When are you going fully electric?

danlightbulb said:
It sort of is the way they implement it, I'm with Rob here somewhat. Here's why:

1. Surely the grid needs load balancing continually in some form? So why are these slots just one hour long and infrequent.

2. How does the grid know it's going to need load balancing a couple days in advance for an hour at 1pm? What happens if the wind suddenly drops at that time and the grid no longer needs balancing.

3. Recently the promo has been to give 1 hour free electricity slots. Previously it was something different - if I recall something like earning points for electricity used above average rate last winter. Why the chopping and changing, and why no promo between last winter and now?

4. Why Monday night for the free EV charging? Similar to q2 above how did they know there would be loads of free capacity Monday night? It was more windy yesterday, why not offer free EV charging then?

5. Why are only Octopus doing this?


Seems to me they'd be better off not giving anyone prior warning, but just reacting to the grid capacity even at minutes notice by automatically starting charging people's EVs etc.
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The recent 1 hour free energy slots and the previous reduce use at peak time events, were offered for different reasons:
  • 1 hour feee energy - it’s cheaper to offer excess energy to consumers to use, than it is to pay generators not to operate.
  • Peak time energy reduction - these were offered to understand household energy saving, at peak use time, when the UK electricity generation was expected to be close to the low margin production threshold.
Also, these are early public test events, with small numbers of consumers (relative to the number of UK energy consumers)
 
danlightbulb said:
It sort of is the way they implement it, I'm with Rob here somewhat. Here's why:

1. Surely the grid needs load balancing continually in some form? So why are these slots just one hour long and infrequent.
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Because they represent the times where the cost is the highest.

They are either to avoid paying for gas peaker plants to turn on or to avoid paying wind turbines to turn off.

danlightbulb said:
2. How does the grid know it's going to need load balancing a couple days in advance for an hour at 1pm? What happens if the wind suddenly drops at that time and the grid no longer needs balancing.
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You need to think about scale. The demand for electricity at the macro level is very predictable.

The day ahead weather forecast is actually pretty accurate at a macro level.


danlightbulb said:
3. Recently the promo has been to give 1 hour free electricity slots. Previously it was something different - if I recall something like earning points for electricity used above average rate last winter. Why the chopping and changing, and why no promo between last winter and now?
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During winter you peak times and the demand reduction offer, you are being paid not to use electricity.

That incentive wouldn’t work for excess electricity, they’ve been running a ‘fill your boots’ power up sessions for a while in certain postcodes. Free electricity is a good incentive when there is excess they can’t get out into the wider network, it’s cheaper than paying the producer not to produce.

danlightbulb said:
4. Why Monday night for the free EV charging? Similar to q2 above how did they know there would be loads of free capacity Monday night? It was more windy yesterday, why not offer free EV charging then?
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Probably because there is little wind energy around on Tuesday night and as such it will be expensive for them to sell it to us for 7p.
danlightbulb said:
5. Why are only Octopus doing this?
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All the other suppliers are stuck in the Stone Age and don’t have the systems and processes in place to deal with it.

Likewise because of the tariff offer that octopus energy has, it tends to attract all the nerds that would take advantage of such an offer.

danlightbulb said:
Seems to me they'd be better off not giving anyone prior warning, but just reacting to the grid capacity even at minutes notice by automatically starting charging people's EVs etc.
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They also do this already. The IO schedule can change frequently after plugging in.
 
Those answers make sense but don't explain the frequency.

If it's windy at 1pm on a bank holiday Monday it's also probably windy at 12pm and 2pm as well.

It was probably windy on Saturday at 3pm. Or Sunday at 11am. Or whatever.

It doesn't make sense to me that out of what 72 hours over the weekend they pick one slot at 1pm for an hour a couple days in advance.
 
It’s not all just about wind, 1pm is also typically peak solar production.

You are missing a key component also, its supply, demand and creating an incentive which is more likely to shift customer behaviour. People don’t always do things which are entirely logical.

It’s also not just about what’s happening at 1pm, it may also be because of what’s happening at 4pm or 10am.
 
It's just marketing.

People will talk about the "free electricity". In reality or course it makes more sense to just quietly automatically charge cars when there is a renewable surplus.

Or dynamically vary pricing and let people set up thresholds for charging.
 
They already turn on the car chargers where they can.

The failure with your logic is that the people who need to charge their cars will have either:
a) already charged them the previous night to use today
b) will be using them because it’s BH Monday and they are out and about.

Those that have solar would deliberately avoid charging during the day because they get paid more to export their solar.
 
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b0rn2sk8 said:
It’s not all just about wind, 1pm is also typically peak solar production.

You are missing a key component also, its supply, demand and creating an incentive which is more likely to shift customer behaviour. People don’t always do things which are entirely logical.

It’s also not just about what’s happening at 1pm, it may also be because of what’s happening at 4pm or 10am.
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I'm not missing anything, what I'm trying to say is that it's not logical that the only time it's beneficial to offer some sort of grid promo is 1pm on X day known 2 days in advance.

Yes the demand can be predicted. Yes the weather can be predicted.

If there is excess capacity at 1pm on X day there is also likely to be excess capacity at other times on the same day too. Or on different days.

Do you have any grid capacity data to show how it coincides with octopus chosen 1 HR slot?
 
danlightbulb said:
Those answers make sense but don't explain the frequency.

If it's windy at 1pm on a bank holiday Monday it's also probably windy at 12pm and 2pm as well.

It was probably windy on Saturday at 3pm. Or Sunday at 11am. Or whatever.

It doesn't make sense to me that out of what 72 hours over the weekend they pick one slot at 1pm for an hour a couple days in advance.
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I imagine the know the typical energy use of August bank holiday weekend too. All Monday night is half price IO anyway.. so bit more than your one hour…
 
Hodders said:
It's just marketing.

