I’ve been looking at Tariffs as we are presently on Flexible Octopus which got us onto their system. Export is Outgoing Octopus. We run off the battery, evening and overnight, charge it from the panels during the morning and then when it’s full, export the excess. All good.
As the days get shorter, we’ll want to charge the battery overnight at a low rate and then use the batter and any available solar to run the house during the day and load shift as much as we can to the night time rate. We don’t have an EV as yet but have an EV charger ready to go.
It appears that I can sign up to Octopus GO to use the 9.5p overnight rate, with a view to moving to Agile for better rates and more flexibility when we do get an EV. The Internet says that Octopus don’t check whether you have an EV for the GO tariff so I’m assuming we can just sign up and for now charge our home battery overnight ?
Our tariff gives us seven hours of off peak (5-9am and 1-4pm) and standard rate at other times. By adding another battery we will reduce by around 85% the number of nights in which the battery is depleted and we need to import at standard rate (depending on how cold it is of course). However if we set an emergency fish support reserve in the battery, say 15%, then there’ll of course be more nights when we have to import at standard rate. Overall we’re not sure yet how we’ll actually use the extra battery capacity, but at the very least my inner nerd likes having the data to analyse.
I’m not sure Agile will be better for EV charging. It’s so volatile on a half-hourly basis and varies a lot over the year. In summer, around midday might be a good time to charge an EV due to a glut of Solar on the grid. In winter it’s hard to be so specific as it will depend on wind generation much more.
With no EV the Flux tariff might be a better bet than Agile. You can probably charge the battery at least partly overnight (3 hours I think) as well as from Solar in the morning. Good export rates between 4-7pm too.
There are far too many tariffs for me, it’s so confusing. Flux seems to only have a cheap rate for 3 hours. I wonder if the Economy 7 might be better, if Go isn’t possible. If Octopus will allow people to sign up without an EV, which seems odd, then five hours at 9p is the best option.
We’ve looked at the various variable export tariffs and concluded that the 12p at any time is the best both financially and for simplicity. We fully charge the batteries with our intelligent go between 11.30pm and 5.30am, which then gets us through the day.
When our heat pump was installed we had two 9.4kWh batteries at the same time. We run on batteries from 5.30am when the cheap pricing ends. That was enough for most days, but when it’s very cold and very gloomy the batteries would run out by about 6.30pm, leaving five hours at peak pricing. We’ve added a third 9.4kWh battery recently, which hopefully will reduce the running out days significantly.
I couldn’t agree more, especially to someone new to both the complexity of export tariffs and the number of energy companies with their different supply tariffs (in the Isle of Man there is only one electricity supplier and one mains gas supplier, the former just having maybe or so different tariffs to suit different usages). Once BG have set up to pay I think I will stick with my them for a while, and meanwhile try to understand the pros and cons of the main alternatives.
I noticed you’d done that. We’ve considered going straight from one to three, but they aren’t cheap so we’re going to add just one more and reassess after another winter. Also the financial pay back of adding more batteries is very low compared to having one (at least on our current tariff), so for us this is more about having a bit more resiliency than it is about saving on bills.
And yes, tariffs are confusing! For simplicity we’ve decided to stay with our current provider for another year at least - very easy to speak to someone when you need to which is a nice change from other utility providers I’ve used / use.
I’m another on IOG having tried Flux. I can fully charge 3 batteries overnight and I exported over 1300kWh last month. To heat a 300m2 home cost 3000 kWh last winter. The key to efficiency with an ASHP is low flow temperature, in our case 35C.
How have you been getting on with Axle (you have a Solaredge setup I believe), or indeed anyone else who’s using it ? It seems like a great idea (save money, help balance the grid) but feels a little too good to be true. The only catch I can see is that you have to give a third party access to your inverter.
Works fine. I have also agreed to the two hours of notice option, not that they have used it yet. There have been some events less than an hour - not sure if it’s my setup throwing events their software doesn’t cope with.
I have to reserve an hour’s worth of export (4kWh) in case, but not difficult. Just means I export at a later time.
Just had £500 credit for having an VW ID4 for another 10000 miles free charging! And am using solar, batrery and then 14p kwh to charge if from grid.
Currently my OVO bill is £1100 in credit. It will be adjusted over 3 month period. Ironically they increased the DD.
I have a gas boiler so energy will increase.
Having the VW is actually making me money in terms of charging it. I do 7000 miles a year, get paid for 10000 miles and then pay half price to charge. At one point it was 7p kwh to charge, but they changed it after 6 months.
With my solar, battery and deal I am doing alright. Not a bad gig all this tech!
Yes we have just come back from a Tesla Model 3 Long Range test drive - absolutely fantastic on country lanes, twisty roads and on the high speed dual carriage way too as well a driving though town (Ipswich) - Mrs SinS liked it too… and the central screen console was surprisingly natural to use compared to peering through the steering wheel to the dashboard… if you get over the EM aspect, it’s superb and not quite so silly money any more… but boy it doesn’t half shift… these newer lighter more agile EVs really drive well.
I think we will be go for a Zappi charger too which seem to quite popular on this Forum and elsewhere.
I would love to have an EV and benefit from solar power charging when the weather is right! But when we changed our car immediately after moving home earlier this year, simultaneously going from a multicar household to just one car (plus campervan which could be used for some things if absolutely necessary), we felt the time was not yet ripe. At that point we hadn’t even thought about getting solar in this house, having rejected in just a few years ago in our last, and as I would only ever buy secondhand I’m very wary about battery longevity, though reading around it in recent months it seems that might be better than formerly indicated. And significantly, whilst an electric car would be absolutely perfect for the local trips we do, which is the most frequent if not highest mileage use we have for a car, it is longer journeys that are of concern: I am not convinced that the charging infrastructure is sufficiently adequate everywhere we are likely to want to go - one example, a trip we are likely to do frequently is visiting our sons, who live in a terraced house with no off-road parking and uncertain opportunity of parking in front or even close to their house, and as far as I am aware nearest public EV chargepoint a mile or more away.
Our car is a hybrid. Now we have solar, a question I have to ponder is whether to change to a plug-in hybrid, which would probably cover most if not all local journeys and take away the concern about other journeys, or alternatively wait a few years and go full EV (There’s a Tesla that has looked pretty much ideal to me, but circumstances in the past couple of years have taken it out of consideration.)
People worry unduly about charging and range. Most of your charging will be at home. When going away, just charge at a fast charger en route. They are not that cheap but you can charge to 80% while having a coffee and a wee. If we can get from the South Coast to Hadrian’s Wall, or down to Nice, both of which we did last year, you can get anywhere. In a few weeks we are getting the ferry to Bilbao and then driving up through France to Calais for the tunnel home. It’s easy peasy. Just get an Electroverse card and off you go. A hybrid is the worst of both worlds. All those oily bits to service and lugging around a battery that won’t get you very far.
