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Octopus "Saving Sessions"

Nick Thomas

By Nick Thomas
in Energy Storage

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SteamyTea
SteamyTea

Displaced, not saved.

Nick Thomas
Nick Thomas

Seems they've decided on the branding for the national grid "pay you to load-shift" scheme: https://octopus.energy/blog/saving-sessions-faqs/   A few interesting points:   - Export

NSS
NSS

Had an email invitation to participate from Octopus earlier this evening. Have signed up but not sure how likely we'll be able to benefit as we've already load shifted much of our use to the Go period

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Ronny Member

Ronny

Posted
Posted
  On 15/11/2022 at 13:04, markc said:

Don’t all smart meters connect through the property Wi-Fi ?

my octopus meter does … well occasionally but I don’t monitor it anyway

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Only the in home display works through wi-fi. I am also with octopus.

JohnMo Advanced Member

JohnMo

Posted
Posted
  On 15/11/2022 at 13:22, SteamyTea said:

Embracing BRSXIT to the full nine yards.

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Yep, filling my car in litres, calculate consumption in mpg, and distance travelled in miles, while monitoring temperature in degrees C and building a house in millimetres.

 

And paying for things in pounds and pence instead of shilling and Grote's etc.

  • Haha 1
jack Advanced Member

jack

Posted
Posted
  On 15/11/2022 at 17:05, NSS said:

As 5pm arrives we're using 135 Watts 

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As 5pm ticks over, we're using something like 1.3 kW, which is more than we've used all day.

 

I'm working on something urgent for a client, so I can't turn my PC off.

 

Also, my wife has suddenly decided that now is the time to get the house ready for family coming over on Friday(!), so there's cooking, vacuuming and god-knows what else is going on in the background. I know better than to object.

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NSS Advanced Member

NSS

Posted
Posted (edited)

And putting the MVHR into standby takes us down to 111 Watts.

Edited by NSS
jack Advanced Member

jack

Posted
Posted
  On 15/11/2022 at 17:11, NSS said:

And putting the MVHR into standby takes us down to 111 Watts.

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My wife just turned on the dryer.


And the washing machine.

 

I am not joking.

NSS Advanced Member

NSS

Posted
Posted
  On 15/11/2022 at 17:27, jack said:

 

My wife just turned on the dryer.


And the washing machine.

 

I am not joking.

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And I thought my missus was rebellious 🤣

jack Advanced Member

jack

Posted
Posted
  On 15/11/2022 at 17:30, NSS said:

And I thought my missus was rebellious 🤣

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I mentioned that her timing was terrible and she said that "at least the house is clean" and asked if I wanted to turn to dryer off.

 

I mean, we did discuss this yesterday, so she was aware it was going on.

NSS Advanced Member

NSS

Posted
Posted (edited)
  On 15/11/2022 at 17:38, jack said:

 

I mentioned that her timing was terrible and she said that "at least the house is clean" and asked if I wanted to turn to dryer off.

 

I mean, we did discuss this yesterday, so she was aware it was going on.

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I boiled the kettle at 4.57, made Mrs NSS a cuppa, passed the phone and left her to chat to her mother 😉

 

Edited to add; and the bonus is a 1 degree increase in room temperature due to all the hot air 😀 

Edited by NSS
Nick Thomas Regular Member

Nick Thomas

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  • Author
Posted

~120-180W throughout, except for that bit where I came downstairs to turn off the heat pump and discovered the toaster was on.

 

Left the TV alone but did turn off the mains to the laptops and made do with a single screen for the final hour of work, which got me 30W or so. Had no interest in turning off the fridge or the vampire loads. Will see what octopus makes of it within a few days, I suppose.

Screenshot from 2022-11-15 18-39-16.png

Nick Thomas Regular Member

Nick Thomas

Posted
  • Author
Posted

House temperature dropped by <0.2°C if the thermostat is to be believed, we do get some losses through draughts. It might have been vaguely uncomfortable if the session had been 3 hours long.

 

Replacement front door will hopefully help with that, it's coming thu//fri.

Nick Thomas Regular Member

Nick Thomas

Posted
  • Author
Posted
  On 15/11/2022 at 10:42, Kelvin said:


It’s more about incremental gains multiplied by potentially millions of people. We are too used to waste in wealthier countries whether it’s energy, water, food, or packaging. Add in the amount of unnecessary stuff people buy from clothes to electronic tat. This has been driven by low inflation and cheap money. Obviously the two extremes at either end of wealth curve still exist so the well off don’t need to cut back anywhere (luxury goods don’t tend to suffer in a recession) and the poor struggle to survive. 
 

As a very minimum if people think twice about their energy usage it won’t be such a bad thing in the long run. 

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In this case, ~200K people with octopus, plus however many with the other suppliers. Call it a million, tentatively. If they average a turndown of 1kW each, it means 1GW of plant can be left off, which isn't bad considering total generation right now is 39GW. Even half of that is not to be sneezed at.

 

I just think the incentives are skewiff. Rewarding the most gluttonous for being slightly less gluttonous on occasion is... not ideal.

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SteamyTea Advanced Member

SteamyTea

Posted
Posted
  On 15/11/2022 at 18:53, Nick Thomas said:

it means 1GW of plant can be left off

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That will be a couple of gas plants changed over to spinning reserves, rather than actually switched off.

If we stopped milking cows at the two peak periods we would save the same (ish, it takes 1 kWh/day to milk a cow and we have around a million of them being milked every day).  Turning off 40 million, energy efficient fridges (8W), for an hour, would save about 320 MWh.

Would have to get that back though.

Using 1 litre of fuel a week less in all the cars would save 33.5 GWh a day.

So we can see where the real savings are

Kelvin Advanced Member

Kelvin

Posted
Posted
  On 15/11/2022 at 18:53, Nick Thomas said:

 

In this case, ~200K people with octopus, plus however many with the other suppliers. Call it a million, tentatively. If they average a turndown of 1kW each, it means 1GW of plant can be left off, which isn't bad considering total generation right now is 39GW. Even half of that is not to be sneezed at.

 

I just think the incentives are skewiff. Rewarding the most gluttonous for being slightly less gluttonous on occasion is... not ideal.

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Remember that this is a trial. Load balancing will become an ever more integral part of how the grid is managed. 

SteamyTea Advanced Member

SteamyTea

Posted
Posted
  On 15/11/2022 at 19:36, Kelvin said:


Remember that this is a trial. Load balancing will become an ever more integral part of how the grid is managed. 

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Yes, and we cannot read too much into the results.

The main reason to have load balancing is to improve efficiency of our existing fossil fuel stock and integrate renewables into the system, it is not to give individuals a small cash bonus (equivalent to 2 cigarettes a day).

 

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