How to automate force charge in Home Assistant

albie999 · Mon Sep 01, 2025 10:27 am

Been using Home Assistant (with Modbus integration) for a while now ... but with these "free" electricity sessions that Octopus are now providing, and where they have stated that EV/Solar people can also benefit (by plugging car in) ..... trying to automate my setup even further

Spotted in the Fox Modbus integration the below entities .. but I do not seem to be able to set these inside of Home Assistant. Example is when I click on "Enable Charge From Grid" .. I only get a status windows .. rather than an option to change .. therefore, do not seem to be able to automate switching this on and off

I have had to go into the FoxApp itself, and manually turn these on .. that then shows the change in HA ... but would like to do it all from HA iteself

Mon Sep 01, 2025 2:12 pm

If you want to write an automation to switch the charge periods you should be able to use the integrations built in service - you can see that if you go to 'Developer Tools' click on 'Actions' and in the action box start to type foxess and select the entry for 'Update Charge Period', you select your inverter in the drop down list select the time period you want, set the switches and times and perform action and it should set the charge times. (Note your App may not show this for some time afterwards as it doesn't expect the inverter to be setting the times)

I use a couple of time helpers and a toggle to enable it, and have an automation that sets the second charge period to the free session time period and then when the period is over it clears the charge period.

albie999 · Mon Sep 01, 2025 4:33 pm

Thanks Dave, that is really helpful and will investigate that. You mention that you set the session to the "free session time period" .. I spotted the "Octopus Free Electricity" entity .. but that just shws and On / Off ...... can you advise what entity shows the actual time slot?

Mon Sep 01, 2025 4:42 pm

albie999 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 01, 2025 4:33 pm Thanks Dave, that is really helpful and will investigate that. You mention that you set the session to the "free session time period" .. I spotted the "Octopus Free Electricity" entity .. but that just shws and On / Off ...... can you advise what entity shows the actual time slot?

As far as I know for the free saving session there is no entity that does that (at least not yet) - there always was for the saving sessions but they haven't extended that to the free sessions so i've just created myself a couple of helpers for the times and switch it on when I have a confirmed time.

albie999 · Mon Sep 01, 2025 4:46 pm

Perfect . thanks ... it was not just me being daft then