Octopus "Saving Sessions"

[NSS]

Still number crunching the figures for what we earned, apparently. About 70p by my calculations.

[NSS]

[PeterW]

So how does this work with Octopus..? Do they compare your usage before and after..? Or do they just credit you for using power in the E7 off peak band..?

[NSS]

1 hour ago, PeterW said:

So how does this work with Octopus..? Do they compare your usage before and after..? Or do they just credit you for using power in the E7 off peak band..?

They take the average for the 'saver hour' over the previous 10 days compared to what you use on that day during the nominated hour. In this case it was between 5pm and 6pm on 15th November. You then earn £2.25 for each kWh saved in the hour. In our case, we used 0.13 compared to an average of 0.46 for the previous 10 days.

Edited November 19, 2022 by NSS
Typo

[NSS]

Incidentally, over 288,000 Octopus customers took part.

[Ferdinand]

On 15/11/2022 at 17:09, jack said:

 

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.

 

No disrespect, but if you have to tidy up for them then they are not real family 😁.

 

According to the ghost of my mum, the only person you *really* clean up before is the .. er .. cleaning lady.

[JohnMo]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

 

No disrespect, but if you have to tidy up for them then they are not real family 😁.

 

According to the ghost of my mum, the only person you *really* clean up before is the .. er .. cleaning lady.

Do you have a wife?  I'm in the same boat @jack is sailing in.

[Ferdinand]

35 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Do you have a wife?  I'm in the same boat @jack is sailing in.

 

I have the privilege of being wifeless.

 

Though up until a couple of years ago I had a mother in the house, which is perhaps more challenging.

 

At least with a wife you have the *illusion* of being an equal.

[JohnMo]

22 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

*illusion* of being an equal.

Very much the illusion, hense the tidying, when anyone comes to visit, family or otherwise.

[NSS]

Next session is tomorrow between 5.30 and 6.30pm. Slight problem, I won't be home....

 

... but Mrs NSS will be 🤦🏼‍♂️

[SteamyTea]

14 minutes ago, NSS said:

Next session is tomorrow between 5.30 and 6.30pm. Slight problem, I won't be home....

 

... but Mrs NSS will be 🤦🏼‍♂️

Flick the main switch and tell her that the power will come back on later.

[jack]

12 minutes ago, NSS said:

Next session is tomorrow between 5.30 and 6.30pm. Slight problem, I won't be home....

 

... but Mrs NSS will be 🤦🏼‍♂️

Welcome to my world.

 

Surprise, surprise, but it appears we didn't get a payment for the last one. Will see if I can do anything about tomorrow (possibly helped by the fact that our atrocious result during the last period will contribute to the average against which the next one will be measured).

[MikeSharp01]

On 19/11/2022 at 13:38, Ferdinand said:

No disrespect, but if you have to tidy up for them then they are not real family 😁

H mmm several members of my family think this way - I think you are supposed to make an effort (well somebody is!)

[jack]

14 hours ago, jack said:

Surprise, surprise, but it appears we didn't get a payment for the last one. 

 

Correction:

 

 

I can only assume we managed this because there was a lot of cooking going on during this period in the lead-up to the saver session.

 

Let's see how tonight's session goes. We're using the slow cooker during the middle of the day while the sun is out, so hopefully we can beat the number above.

[NSS]

1 hour ago, jack said:

 

Correction:

 

 

I can only assume we managed this because there was a lot of cooking going on during this period in the lead-up to the saver session.

 

Let's see how tonight's session goes. We're using the slow cooker during the middle of the day while the sun is out, so hopefully we can beat the number above.

Blimey, how much do you normally use in that hour to have saved only 25% but earned £1.11 😯

[jack]

1 hour ago, NSS said:

Blimey, how much do you normally use in that hour to have saved only 25% but earned £1.11 😯

 

I have absolutely no idea what's going on.

 

£1.11 is roughly half a kWh, which suggests an average of 2 kW during that period for the previous 10 days.

 

The heating and DHW aren't on at that time of the day, and a lot of the time we don't start dinner until after 18:30. I know there was a bit of unusually-timed car charging in the preceding week, but 17:30-18:30 is still an unusual time for us to have been using a lot of energy.

 

I may dig into the numbers when I get a chance. 

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, jack said:

£1.11 is roughly half a kWh,

I wish they would post up the actual usage, rather than points and pennies.

 

I am starting to think that this is an experiment that is set up tot fail.

If everyone on this trial saved 0.5 kWh, that is 150 MWh, sounds a lot, but it isn't

Between 5:30 pm and 6:30 pm yesterday, the national usage was 39,696 MWh.

If 25 million homes did this, apart from just shifting the peak by an hour, the saving would be 12,500 MWh.

That is 32%.

That amount could easily be save, all the time, by basic changes i.e. don't fill the kettle more than needed, reduce tumble drying, shorter shower.

If change is to come about through a price mechanism, then charge £0.5/kWh, don't reward.

[jack]

6 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

I wish they would post up the actual usage, rather than points and pennies.

 

I am starting to think that this is an experiment that is set up tot fail.

