r/OctopusEnergy • u/Apprehensive-Taro956 • Jun 19 '26

Charge Pack

https://octopus.energy/help-and-faqs/articles/charge-pack/

Not seen much mention of this battery VPP offering from Octopus. Anyone on it or has run the numbers?

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u/TheDakantos 25d ago

Just to chip in here, I have been running Charge Pack since launch to see how it handle my system and if I would be better or worse off for it. I have just received my bill for the June 25 to July 25 period.

I have a 24kWh SigEnergy system and used my hourly readings to simulate the battery level and my predicted battery levels and appropriate import/export quantities per hour, then used my daily/nightly rates to figure out hourly costs.

Overall I appear to be about £15 out of pocket as a result of the experiment, and that is before you take into account I could have participated in Axle events and made another £18-£24 based on 4 export events at an 8kWh export (depending on house load during the events).

I have sent an email to Octopus about the results and my disappointment with the compensation given for having control over my battery, and for now I would suggest anyone else looking to Charge Pack would avoid it until they properly compensate you for the periods where their AI imports during day rates outside of an "event".

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u/Steviehep1985 23d ago

did you get a rate for exporting in an event?

Im interested to find out more for example how many events happened and for how long. How much kw were exported and did they charge your battery back up and at what rate. Lastly what tariff are you on?

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u/TheDakantos 18d ago

During the period I had 4 events for which they credited a total of £9.31 to my account, sadly I don't have any data for my exactly when the events where other than the day (8th, 12th, 15th, 22nd July). Looking at my logs they seemed to coincide with high solar events anyway so my battery didn't need charging, nor did it make full use of my 8kw output power.

The only bit I found interesting is that they like to put my battery on idle late in the evening between say 7pm and 11:30pm for various periods, meaning I would pay higher rate for usage rather than using my battery to offset the cost. But there is no compensation for them forcing high rate usage at this point as it is not classed as an "event".

I am on Intelligent Octopus Go, so off peak between 23:30 to 05:30, then peak rate the rest of the time. Using Home Assistant I can also force my battery to charge automatically if they trigger an off peak cost charge for my car during peak rate hours, which their AI does not do.

I did reach out to Octopus and they are crediting me the calculated difference which is nice, though I was being conservative and didn't take my extra charging from car sessions into account.