Smart meter ?

[Ivor Windybottom]

We're currently about to install solar. I was considering blowing £1000s on batteries, getting a time-of-use tariff and mucking about with charging/discharging to beat the system.

However, the Tracker tariff has absolutely no variation in price through the day. It's just one (almost always low) price, all day. Yesterday was 14p, today is 18p, all day and night. The standard tariff is 27p.

Octopus will pay a fixed 15p per unit for exported solar power, even while on their variable Tracker tariff. Given that this is typically so close to the cost of imported power, it makes absolutely no sense to spend £1000s and hours of our lives setting everything up to mess about with batteries, then spend our lives planning around the electricity timetable. Sod that, we'll just continue using what we like at any time, any surplus will just go to the grid.

Also we both work from home, so in the spring and autumn there should be some overlap between the sun shining and us needing heating. So this energy will go directly from the solar panels to the heat pump without being bought or sold.

My point is that for us, getting a smart meter opened us up to the Tracker tariff, which will probably save us £100s per year. Without making any lifestyle changes at all. Anyone else could do the same, it's just a way of paying less just as long as you keep an eye on it. It makes even more sense with solar, but still makes total sense without. I think it also wrecks the justification of getting a time-of-day tariff and/or mucking about with batteries.

I get automatic alerts on my phone with today's price at 7am every day. If it suddenly got higher then I'd know about it.

 

[flameport]

It's just one (almost always low) price, all day.

While that is true for much of 2023, it's not true for the whole time that tariff has been available, and there is zero guarantee that it will be in the future.

Price was stuck at 40p for weeks during the summer of 2022 - not necessarily a problem for those with solar, but pretty poor deal for anyone else.
For the first three weeks of December 2022 it was an average of 46p with a peak of 78p.

There can certainly be savings, but it's not a magic solution and people should consider very carefully before signing up to such things.

Tracker tariff has absolutely no variation in price through the day

That's the biggest problem.
If you get a day priced at 78p in December and you don't have battery or solar, your options are to pay high prices or freeze to death.

Real TOU tariffs such as Agile or Flux provide variable pricing throughout the day, which is where local battery storage is of actual benefit.
Those also encourage loads to be shifted away from peak periods, which is the whole point.
For yesterday, prices overnight were near zero or negative, which is when batteries would have been charged to avoid grid imports during the day.

 

[Adam_151]

Fwiw, I averaged 15.86p /kwh hour on agile between 25Nov-24Dec. Thats without solar or battery storage atm, but with an electric vehicle and running the washing machine and dishwasher on the cheapest periods.

Best day was Christmas Eve when the winds were blowing, and I ensured the car was properly charged, caught up on the laundry, and cleaning and preheated the floor in the conservatory for the next day (Its got quite a high thermal mass, takes ages to heat up and stays somewhat warm for quite some time) Still supprised that I magaged to use 56.78kwh though!

 

[reds42]

If you get a day priced at 78p in December and you don't have battery or solar, your options are to pay high prices or freeze to death.

I've found the savings made in the rest of the year have more than made up for the spikes in prices on octopus tracker. I don't have a battery setup and do fairly basic and minimal load shifting.

I dont care about the short time the price is high if I've still come out on average better off over the year as a whole. I'm certainly not going to freeze to death - just because the price is high at times it doesnt mean I have to turn my heating off.

 

[ericmark]

You use battery storage, such as the one you had installed recently.

That's the whole point of having a battery system - it stores free energy from the solar, cheap electricity from the grid or both so you can use at times when solar isn't available and importing power would be more expensive.

That would be the ideal way, but in real terms I have little control of when the battery is charged or discharged. What it does is allow me to use an appliance without using energy from the grid do to some short term cloud cover.

I don't have control over when it charges from the grid, in theroy is should never charge from the grid unless there has been a power cut, in practice it does seem to over discharge then charge up again, but at moment 60 watt from solar does not need a battery to smooth out use.

I have always been against a smart meter because they have the ability to turn off ones power without having to knock ones door, it seems the ability is their for pre-payment clients, so there is no need to swap the meter to change between pre-payment and paying the bill after the power is used. And the companies claim it will never be used to switch off ones power, however I was around between November 1978 and February 1979 and I remember how the government turned off our power, so I take all the promises with a pinch of salt, I remember having no heating, gas was not turned off, but the hot air central heating would not work without electric, so after that I moved house to one with a flue brick and the ability to use a gas fire with no electric. I have moved again and have an open fire I can use in an emergency, and if we get enough sun to keep batteries charged then the central heating and freezers will work on solar.

