Energy Suppliers

Hi, semi hijack.

Currently on Standard Variable at about 20p/kWh.
Getting an EV in March and the price cap is going up in April.

I looking to switch to Octopus Go for the cheap night time EV charging. So it's 30.15p/kWh and 7.5p/kWh off peak.

When would be the best time to fix?
 
Troop said:
^^^ Just for info I'm in Mid Wales with a 3.6kw system on one of my rental properties over the last 8 years it's produced 3300 to 3500kw per year.
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Yeah, that is the kind of info you want @413x - at the price you are paying per kWh that would translate into £724 per year on average (at your unit rate) if you could use it all or store then use it. The 10 year payback figures given on MSE are a total joke tbh, unless you are not shopping around or haven't done the correct research on where to spend the money.
 
Journey said:
Yeah, that is the kind of info you want @413x - at the price you are paying per kWh that would translate into £724 per year on average (at your unit rate) if you could use it all or store then use it. The 10 year payback figures given on MSE are a total joke tbh, unless you are not shopping around or haven't done the correct research on where to spend the money.
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You wont get anywhere near that return per year and a ten year payback is on the optimistic side.

We have a 4.2Kwh system which generates between 3.9 and 4Mwh year on year. The bulk of that generation is April to August, 400Kwh up to 600 Kwh per month, the majority goes back to the grid at a little over £0.04 per Kwh, my wife is at home all day so we do make good use of the power with the dishwasher, washing machine, oven etc. Our estimated use per year is around 40% of what we generate, if we had a battery we'd be around 60% but through the summer months the majority of the power generated would still go back to the grid as the battery would be replenished within a couple of hours of the sun coming up.

System was installed late 2018 so we've been receiving FiT payments, year on year they've been £250-£260 based on 50% of total generated each year. I think the likes of Octopus offer £0.055p per Kwh but you need a smart meter fitting to monitor your export to the grid.
Up to late last year we were paying £0.15 per Kwh so it was saving us roughly £240 directly off our bill, currently with prices at £0.21 per Kwh that's £336 saved off the (considerably larger) bill.

Having a battery for storage will certainly help through winter if you're on a tiered supply and can charge it overnight, but you're going to want enough capacity to last a full day otherwise you're going to be hammered per Kwh once your battery is depleted as I wouldn't be surprised if the top tier goes up to £0.50 Kwh after April.
 
Foghorn Leghorn said:
You wont get anywhere near that return per year and a ten year payback is on the optimistic side.
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I've included a battery for that very reason, and you need to spend time looking at where you can optimise power usage. The fact you've said you have decent sized array and know you can't use it all means you could/would be better off having a battery installed over the longer term. Battery helps in summer not just winter, as you can discharge after sun down, and dump what is left into your car (for EV owners) or force export if you have anything remaining for those 5.5p's that all add up.

We were also discussing the cost vs payback, but ignored the option to take the expensive parts with you if you moved, or sell them on if the new owner wasn't willing to pay a fair price. As I have already said, and as 413x said the cost/outlay wasn't the issue, it was justifying it on a pure financial basis, and again as I also highlighted a few £K on a £200k+ house is a rounding error when selling it. I think for some reason people need to find a payback time, rather than looking at QoL/QoS, and what solar offers to the future not just the bank balance. Spending £5k+ on a solar/battery setup when you have a household income of £70-80K+ should be a total no brainer, but for some reason whacking a few options on a new car, buying a new over priced sofa, or things that literally become almost totally worthless as soon as you have them take priority.
 
Don't forget battery will need replacing. If it lasted 20 years then great, but they normally only come with 10 year guarantees. So to cover worst case scenario, take that battery cost and divide it by 10, there is your rough yearly cost to run it. If it goes longer, then great, but it's not 100% going to!
 
I'll just add a link here to show what can be achieved with 3kw solar and batteries on a garage roof. Summer there now so good numbers.
Just go through the days to show what's produced, what goes into his house......it's a live feed from a Victron system running Venus OS on a PI for the data.

Same as I am building up slowly.

Live feed link. (mouse over the bars to get more info)
Change the days in Historical data, today, yesterday, ect

https://vrm.victronenergy.com/installation/100328/dashboard
 
HungryHippos said:
Don't forget battery will need replacing. If it lasted 20 years then great, but they normally only come with 10 year guarantees. So to cover worst case scenario, take that battery cost and divide it by 10, there is your rough yearly cost to run it. If it goes longer, then great, but it's not 100% going to!
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10 year warranty, doesn't mean failure after 10 years though, otherwise they wouldn't risk a 10 year warranty. It means they are very confident it will easily last 10 years, as the warranty reflects the that (in my case) it will retain 70% of the original capacity based on two factors, cycles and throughput, and on my pack the throughput is unlimited. So if I have 70% of 8.2kWh after 10 years then it is still very useable at 5.7kWh (worst case or it would be replaced). Also batteries will become cheaper and cheaper per kWh so I doubt that it would be an issue once you see how much you'll save on it.

The only thing that will take away from potential is the uptake of V2G and V2H once it is widely available, but I think I'd still like to have a small pack for a single vehicle household for when the vehicle is not connected.
 
Journey said:
10 year warranty, doesn't mean failure after 10 years though, otherwise they wouldn't risk a 10 year warranty. It means they are very confident it will easily last 10 years, as the warranty reflects the that (in my case) it will retain 70% of the original capacity based on two factors, cycles and throughput, and on my pack the throughput is unlimited. So if I have 70% of 8.2kWh after 10 years then it is still very useable at 5.7kWh (worst case or it would be replaced). Also batteries will become cheaper and cheaper per kWh so I doubt that it would be an issue once you see how much you'll save on it.