If everyone on this trial saved 0.5 kWh, that is 150 MWh, sounds a lot, but it isn't

Between 5:30 pm and 6:30 pm yesterday, the national usage was 39,696 MWh.

If 25 million homes did this, apart from just shifting the peak by an hour, the saving would be 12,500 MWh.

That is 32%.

That amount could easily be save, all the time, by basic changes i.e. don't fill the kettle more than needed, reduce tumble drying, shorter shower.

If change is to come about through a price mechanism, then charge £0.5/kWh, don't reward.

 

You keep analyzing this trial in terms of total energy saved, but the explicit aim is to reduce consumption during peak periods (presumably at times where there is predicted to be lower renewable energy available), not save energy in absolute terms.

 

Also, I'm surprised that a scientist is so negative about doing preliminary experiments to see what happens. This isn't the end, it's the start. If the experiment proves successful enough to go further, then they can try adjusting charges, incentives, periods, etc, to see what works best. If it doesn't, fine, they know what doesn't work and maybe they'll try something else.

 

Quote

I wish they would post up the actual usage, rather than points and pennies.

 

People understand money, not kWh.

[SteamyTea]

5 minutes ago, jack said:

You keep analyzing this trial in terms of total energy saved, but the explicit aim is to reduce consumption during peak periods (presumably at times where there is predicted to be lower renewable energy available), not save energy in absolute terms.

Yes I do, because by reducing total energy, less primary fuel is used, this reduces (at the moment) emissions.

There is a bit of a myth that the grid reacts to demand.  Actually the other way around, capacity is increased, or decreased, to match predicted demand.  This works very well, and our system is currently set up to favour RE over FF generation.

 

9 minutes ago, jack said:

I'm surprised that a scientist is so negative about doing preliminary experiments to see what happens.

Probably because it is not new.  France has been doing it for decades.

It is not so different to what I was doing in my ResM either, and that was over a decade ago.

 

Why I think that it is an experiment that has been set up to give a negative result.

It is like proving that more motorist in Devon and Cornwall are speeding, by measuring at more points (except the 'customer' does not get any rewards).

 

[jack]

15 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Yes I do, because by reducing total energy, less primary fuel is used, this reduces (at the moment) emissions.

 

Again, that's not the focus of these sessions. If you want to discuss total energy consumption, this isn't the thread.

 

15 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

There is a bit of a myth that the grid reacts to demand.  Actually the other way around, capacity is increased, or decreased, to match predicted demand.  This works very well, and our system is currently set up to favour RE over FF generation.

 

Exactly.

 

And when there's predicted to be a period of low renewable power available relative to demand, reserve capacity is expected to be placed under strain. I assume that making up the anticipated shortfall requires importing expensive energy from other countries and/or firing up dirty sources such as coal plants or diesel generators. 

 

You can see on gridwatch that the average contribution from wind power (light blue) has been falling continuously since yesterday:

 

 

We were exporting energy to France until just after midday today but now we're importing.

 

I haven't looked at the rest, but it's clear that local/cheap capacity is already starting to come under pressure now, wind output continues to fall, and the evening peak period is still hours away.

 

Let's see what happens between 17:30 and 18:30 tonight. 

 

15 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Probably because it is not new.  France has been doing it for decades.

 

Decades is a long time to operate a system that according to you doesn't work.

 

[SteamyTea]

7 minutes ago, jack said:

Decades is a long time to operate a system that according to you doesn't work.

Yes it is.  It saved them buying even more nuclear plants  Easier for the French to buy in power for connected countries i.e. Spain, Germany, Italy, Netherlands via Belgium, Switzerland.

 

The concept of relying on individual households to save a few pence to 'help the grid out' is what is flawed. 

I can't see that each house saving 0.5 kWh over a busy period is the long term solution.  

 

Make the problem smaller and  then the solutions are smaller.

[Marvin]

I am late into this but surely the only thing that can be deduced from the trial is that people involved in the test reduced the amount of power they used during the test period? 

 

Surely the only conclusion is that if you incentivise people to avoid using/use less power during a short set period of time, thus making it cheaper to use power at other times, the amount used will become less than usually used.

 

We need a test for this???

 

One could hypothesise from this that less expensive power would be used during a 24 hour period if such a system was introduced (and maybe the facilities producing power would not need to be able to produce such a high level of power to supply the peak), however if this is about money, as the price is dictated by a free market, surely the suppliers will just try to raise the price of power either side of the test period when people would be using more, thus cancelling the "saving effect".

 

Or have I missed something?

Edited November 22, 2022 by Marvin
spelling error

[SteamyTea]

4 minutes ago, Marvin said:

Or have I missed something?

Don't think you have.

That is the problem.

 

Putting in 25A fuses to peoples houses, and a £100 replacement fee would sort the problem pretty quick.

Basically what they have in some countries.

[Marvin]

1 minute ago, SteamyTea said:

Don't think you have.

That is the problem.

 

Putting in 25A fuses to peoples houses, and a £100 replacement fee would sort the problem pretty quick.

Basically what they have in some countries.

Do you realise how many 4 inch nails would be bought if you did this?

[SteamyTea]

3 minutes ago, Marvin said:

Do you realise how many 4 inch nails would be bought if you did this?

Several, but only 1 would be used