Intelligent Octopus for Home Battery Trial

What are the benefits of using Intelligent Octopus?

We’ll pay you an account credit each month if your battery is connected to Intelligent Octopus. You’ll be helping us learn how we can best use home batteries to save consumers money. We’re aiming to control your battery in a way that maximises the value of the battery to you and also allows us to utilise it smartly on the grid.

What batteries does this work with?

Intelligent Octopus for home batteries is currently available for Energiser Homepower batteries. We plan to add more makes and models over time.

When you control a battery what are you doing?

We'll communicate with your battery remotely using the internet. We give instructions to your battery about when to charge and discharge. 

You'll first tell us what minimum state of charge needs to be maintained. This is so you always have a reserve of power to power your home in the case of a power outage. Note that during a power outage, the battery will return to its default mode of operation to ensure your home has power.

What if I want to stop the control of my battery?

Once Intelligent Octopus starts controlling your Energizer Home battery app, you will no longer be able to manually control it. You can request for control of your battery to be returned to you at any point during the trial.

If you would like to pause the control please email us at hello@octopusenergy.nz, or call 0800 947 867, with your account number and we will issue a ‘pause’ on the control. This will typically take up to one business day.

If you would like to permanently stop the control, again please email or call us with your account details and we will pause the control within one business day. Once paused, it will take up to 2 business days for our access to be removed permanently. 

How will you determine when to charge and discharge?

We optimise your battery by taking account of your pricing plan and what is happening on the wholesale market. We will prioritise grid charging during our night rate time period (11pm - 7am). Our optimiser then takes the wholesale pricing signal, and will choose the cheapest times to charge your battery overnight.

Once your battery has been charged overnight, it will slowly trickle charge during the day. If you have excess solar generation, this will naturally take priority and be used to charge the battery.

In the evenings, we will then be optimising when your battery discharges, we will prioritise discharging your battery between 5pm and 9pm, the discharge times within this will be determined by what is happening in the wholesale market. This will provide power to your home, and export any excess to the grid. 

I'm interested in joining the trial!

You can register your interest by sending us an email at hello@octopusenergy.nz and an energy specialists will be in touch to discuss this further with you.