Tariffs · Octopus Agile
Octopus Agile battery charging, planned every night
On Agile the cheap hours move. Tonight's best half hours to charge are not last night's, and a fixed schedule on the inverter is wrong most days. Suntide fetches tomorrow's prices when Octopus publishes them, a little after 4pm, and plans your battery across all 48 half hours.
See your own month on Agile, free 30 days free. No card. In beta, with a direct line to the people building it.
What Suntide does on Agile
Solves the whole day
Every half hour is priced: import, export, the solar forecast for your roof, and how your house draws power on days like tomorrow. The cost of wearing the battery is in the sum. So is what is left in it at the end.
Looks again when the day changes
If the battery drifts from the plan, the solar forecast moves or a grid event arrives, Suntide plans again. A new plan has to beat the standing one by 10p or 5% to replace it, so the schedule is not rewritten for pennies.
Charges when you are paid to
When Agile goes below zero, Suntide finds the run of negative half hours and offers to fill the battery through it. You arm it, or set it to run on its own.
Not on Agile yet? Replay your own month first
Comparison sites price a typical home. A battery home is not typical. Suntide replays every measured day of your month on Agile's real prices for your region. Once as you ran it, and once with the plan it would have made each night. It does the same for Octopus Tracker and EDF FreePhase. Every figure is labelled simulated, with the days it covers. You see whether switching pays before you switch.
This works on any tariff you are on today. Connect your inverter, let a few weeks of readings build up, and ask.
What your inverter allows
Inverters differ in what they accept from outside. See what yours allows.
| Takes a full schedule | Charge and discharge windows set from Suntide with the charge current, and read back. Each night's plan is fitted into the windows the inverter has. |
| Takes charge windows only | The plan is fitted to the cheapest stretches as charge windows. Some inverters do not take a forced export window from outside. |
| Read only | The plan is drawn and priced every night. You set the times in the maker's app. On Agile that is a daily job, which is worth knowing before you choose. |
It earns the switch first
Suntide starts in shadow. It changes nothing. Each evening it decides what it would do, and the next day it prints what that would have saved or cost against what happened. After 7 measured nights you can let it steer for you. A steered change is read back from the inverter, logged, and reported to you. One pause switch stops all of it.
Pricing · What Suntide changes on your inverter · Everything Suntide works with · How it compares