The only thing that will take away from potential is the uptake of V2G and V2H once it is widely available, but I think I'd still like to have a small pack for a single vehicle household for when the vehicle is not connected.
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Yes I'm not trying to say a battery is definitely a terrible idea or anything, but it's not like it's dirt cheap, a good battery will cost a few £K today. The 10 year life time you kind of have to assume because it could die 10 years and 1 day into things, at that point you would be out of luck on warranty and you'd need a new one. Ideally it would be good for at least 15 years.

I'm trying to find out from Octopus what the deal is with the Go tariff and whether it will also eat higher fees. The battery idea will live and die based on how good the deals are on the off-peak pricing in particular. If we're suddenly paying £0.20 per kwh overnight they simply aren't that great, the difference in the price and the ability to store them is what makes it good.
 
HungryHippos said:
I'm trying to find out from Octopus what the deal is with the Go tariff and whether it will also eat higher fees. The battery idea will live and die based on how good the deals are on the off-peak pricing in particular. If we're suddenly paying £0.20 per kwh overnight they simply aren't that great, the difference in the price and the ability to store them is what makes it good.
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If you are a current customer then all you need to do is apply for it via their dedicated team, and it is 7.5p for the off-peak period and around 30p peak. It used to be that you could only have it if you have a BEV, I am not sure if that is still true. You do need a SMETS2 smart meter installed, and if you don't have one that would take some time. I am also unsure if they are allowing newly acquired customers on to it right now, so if you aren't with them I don't think you can apply for it.

Put your post code in here - https://octopus.energy/go/rates/
 
Yes I can ses the rates and I have asked them about it, but as I mentioned before, is this tariff also going up in april? No one seems clear on that so far not even octopus appear to mention it.
 
HungryHippos said:
Yes I can ses the rates and I have asked them about it, but as I mentioned before, is this tariff also going up in april? No one seems clear on that so far not even octopus appear to mention it.
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It's a year contract minimum, with no exit fee. So you get that price regardless of it goes up, it already went to from 5p/15p then 5p/23p.
 
Journey said:
It's a year contract minimum, with no exit fee. So you get that price regardless of it goes up, it already went to from 5p/15p then 5p/23p.
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Good to know thanks. It's still good if the off peak unit rates track at 1/3 or so of regular rates down the line as well, just need a big enough battery to charge it up and for that to last a lot of the day.
 
Journey said:
I've included a battery for that very reason, and you need to spend time looking at where you can optimise power usage. The fact you've said you have decent sized array and know you can't use it all means you could/would be better off having a battery installed over the longer term. Battery helps in summer not just winter, as you can discharge after sun down, and dump what is left into your car (for EV owners) or force export if you have anything remaining for those 5.5p's that all add up.

We were also discussing the cost vs payback, but ignored the option to take the expensive parts with you if you moved, or sell them on if the new owner wasn't willing to pay a fair price. As I have already said, and as 413x said the cost/outlay wasn't the issue, it was justifying it on a pure financial basis, and again as I also highlighted a few £K on a £200k+ house is a rounding error when selling it. I think for some reason people need to find a payback time, rather than looking at QoL/QoS, and what solar offers to the future not just the bank balance. Spending £5k+ on a solar/battery setup when you have a household income of £70-80K+ should be a total no brainer, but for some reason whacking a few options on a new car, buying a new over priced sofa, or things that literally become almost totally worthless as soon as you have them take priority.
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I spent a lot of time looking at batteries at the time but they were low capacity and expensive in comparison to what's available now. I'll revisit batteries in a few years when the system is paid off, I paid for the setup on a 0% credit card, I already had the cash to pay for it so put it in Vanguard ISA which has been doing well over the last few years.

Now we've had the setup for a few years there's a few things I'd do differently. We had 14x300w panels fitted, there's enough room for another 18 panels, wish I'd filled the roof and spoken to the DNO to up the maximum export capacity. I'd also remove the tiles and have the panels fitted flush purely for aesthetics, I know there's some performance loss due to heat but if I was fitting a setup now I'd be looking at 34 panels with a potential for 15 Kwh max output :D and I'd be fitting 10Kwh + of storage. Things have improved considerably within the last few years. I'll be keeping an eye on the tech improvements over the next few years and I may consider a full new install with storage and move the current system onto the garage if not then it'll be a inverter upgrade and batteries.

Agree on the pay back, when our setup was first fitted we were looking at approx. 15 year pay back, same setup from April onwards figures and the payback would be 10 years. Long term prices are only ever going one way but that's only part of the reason we had panels fitted.
 
HOw many here work from home?

I think the people working from home are going to affected by this a lot. Had i be going to a office for work, that would have mitigated the cost of electrcity as it will basically be off for the whole day and only on/used during teh evenings and early mornings and weekends
 
jonneymendoza said:
HOw many here work from home?

I think the people working from home are going to affected by this a lot. Had i be going to a office for work, that would have mitigated the cost of electrcity as it will basically be off for the whole day and only on/used during teh evenings and early mornings and weekends
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Both me and my gf are full time WFH. That's another reason why I fixed in October. Risk is greater

WFH electricity is negligible

Heating is much more significant
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
Yeh, compared to a £X000 season ticket, I’ll take the hit on the energy bill any day.
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Has anyone ever said.. Nah ill decline that WFH offer as my utilities are a bit much?

No

Insurance
Wear and tear
Fuel

We've easily dropped to one car too
 
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