Learn · 29 October 2026
Intelligent Octopus Go with a home battery: what to know
Running Intelligent Octopus Go with a home battery: how the cheap window works, why the battery can drain into your car, and how to plan around it.
Join the betaIntelligent Octopus Go is built around an electric car. Octopus controls the car charger, gives you a long cheap window overnight, and sometimes adds extra cheap slots when it charges the car at other times.
A home battery can do very well on the same tariff, because it can fill up in that overnight window too. But Intelligent Go controls the car, not the battery, and that leaves a couple of things for you to get right.
How Intelligent Octopus Go works
You get a cheap rate for a six-hour window overnight and a standard rate the rest of the day. Octopus schedules your car’s charging, mostly inside that window.
When Octopus charges the car outside the overnight window, those extra slots are usually billed at the cheap rate too. They are not known in advance — they appear when Octopus decides to charge the car.
The battery-into-car problem
A home battery covers whatever the house is drawing. It cannot tell a car charger from a kettle, so when the car starts charging the battery may try to supply it, emptying itself into the car.
Octopus’s own advice is to “blind” the battery to the car charger, by placing the energy meter the inverter reads so it does not see the charger’s load. That is a wiring job for your installer, and it is the most reliable fix.
Until that is done, a reserve level on the battery limits the damage: the battery stops discharging at that level and the car charges from the grid instead.
Planning the battery on Intelligent Go
With the car taken care of, the battery’s job is simple to describe: fill up in the cheap overnight window, then run the home through the standard-rate day and evening.
The judgement is in how full. On a sunny day you want room left for the panels; on a dull winter day you want it full. ShiftCharge reads your Intelligent Go prices, checks the solar forecast and your usual household use, and sets the overnight charge to match.
ShiftCharge plans around the regular overnight window. It does not count on the extra car-charging slots, because they are not published ahead of time.
Intelligent Go or another tariff?
If you have an electric car that Octopus supports, Intelligent Go’s long cheap window is hard to beat, and a battery fits around it well.
If you have solar and a battery but no car, compare Flux or Agile. They reward exporting in the evening peak, which Intelligent Go does not.
Common questions
- Does Intelligent Octopus Go control my home battery?
- No. Octopus controls the car charger. The home battery follows its own settings, which is why it is worth planning it separately.
- Can ShiftCharge stop my battery draining into the car?
- Not reliably on its own. The dependable fix is having your installer blind the battery to the car charger. ShiftCharge then plans the battery around your home’s use.
- Should I charge my battery to 100% every night on Intelligent Go?
- Not always. In summer a full battery overnight can leave no room for solar. In winter, filling it in the cheap window usually makes sense.
Want this running in your home?
ShiftCharge is in private beta. Join the waitlist and we will reach out when there is a slot open for your hardware and tariff.
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