Intelligent Octopus Flux alternative: run Flux your way

Flux has three price bands every day. A cheap window in the early hours (2am to 5am), an expensive peak in the late afternoon (4pm to 7pm), and a middle rate the rest of the time. The import and export prices follow the same bands, so the export rate is at its best exactly when the import rate is at its worst.

That shape is simple to describe and hard to run well by hand. Fill the battery too much overnight and a sunny day has nowhere to put your solar. Fill it too little and you buy at the peak. Export too hard at 4pm and the evening runs short.

Intelligent Octopus Flux connects your battery to the Octopus app and lets Octopus charge and discharge it for you, steering around grid demand and wholesale prices. Import and export prices match in each half-hour, so every unit you sell earns what the same unit would cost to buy.

The catch is compatibility. It only works with the batteries Octopus has integrated, and that list is shorter than the list of batteries installed in UK homes. If your inverter is not on it, Intelligent Flux is not an option, however good it might be.

The other trade-off is control. Octopus is optimising your battery alongside its own needs on the grid. Most of the time that lines up with saving you money, but you see less of why a decision was made and have fewer levers if you want the battery to behave differently.

The alternative is to stay on plain Flux and let an independent planner run the battery to the Flux bands. ShiftCharge reads your Flux import and export prices every day, checks tomorrow’s solar forecast and how much power your home usually uses, and then sends the charge and export times to your battery.

On a typical Flux day that means charging in the cheap early-morning window, leaving room for the panels if the forecast is bright, running the home from the battery through the day, and planning Discharge to grid in the 4pm to 7pm peak — while keeping enough back to cover your own evening use.

Because the plan is yours, you can see it. The app tells you in plain words what the battery is doing and why, shows what each day saved, and lets you pause the plan and take over whenever you want.

Who runs the battery: on Intelligent Flux, Octopus; on Flux with ShiftCharge, a planner working only for your bill.

Which batteries work: Intelligent Flux supports the brands Octopus has integrated. ShiftCharge works with Growatt today, with GivEnergy and Solis in open beta — including setups Intelligent Flux does not cover.

What you can see: Intelligent Flux shows results in the Octopus app. ShiftCharge shows tomorrow’s plan before it runs, the reasons behind it, and the saving afterwards.

Switching tariff: Intelligent Flux ties the automation to that one tariff. ShiftCharge plans around whichever Octopus smart tariff you are on, so moving to Agile, Go or Cosy later does not mean starting again.

Pick Intelligent Octopus Flux if your battery is on Octopus’s compatible list and you are happy to hand over control in return for matched import and export prices. It is a well-designed tariff and for many homes it is the simplest answer.

Pick plain Flux with a planner if your battery is not on that list, if you want to see and adjust what your battery does, or if you might move to another Octopus tariff later. You keep the Flux price shape and still get a plan that adapts to the weather and your home every day.

Whichever way you go, compare a few real weeks rather than one sunny day. The right answer depends on your battery size, your solar and when your household actually uses power.