_start"))-now() }}
But, for some reason, it didn’t report a time back, and just showed “unknown”.
Would you know what I need to do to the data format, to enable this parameter, to be used to compare to the current time now? My aim is to use this parameter, to pause my battery discharge, 3 hours before the Saving Session starts.
Thanks
On a couple of sessions I’ve got a message that they don’t know what are my numbers for the session 
@robbo100 There should be a few datetime conversations in my automations so please take a look. I always try to test it out with HA developer tools ans the template editor.
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Thanks @kamilb, and sorry for the slow reply.
I ended up using:
{{ (as_timestamp(state_attr('binary_sensor.octopus_energy_X_XXXXXXX_octoplus_saving_sessions', 'next_joined_event_start')) - as_timestamp(now()))/3600 }}
Which gave me the number of hours.
It now works a treat
@kamilb - I have a quick question about the saving sessions, and how Octopus calculate the “saving”.
I recently got the results for my first saving session for when I pushed the battery to the grid (17th Jan). When I got the result, Octopus told me that I only saved 0.28 kWh, despite me exporting approx 4.5 kWh to the grid during this session.
Am I correct in thinking that the system should calculate the net difference between normal usage (in my case, I averaged about 0.28 kWh import during this time, over the previous 10 days) and the actual energy imported or exported during the saving session (On this occasion I exported 4.5 kWh during the saving session).
So, am I right in thinking that I should have been credited to a value of £2.25 x (0.28 + 4.5) = £10.75
It feels to me, that OE haven’t registered my export on their system, during the saving session, and have only recorded the difference between normal usage, and zero.
Or have I completely misunderstood how the saving sessions work?
Thanks
Hi!
I have Tesla Powerwall 2 system and would like to automate the forced discharge in the savings sessions too. Does anyone have any knowledge on this as I am a total novice to coding. I have managed to set up the @bottlecapdave Octopus energy saving sessions automation and get it working, now would like to automate the Powerwall discharge in the savings sessions.
Any help or pointers will be greatly appreciated.
Great job and great automation. That could be a very good solution for me. But I live in Sweden and we have Nordpool prices trough Tibber in my case. It is possible to adjuste this automation for Nordpool priceses instead?