The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on, so James Callaghan and his Labour Party government has put pay to any ideas of relying on electric, electric powered heat pumps are a non starter.

However due to solar panels and the fact I am loosing money by not having a smart meter fitted, I have now asked for one to be fitted, I did before moving ask for a gas smart meter to be fitted but was refused, my idea was that I could see in real time how much the gas boiler was modulating, however it seems gas meters don't work in real time anyway, so I would not of been able to see how the boiler modulated anyway. Now on oil, so no longer an issue.

But electric it is so easy to see in real time what I am using without a smart meter, I have two computer linked plug in units so I can see what each appliance is using, at moment looking at the heat pump tumble drier, and how much power per month used seems around 18 kWh used this month. I also have one not linked to PC, and I have a couple of clamp on meters, plus the ones fitted for the solar panels and the iboost+ so I can see how much I am using without any smart meter, can't clap my hands to turn lights on/off as in the smart meter adverts, but hey google will turn them on/off with voice control. Not sure I want to turn lights on/off by clapping hands, and I think that function is an outright lie, I don't for one minute think once fitted I can turn lights on/off by clapping hands, it just makes me wonder with such out and out lies what the real reason for smart meters is? And what the ASA is doing allowing the advert.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I don't have control over when it charges from the grid, in theroy is should never charge from the grid unless there has been a power cut, in practice it does seem to over discharge then charge up again, but at moment 60 watt from solar does not need a battery to smooth out use.

If you have a worthwhile amount of storage, that lack of ability to control when it can charge, needs to be addressed. A smart switch/plug, controlled by when the supply cost is low..

However due to solar panels and the fact I am loosing money by not having a smart meter fitted, I have now asked for one to be fitted, I did before moving ask for a gas smart meter to be fitted but was refused, my idea was that I could see in real time how much the gas boiler was modulating, however it seems gas meters don't work in real time anyway, so I would not of been able to see how the boiler modulated anyway. Now on oil, so no longer an issue.

Well done.

Gas consumption is reported in realtime, except it's quite granular - every 30minutes, though the indoor display does seem to update more frequently than that. Octopus have gone a step further, and have developed a gadget which replaces the indoor display, and able to put the data straight onto your LAN from where it can be accessed by a PC/phone etc.. They are now testing the second version of this gadget.

Previously, the only way to see your consumption in real time, was via the indoor display, or the next day, via your supplier's website.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

If you get a day priced at 78p in December and you don't have battery or solar, your options are to pay high prices or freeze to death.

You just pay high prices, which will make a tiny imperceptible dent in the huge savings you already made.

Also it probably won't happen.

If you're going to worry about the risk of the sky falling down then you should pay the standard tariff and effectively pay the energy supplier a huge premium to take that risk away from you. That is what most people opt for, effectively buying very expensive insurance against risk.

This is why I say it's only for those with a sensible attitude to risk.

My estimated assumption is that a time-of-day tariff won't make sense unless you either have a battery or are prepared to make major lifestyle changes.

Current batteries cost around £400 (+fitting) per 30p-worth kWh of energy storage. So you need to fully charge and discharge 1333 times before you break even, even ignoring installation costs. That's a heck of a huge investment and all assumes it will work perfectly for lots of years, the supplier won't go bust etc.

I won't install a home battery. Instead I'll wait for the next generation of electric cars, in which you'll be able to charge and discharge the car's battery in the same way as a home battery. E.g. you tell it you want to keep 100 miles of range, the system decides how to use it to reduce your home energy costs. Many cars just sit outside the home most of the time, especially if working from home or retired.

Looking at the difference in costs between home batteries and electric cars, you currently get the rest of the car for little or nothing on top of the equivalent capacity home battery. So it appears that home batteries are currently hugely overpriced. When cars become more useful as home batteries then either home batteries will reduce in price or will just be a niche product for those who drive around a lot.

 

[ebee]

It is the age old question.
How much does it cost to get batteries, solar, wind, tide, heat pumps etc etc etc.
How much could it/would it save you (and the environment maybe) compared to your usage and your grid costs etc etc.
Then you will have some figures to work on that might be ok (mostly) for you but maybe not somebody else.

 

[JohnW2]

It is the age old question. .... How much does it cost to get batteries, solar, wind, tide, heat pumps etc etc etc. .... How much could it/would it save you (and the environment maybe) compared to your usage and your grid costs etc etc. ... Then you will have some figures to work on that might be ok (mostly) for you but maybe not somebody else.

