Octopus Power Ups and Free Energy Sessions

DRZ said:
I'd imagine next to nobody is making any realistically worthwhile/meaningful saving with these sessions but it is excellent marketing for Octopus!
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Unless I'm expecting a long journey, I only charge my EV to 50% overnight. Leaves plenty of room for free electric.

Throughout the day any excess solar will go into the car, so the battery is low ready for the battery to be charged fully during the power up.

I'll also have the oven, dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer on. Then as I'll have a full battery and dinner all cooked, most of what's gone into the battery will go into the other EV overnight.

I've saved loads.
 
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By sending the excess solar into the car aren't you relieving yourself of the opportunity to export it at 15p/kWh? I don't get why you'd do that when it is 7p/kWh to charge overnight, ie diverting the solar is costing you 8p/kWh. Same with everything else - we run the dishwasher and washing machine in the 7p window because that is the cheapest possible time to run it. The batteries are full of 7p/kWh electricity for the times when the sun isn't shining and we're not in a 7p/kWh window. All other times, it is the optimal strategy to export as much as possible ie not use any power. The issue with these free hour periods is that you're losing out on the export. If I didn't have an export limitation or had a higher one like some here it would be even worse than my previous post!
 
DRZ said:
By sending the excess solar into the car aren't you relieving yourself of the opportunity to export it at 15p/kWh?
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I don't have an export tariff. When I built my solar / battery system is was vastly cheaper not to worry about it and focus on saving instead of generating income.

Last month my electric was ~£30, which includes powering the house and two EVs, driven daily.

I'm 2.5 years in and already half way to recovering all my investment.
 
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DRZ said:
Why not? Seems pretty niche to go to the trouble of having solar but not benefitting from the export capability?
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It's not MCS certified. I did start going down the Octopus route of doing it without MCS, but the £250 fee didn't seem like it would pay off.

I've still got my main roof completely empty so in a few years when I've recovered the cost of my existing system I might invest more.

For now, it's doing everything I wanted it to. For all we know the 15p hack might not last that long.
 
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Hawk Tuah said:
It's not MCS certified. I did start going down the Octopus route of doing it without MCS, but the £250 fee didn't seem like it would pay off.

I've still got my main roof completely empty so in a few years when I've recovered the cost of my existing system I might invest more.

For now, it's doing everything I wanted it to. For all we know the 15p hack might not last that long.
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How big is your pv? You’d probably make the £250 back within 2 months.

For me I was paid £247 in June and £207 in July.

The export is lasting at least another 12 months. Get on dat thing.
 
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DRZ said:
The issue with these free hour periods is that you're losing out on the export. If I didn't have an export limitation or had a higher one like some here it would be even worse than my previous post!
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Why??? Just export it at a different time, that's what I do, unless your export limit/battery size is restricting you, then a higher export would help, not make it worse.

I'm on Flux so my off peak is roughly 15p and my normal daytime export is also roughly 15p.

I usually charge the batteries overnight, but only to about 80% in the summer, I reduce this when there is a charging session.
I then limit the battery charge to 45%, exporting the excess solar.
At 13:00 I import as much as possible, which charges the battery, the battery is also charged from solar.
At 14:00 I turn off import.
Batteries charge to 100% from solar, excess is exported.
16:00 to 19:00 I export the batteries to 45% at peak rate, circa 26p.

I will admit it does seem quite a bit of effort for little reward, but I should be able to automate it fully once I get the time.
 
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Hawk Tuah said:
It's not MCS certified. I did start going down the Octopus route of doing it without MCS, but the £250 fee didn't seem like it would pay off.

I've still got my main roof completely empty so in a few years when I've recovered the cost of my existing system I might invest more.

For now, it's doing everything I wanted it to. For all we know the 15p hack might not last that long.
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another 15mths on 15p export for me yet,so gaining all the time
 
Ron-ski said:
Why??? Just export it at a different time, that's what I do, unless your export limit/battery size is restricting you, then a higher export would help, not make it worse.

I'm on Flux so my off peak is roughly 15p and my normal daytime export is also roughly 15p.

I usually charge the batteries overnight, but only to about 80% in the summer, I reduce this when there is a charging session.
I then limit the battery charge to 45%, exporting the excess solar.
At 13:00 I import as much as possible, which charges the battery, the battery is also charged from solar.
At 14:00 I turn off import.
Batteries charge to 100% from solar, excess is exported.
16:00 to 19:00 I export the batteries to 45% at peak rate, circa 26p.

I will admit it does seem quite a bit of effort for little reward, but I should be able to automate it fully once I get the time.
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Yeah I don't get this it doesn't work thing, I've done almost 100 saving sessions now (which are just slightly better than the free power sessions) and its made a large diff to my income.

