FoxESS Community - Owners & Installers Forum

We are On Octopus Go. At the end of the day currently our battery is full. I want to charge the car from the grid tonight and not drain the battery. Is there a way of doing this through the mode scheduler? TIA (Apols if this is answered elsewhere - couldn't spot an answer though it must be a FAQ)

Rather than the scheduler you can use the charge periods, set the time for Octopus Go but leave the Charge from Grid switch turned off (that won’t charge or discharge).

If you are using the scheduler for anything you can’t run charge periods and scheduler at the same time and so scheduler options are a little more difficult - if you have a workmode called ‘backup’ you can select that for the time period and it will not allow discharge.

If you don’t have backup workmode, set you minsoc on grid (aka battery reserve) to be approx what your battery soc is - that will maintain your battery soc using a low power charge and will not allow discharge.

Thanks Dave - really helpful. Just to be sure . . . Using your first suggestion:

I set my Ohme charger to charge during the Octopus Go night-time cheap period. And on the battery settings on the Fox app I set up a force time charge for the same period but disable it for the same period using the 'Charge from grid disabled' button.

Did I get that right? (this is all new to me!)

cheers, m

Yes if you have set a charge time for your Octopus Go period with 'Charge from grid disabled' (don't forget to Submit as that sends it to the inverter) - it will not charge and nor will it allow discharge.

You mustn't have any schedules enabled when you are using the 'older' charge times as schedules always override and reset them to 00:00.

Wouldn't it be nice if "CT2" could be used on an EV charger to detect when it's used and automatically prevent the battery from discharging? I'm pretty sure that would be something relatively easy for FOX to implement in the firmware.

Hegemon wrote: ↑Tue Aug 12, 2025 10:54 am Wouldn't it be nice if "CT2" could be used on an EV charger to detect when it's used and automatically prevent the battery from discharging? I'm pretty sure that would be something relatively easy for FOX to implement in the firmware.

That'd be nice!

Thank you for the response above, A year later, I’m reading this and I would appreciate a little help.

We also have EVs and are on Octopus Go. Our solar installation is new and our experience so far is that the panels generate all we need to run the house. We have enough power to get the day started before the panels get going. And we have enough to run the house in the evening.

But the battery is not enough to charge the car. It also charges slower than the grid. So we want to always use the grid to charge the cars between 23:30 and 5:30.

Please could you explain how we should configure our system to maintain our battery charge overnight and not discharge into an EV?
Many thanks.

When you create your charging mode for overnight, you are looking to set the work mode once the SoC is reached.
So this example image is what you are looking for in the red circled section for your charging schedule. As Dave has previously posted in the thread above, you are looking to set the work mode as 'backup' or 'standby'

It is dependant on having the correct firmware, so if you cannot see this, then you need to get the latest firmware versions loaded on.

Thank you. I don’t have the setting you’ve circled in red.

Any tips on how to update firmware gratefully received.

tazzas wrote: ↑Mon Aug 31, 2026 9:40 am Thank you. I don’t have the setting you’ve circled in red.

Any tips on how to update firmware gratefully received.

https://www.fox-ess.com/contact-us
Scroll down to 'Global Service Contacts' find your country, and email them (include inverter serial number) asking for firmware upgrades.

Thank you!

For anyone else reading this thread, who doesn't have the options described about, I seem to have got it to work as follows:

Use Mode Scheduler and set up two periods of "Backup" mode to cover the pre-midnight and post-midnight timeslot for the cheap Octopus times (23:30 to 23:59 and 00:00 to 05:30)
This prevents the battery from discharging during these periods, ensures your EV charges from the grid, and is charged in time for the morning.

This doesn't solve the problem of the Ohme charger and Intelligent Octopus deciding to charge outside these hours (because grid usage is low). For this, we will experiment with changing the Basic mode from Self-use to backup should we plug the cars in during the day. This will override everything else and ensure the battery still charges, and is not depleted by the cars.

Thanks to everyone for their help.
If I discover that this also doesn't help, I'll keep you posted!

tazzas wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2026 9:55 amThis doesn't solve the problem of the Ohme charger and Intelligent Octopus deciding to charge outside these hours (because grid usage is low).

This is where Home Assistant wins for you, as it can detect charging events and change the Inverter work mode to charge/hold depending on your needs.

Glad you got somewhat of a work around going for now.