People will talk about the "free electricity". In reality or course it makes more sense to just quietly automatically charge cars when there is a renewable surplus.

Or dynamically vary pricing and let people set up thresholds for charging.
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They need to be plugged in for that to happen, so you’re right they need to market it, or in other words tell people!
 
danlightbulb said:
I'm not missing anything, what I'm trying to say is that it's not logical that the only time it's beneficial to offer some sort of grid promo is 1pm on X day known 2 days in advance.

Yes the demand can be predicted. Yes the weather can be predicted.

If there is excess capacity at 1pm on X day there is also likely to be excess capacity at other times on the same day too. Or on different days.

Do you have any grid capacity data to show how it coincides with octopus chosen 1 HR slot?
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They are test events - not the final optimised for x,y,z scenarios !
Octopus don't choose the time - That comes from National Grid.
 
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dlockers said:
Not sure what your point is Dan. Feels like shouting at clouds because you don't understand the detail behind their forecast model?
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My point is only that there must be other times where the promo could be offered. It's not logical that their one hour slot, defined a couple days in advance, exactly coincides with the actual negative pricing.

Hypothetically let's say there is excess electricity right now. It's quite windy, it's also quite sunny. It's a bank holiday Monday and so not many at work, it's after breakfast but before lunch so you'd expect demand to be quite low right now.

So it's quite plausible that right now we have excess capacity. Yet no offer.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
People don’t always do things which are entirely logical.
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Exactly, like all the people switching off their 4.5W LED light bulb and sitting in the dark while trying to save money during the saving sessions.

Octopus are very different to any other energy company due to their Tesla esque business model. They were hemorrhaging cash while building a massive user base and the investors were happy to keep pumping in seemingly endless funds. While other energy companies were deemed economically unviable, the loss making Octopus was there to hoover their customers up.

Now they've hit critical mass and finally turned a profit for the first time and picked up nearly a quarter of the energy market in the UK we'll see how the end game plays out.

I guess the utopian outcome will be everyone's EV sitting plugged in whenever it isn't moving, wherever that may be, quietly sucking up excess renewables and feeding a bit back into the grid when needed but that is a way off (if it's even viable at all) and we need something in the meantime. It just seems to me that the 'something' needs to be more infrastructure based than Joe Public based.
 
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gimmick yes, preserve the aluminium foil for those tesla mega casting
other companies than octopus have the capability to give cheap slots - many participated in the DFS sessions utilizing same system,
british gas are running a cheaper energy scheme during para olympics maybe greater practical use https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/peak-save/sunday.html

[ can look at the grid balancing site - everything dollied up into 1 hour demand slots a couple of days in advance with bids from generators who will supply the demand,
on the previous DFS slots could see how much the energy was actually costing versus the lesser amount being refunded if you reduced use
. https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/demand-forecast https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/surplus-forecast-and-margin https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-forecast-for-wind-and-solar

human guinea pigs
jpaul said:
they experimented with what savings would occur with shorter notice notification which they'd like to optionally deploy,
you can dig up a research paper where they present results.
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Additionally, we conducted a natural field experiment involving differentadvance notice periods and incentives provided to customers for their participation in a SavingSession. We found: (i) the Saving Sessions resulted in a 10% reduction in energy demand associated with being invited to participate and, based on an estimated local average treatment effect, a40% reduction from those actively opting in to Sessions (where individuals manually made adjustments within their homes to change demand); (ii) shorter advance notice periods for signedup customers dampened the demand response from these households by 25%
]
 
Seeing as I get powerups and have had them a year I can tell you that they only happen in afternoons.
I also have agile so I see something much closer to grid pricing. Cheapest is always early am and mid afternoon. As the renewables kick in more and more those spread earlier and later from that point, but those are the key points.

So makes total sense that powerups are always just afternoon, sometimes come in earlier, maybe 12:30pm and go a little later. The same time slot in the morning, like 2-4am I can't see many people cooking the dinner early, doing the washing etc.
Those who already operate this way, already operate this way.

So 1pm - 2pm makes sense to me.
 
jpaul said:
human guinea pigs

Additionally, we conducted a natural field experiment involving differentadvance notice periods and incentives provided to customers for their participation in a SavingSession. We found: (i) the Saving Sessions resulted in a 10% reduction in energy demand associated with being invited to participate and, based on an estimated local average treatment effect, a40% reduction from those actively opting in to Sessions (where individuals manually made adjustments within their homes to change demand); (ii) shorter advance notice periods for signedup customers dampened the demand response from these households by 25%
]
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Its how science tends to work, and this is behavioural science being tested.

I am happy to be a guinea pig. Saving sessions earned me over £100 last winter. Powerups make me £2 or so regularly. Probably more when I consider i heat my water with that free leccy as opposed to using gas.
My boiler hasn't fired up since the 13 with the negative agile pricing, powerups and free leccy sessions.
 
danlightbulb said:
My point is only that there must be other times where the promo could be offered. It's not logical that their one hour slot, defined a couple days in advance, exactly coincides with the actual negative pricing.

Hypothetically let's say there is excess electricity right now. It's quite windy, it's also quite sunny. It's a bank holiday Monday and so not many at work, it's after breakfast but before lunch so you'd expect demand to be quite low right now.

So it's quite plausible that right now we have excess capacity. Yet no offer.
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If it's a done deal of low demand to such an extent then maybe the cost equation flicks over to reducing capacity.

Normally the demand sessions tie up with inability to flex the fixed grid infrastructure and surplus supply.

The fact we are getting something is good.
 
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