If you look at those days you see much higher export and much higher import than normal days.
They often end up my most negative cost days although when on Agile thats harder to see than when I was on a flat tariff.

If your generation is so high that you can't import then its not for you. But if you have a medium size system then 100% it can be made to work.
If you CBA then sure, move on nothing to see.

In the winter PU days made a massive difference, rarely would my batteries be in a healthy stage by lunchtime/early afternoon, being able to top up then even if its an hour is awesome.

I think for those not used to this (ie unused to having a solar system and doing PU or SS) its come at the worst time, its for sure harder right now its like worst case but give it 3-4 months and it changes dramatically.
 
Definitely different in winter when you dont have the worry of solar production being high. I personally dont have control of my system on inteli flux right now anyway. They seem to be charging my battery about 11am each day rather than 1pm to take advantage.
 
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It's certainly going to be harder for me in summer months when my new panels come online (total 15.5kWp), I'll reassess the situation then, but until then I'll build my strategy with what I have. If these are often (third one in a week) like the power ups, then it will all add up at the end of the year to quite a bit.

PS Still haven't fully resolved my missing smart data, they only requested import data, they never considered export even though I said it was missing :mad:
 
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Ron-ski said:
Why??? Just export it at a different time, that's what I do, unless your export limit/battery size is restricting you, then a higher export would help, not make it worse.

I'm on Flux so my off peak is roughly 15p and my normal daytime export is also roughly 15p.

I usually charge the batteries overnight, but only to about 80% in the summer, I reduce this when there is a charging session.
I then limit the battery charge to 45%, exporting the excess solar.
At 13:00 I import as much as possible, which charges the battery, the battery is also charged from solar.
At 14:00 I turn off import.
Batteries charge to 100% from solar, excess is exported.
16:00 to 19:00 I export the batteries to 45% at peak rate, circa 26p.

I will admit it does seem quite a bit of effort for little reward, but I should be able to automate it fully once I get the time.
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How much can you pull in that hour? I think your batteries can charge faster than mine.

In any case, the bit that doesn't make sense for me but does for you is the charging the batteries from solar bit. I'm on Intelligent Go, so my overnight import rate is 7p/kWh, my export rate is a flat 15p/kWh and my daytime rate is 24.54p/kWh. Using your model above I'd be charging the batteries from solar effectively at 15p/kWh because that energy would otherwise be exported. Your situation is different because and only because your export rate is so high but crucially not at the time of day when these free windows appear. If the free hour was at 4pm for you, your effective cost of charging your batteries from the solar would be 26p/kWh because you'd normally be exporting instead of trying to charge the batteries from the grid. On a really poor generation day when you're not exporting it is always beneficial to have these free hours of course, there's no argument there! The part of the equation that is charging from the grid for free to then sell back later at a higher rate is probably a sound one at a 26p export rate but you have to weigh up the cost of the extra wear and tear on the batteries. I've only done rudimentary calcs on that but I don't think it works for me on IG but it may well do for you on Flux.

Hope that makes sense to you, I'm not sure if my explanation is coming across clearly!
 
I can certainly charge my batteries at a much higher rate than you, I was pushing 10kW* in to them on Sunday, including house usage on Sunday it was about 6.5kWh for the hour, not great, but every little helps.

*In theory they could charge at more than double that, but that would exceed the the breakers, and main fuse which are both 250 amps IIRC. Sunday was pushing 180 amps into the batteries.
 
So today I had negative agile pricing from 10:30am, by 1pm I had charged batts (around 10-11kwh), around 1.5kw average solar generation or so I would say from solar, overcast here pretty much all day
I also did a hot washing wash and a hot dishwasher one. Both benefit from the occasional hot with the lower temps we use nowadays.
Plus heated the water although that seemed pretty hot already. Haven't used any gas since 13th Aug, what with free powerups and free energy sessions plus agile pricing.

So by 1pm I was mainly exporting, although not much, around 500w most of time. The odd spike went above solar when I put the kettle on so a little importing as well for free.

Tomorrow is seriously blue (negative or very low cost on agile). So batts will be dumped tonight. I will recharge them from 2:30am being paid to do so. Not sure about a cheeky export mid/alte morning to also get paid to recharge them mid afternoon...

Half expected a free energy or powerup tomorrow, still time I guess...
 
Managed to import 6.12 kWh, no one was home, so just charge going into the battery and normal house load, maxed at 202.9 amps (11.125kW) going into the batteries at one point.

One of the issues I have is the SolarEdge system is on the AC side, so that and grid draw for charging the battery can't exceed 8kW, as that's the limit of the inverter.
 
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