Quite so - and,as I often point out, and as is uncomfortably apparent for myself, another factor which I think seriously deserves being thrown into the melting pot of one's calculations/decisions is that of one's age.

A capital outlay with a 'break even point', say, 6-10 years down the road, is another way of saying that one will be financially worse off for the next 6-10 years than one would have been had one not made the 'investment'. For someone like me who is 'well into their 70s' (and eric is not far behind me!), it is therefore far from impossible that the consequence of the 'investment' will be that one will be financially worse off 'for the rest of one's life' than would have been the case without the 'investment'.

Kind Regards, John

 

[hllns]

That would be the ideal way, but in real terms I have little control of when the battery is charged or discharged. What it does is allow me to use an appliance without using energy from the grid do to some short term cloud cover.

If it's the same system you've previously posted about the inverters are listed as doing all of the following:

• Advanced Weather compensation programming
• Octopus Agile Tariff Ready
• Octopus Outgoing Tariff Ready
• Octopus Go Tariff Ready
• Grid Share Incentive ready
• Smart export control on both AC & EPS output

Which is all going to be in software and require a level of integration but the mechanisms are there

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Don't forget you lose 10-20% of the energy as a result of charging and discharging.

I'm happy to invest all of £0 upfront and get 15p a unit from Octopus when I don't want it. If I have to pay them more to get it back later it's very likely I'll still be paying a lot less than for a battery, even if calculated over a million years or whatever.

Batteries need a huge amount of analysis. My fag-packet calculations say it's probably not worth bothering.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

You just pay high prices, which will make a tiny imperceptible dent in the huge savings you already made.

Also it probably won't happen.

If you're going to worry about the risk of the sky falling down then you should pay the standard tariff and effectively pay the energy supplier a huge premium to take that risk away from you. That is what most people opt for, effectively buying very expensive insurance against risk.

So, if you made a demand of a constant, for instance 1kw load, 24/7, would the variable tariff, break even or what?

 

[reds42]

If you're going to worry about the risk of the sky falling down then you should pay the standard tariff and effectively pay the energy supplier a huge premium to take that risk away from you. That is what most people opt for, effectively buying very expensive insurance against risk.

I hadn't really appreciated just how big the cost premium for electricty hedged by the supplier buying futures was until I investigated and moved onto the octopus tracker tarrif.

My estimated assumption is that a time-of-day tariff won't make sense unless you either have a battery or are prepared to make major lifestyle changes.

I've considered the octopus agile time-of-day tariff, but without serious investment in battery storage I couldnt see any way of realising a cost saving over tracker without huge sacrifices to lifestyle either.

My personal longterm view of energy prices is that they should not dramaticaly increase, if anything they should get cheaper relatively speaking over the coming years.

Once renewable energy generation is built there is no cost to fuel it unlike a gas or coal powerstations, so renewables produce cheap electricity and there is a lot of renewable generation being built and planned. There will be times supply from it is limited, and until large scale storage is available we will have to rely on the likes of gas as backup, but the renewable share of generation is going to keep on increasing.

I've considered solar as I have not yet installed it (east/west facing roof so not ideal), and also the possibility of battery storage - but the pay back time for my situation strikes me as rather long, and if energy prices do decrease like I expect over the coming years that payback time gets even longer and makes the investment harder to justify.

I know there are a lot of people who hate the idea of renewables, smart meters, time of use tarrifs etc. but I'm up for embracing the future for the benefit of myself and more importantly my kids.

One realy big benefit of getting away from fossil fuels that people dont seem to talk about is for the country to be energy independant - to not be held to ransome on energy costs by hostile oil and gas producing countries.

I find it bizarre that people think the current way of being bent over by the likes of OPEC to keep fueling the country is somehow preferable to embracing the energy independance offered by renewables.

 

[JohnW2]

I find it bizarre that people think the current way of being bent over by the likes of OPEC to keep fueling the country is somehow preferable to embracing the energy independance offered by renewables.

If and when (not in my lifetime) 'the renewables' (which tend to come with an increasingly unpleasant aesthetic cost) are replaced by nuclear fusion, then that will become even more true.

Happy upcoming New Year to everyone!

Kind Regards, John

 

[reds42]

If and when (not in my lifetime) 'the renewables' (which tend to come with an increasingly unpleasant aesthetic cost) are replaced by nuclear fusion, then that will become even more true.

Happy upcoming New Year to everyone!

Kind Regards, John

If only it wasn't always 30 years away...