Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
I sit somewhere between the arguments here, but TBH the levels of corruption that have been going on recently I dont hold any negative views on playing within the rules.
Frankly its the rules that are wrong not people playing with them.

The NG used an existing formula for this and that's what happens when you don't think something through.
I honestly expect if this is repeated next year (can't see why it wouldn't) there will be an adjustment to the in day calculation. A simple cap (eg 200% of the actual savings in the main session window) would avoid excessive in day usage, and actually filter out people like me who have no usage in the target window.
I would hope that they can simultaneously get their brains in gear that people with batteries can do much more. Pay me £1+ a unit and I would be happy to dump my battery to the grid during the savings session, in fact it should be basically a daily event for the peak times.
SEG should be set to a rate that is attractive for people sitting on large amounts of home storage.

Anyway its done now, just DW and battery charging for me in in day window today. And yes shifted from Go time to 5-8am.
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BUT - do you agree that moving OFF PEAK usage to ON PEAK usage, is not what the saving sessions are for??? especially when octopus are already supplying you with cheap OFF peak electric for that same reason, to move ON peak energy use
 
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Welshman said:
BUT - do you agree that moving OFF PEAK usage to ON PEAK usage, is not what the saving sessions are for??? especially when octopus are already supplying you with cheap OFF peak electric for that same reason, to move ON peak energy use
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I do agree, its within the rules but not what they intended.
Its precisely why I said NG messed up with their rules.

How would you consider my using a fan heater last time rather than my GFCH?

Bear in mind, they will simply use gas to generate the electric I would have used as gas. Probably more efficiently than I could.

The net effect all told is probably nothing. There is always gas being burned so if I use it at 3am or 8am its basically mute.
When we get to NO fossil fuels being used at times the dynamic will change a lot.
I don't think I could support not charging my batteries with green and deferring to later when they would in effect be needed fossil fuels. But we are not there, yet.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
I do agree, its within the rules but not what they intended.
Its precisely why I said NG messed up with their rules.

1. How would you consider my using a fan heater last time rather than my GFCH?

Bear in mind, they will simply use gas to generate the electric I would have used as gas. Probably more efficiently than I could.

The net effect all told is probably nothing. There is always gas being burned so if I use it at 3am or 8am its basically mute.
2. When we get to NO fossil fuels being used at times the dynamic will change a lot.
I don't think I could support not charging my batteries with green and deferring to later when they would in effect be needed fossil fuels. But we are not there, yet.
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1. If you didnt normally use a leccy heater at that time, then for me it would be wrong ( my opinion, others would differ)
2. i cant see that happening in my lifetime

i look at my own situation right now, im already exporting solar to the grid, should i go and switch it off and use grid power, i mean we are still in peak hours, peak is not just 9 til 10am??
 
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Welshman said:
1. If you didnt normally use a leccy heater at that time, then for me it would be wrong ( my opinion, others would differ)
2. i cant see that happening in my lifetime

i look at my own situation right now, im already exporting solar to the grid, should i go and switch it off and use grid power, i mean we are still in peak hours, peak is not just 9 til 10am??
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Ok so your taking a particularly hard line. That is your option of course but to me its kind of a bit extreme.

Why do you feel so strongly about this?
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Ok so your taking a particularly hard line. That is your option of course but to me its kind of a bit extreme.

Why do you feel so strongly about this?
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because i honestly think people are using the sessions for the wrong reason and switching off peak use ( when you already get cheap energy) to peak use to make money is wrong and the wrong thing to do.....its also condensing what would be used over a 24hr period to a smaller 3hr window, which could be taking power away from others if it caused network issues due to people draining such high energy in a small window.
 
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Only a small fraction of people would be doing that. If they're daft enough to use such a daft formula, can't be surprised people will try to work it to their advantage.

There have always been people 'gaming the system'. Lets face it, that's why most of us are in this thread. How can we reduce our energy costs.
 
Welshman said:
because i honestly think people are using the sessions for the wrong reason and switching off peak use ( when you already get cheap energy) to peak use to make money is wrong and the wrong thing to do
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Why is it wrong, specifically? You would need to consider the marginal cost of the energy to Octopus from 0:30-4:30 vs 5:00-8:00 to know if I am costing them anything, probably not seeing as I am paying them a lot more, 40p vs 7.5p
As I said the impact on emissions is net zero from time switching

Welshman said:
its also condensing what would be used over a 24hr period to a smaller 3hr window, which could be taking power away from others if it caused network issues due to people draining such high energy in a small window.
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The demand isn't that high that a few people do this would impact the grid.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
2. Why is it wrong, specifically? You would need to consider the marginal cost of the energy to Octopus from 0:30-4:30 vs 5:00-8:00 to know if I am costing them anything, probably not seeing as I am paying them a lot more, 40p vs 7.5p
As I said the impact on emissions is net zero from time switching



1. The demand isn't that high that a few people do this would impact the grid.
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1. a few on here, but we dont know the overall number of people doing this....its just my view

2. if it didnt make sense to octopus, why would they allow an off peak rate??
 
My take on this is that I will only take advantage of this in a limited fashion, I am not planning to use excessive power just to earn money, but I will load shift and find ways to use power that is useful in the pre-session windows.

The formula is screwed up if they reward you for wasting electric or shifting your entire day load into a compressed 3 hour window.

The payment should be capped for the pre-session time based on consumption data you would typically use in a day, or to a set number of kWh or something.

SEG should pay better export as MKW says.

In the end I suspect I would not use more than single digit kWh for most of the sessions ahead of time.
 
I simplier way of the saving session would be to look at the total usage over the last week. Work out what the hourly average is and use that number to work out what you save.
 
john_smith said:
I simplier way of the saving session would be to look at the total usage over the last week. Work out what the hourly average is and use that number to work out what you save.
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Problem is none of the suppliers are going to actively push for change to the formula whilst they are financially benefitting as well. This particular session started off with a bid from Octopus of £6/kWh before being accepted at £3/kWh.
We are only being paid 75% of what they are earning and wil be making a considerable amount out of the savings sessions.
 
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Welshman said:
1. a few on here, but we dont know the overall number of people doing this....its just my view

2. if it didnt make sense to octopus, why would they allow an off peak rate??
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It cant be that many, there arent that many people taking part at all let alone being in a position to significantly load shift

We pay more for other units to get beneficial pricing in off peak (40p for me for example vs 34p cap). The off peak period was historically the very cheap pricing on grid units for them, sometimes even negative
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
It cant be that many, there arent that many people taking part at all let alone being in a position to significantly load shift

We pay more for other units to get beneficial pricing in off peak (40p for me for example vs 34p cap). The off peak period was historically the very cheap pricing on grid units for them, sometimes even negative
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wasnt it over a million people according to the bbc...not just octopus, its all the other suppliers too......but its done, not much can be changed about the calculation.

But personally i would liek to see it about money saved in the actual window...so if someone normally uses 4 or 5kwhs in a window and lowers that to 2 or 3, then they get rewarded. I dont think it should be used for load shifting.
 
Ron-ski said:
I can assure its not, I've personally had pigeons nesting under my panels - there's still the remains of some nests still under there.
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What did it for me is that 3 friends/family members had issues with it and damaged some of the DC cables in 1 instance, and the others just caused a nuisance and light damage.

For the cost of it it's 100% worth it.
 
I wasn't awake this morning for any of the 05:00 - 08:00 so my only nod to this session was to leave the battery at 100% of charge at the end of 08:00.

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To do this I charged as normal 00:30 - 04:30 and then between 05:00 - 08:00 I told it to maintain charge at 100% and to disallow the battery to discharge until 08:00 with a couple of HA actions.

This used about 1.2 kWh in the pre-session time.

I could have moved a lot of that charge time so that the battery was at say 25% 00:30 - 04:30 and charged the remaining 75% (6~ kWh) between 05:00 - 08:00 instead, peak rates but in theory each peak rate unit will more than pay for itself with the load shift mechanic.

I don't know why I didn't really, as it would have financially made more sense to do so, but it feels backwards to me.
 
I think we can all agree that the algorithm they use is a complete farce - you shouldn't be penalised for not using energy previous to saving sessions, and if you use none during the saving sessions that's all that should count. Ultimately if it really was to help NG balance the grid, then not using energy during the time windows should be more than enough - if they can spot the trend of people saving DURING the session that should be the incentive, not trying to play the algorithm - but unfortunately the way it's set up means that's how it is.
 
People (including politicians) are gaming all sorts of systems, in all walks of life, it doesn't mean it's morally right, but it isn't breaking any laws.. We are paid peanuts for what we export so once my system is up and running I'll be doing the same, and I will have 28kWh of storage and an inverter which can charge at 8kw :D
 
We finally got up and running on Friday with a SE facing 4.8kw system and 7.5kw of battery storage. One nice surprise is they have installed a 5kw inverter which I wasn't expecting.

Looking at what is admittedly a very limited 3 days running I think we've actually under-sized on the battery. We're quite heavy users outside of daylight hours so the batteries which got to 75% charge yesterday by 4pm were drained by 8pm.

The savings are looking good for us. Even with the very limited January sunshine of the last two days we used 6.9 and 5.3kwh when our normal grid usage is around 13Kwh per day.

Our batteries are the Fox HV25, so I think I'll definitely look at getting a couple more for 12.5kw total. Today we're already charged up to 60% by 10am despite the weak sun at this time of the year as its generating nearly 3Kw from the panels.
 
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