Octopus Energy tariffs

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, PNAmble said:

What’s rental, assume you aren’t England based as meter rental went out with the arc.

Daily standing charge.

I went out with Noah's wife.

[PNAmble]

1 minute ago, SteamyTea said:

Daily standing charge.

I went out with Noah's wife.

She was a looker but … that’s the problem..  People don’t understand the ‘tax’ of the standing charge which is loaded with green taxes , bust companies, smart meter funding.  If those were loaded on gas, there would be a different argument re ASHP COP.  Not to mention the regional difference of standing charges which I’ve post before.  https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-advice-households/get-energy-price-cap-standing-charges-and-unit-rates-region
 

It’s a huge regressive tax and discourages investment in insulated houses, ASHP and the conversion to carbon neutral. 
 

Rant over. 

 

[CADjockey]

I'm on Octopus Cosy with three rates depending on the time of day. The standing charge is a scandal mind you. However I'm charging our battery storage twice a day which really means we are running near 100% on the lowest rate in the summer and about 65% at the lowest rate in the winter. I'm sure it could be even more optimised but that's the limit of the software at the moment.

[Dave Jones]

we are on agile, recently switched as we finally had a smart meter fitted.

 

Noticed the half hour rate goes negative quite frequently, does this mean we are being paid to use it ?

[TerryE]

2 hours ago, Dave Jones said:

Noticed the half hour rate goes negative quite frequently, does this mean we are being paid to use it ?

 

Yes.  there's an excess of energy being generated -- such is the variable nature of renewables.

[Alan Ambrose]

It’s a bit weird isn’t it? Considered turning the heating on in my shed for no other reason than just to make a few quid. Decided that was ridiculous.

[joe90]

14 hours ago, Alan Ambrose said:

It’s a bit weird isn’t it? Considered turning the heating on in my shed for no other reason than just to make a few quid. Decided that was ridiculous.

Diverters are available to route power to immersions, cannot the same be done with this “negative” rate to make money, surely cheaper for them than turning power stations and wind farms off (if they still get paid) 🤷‍♂️

[Bramco]

58 minutes ago, joe90 said:

Diverters are available to route power to immersions, cannot the same be done with this “negative” rate to make money, surely cheaper for them than turning power stations and wind farms off (if they still get paid) 🤷‍♂️

Yes - dump it in a battery and then let it discharge when you're getting paid for it. A hot water tank is a kind of battery the only difference is you can't reconvert it to mains electricity.

 

We're not on the flexible tariffs with Octopus but we do get a 7p rate for 6 hours at night and 15p at any time for export. So we let the batteries discharge to 20% before the cheap rate comes in and then charge them up again at the 7p rate. So 10-12kWh export, then recharge at a net cost to us of -7p. So 70pish per night off the bill.   You do need to make sure you disable any diverter when you do the discharge of the battery or a lot of it can end up in the hot water tank - although that simply shifts the time when the tank is heated up a bit.

 

Simon

[TerryE]

On 15/07/2024 at 20:00, Alan Ambrose said:

It’s a bit weird isn’t it?

 

Octopus are quite transparent about how they set their Agile price: 2W+P where W is the half-hourly EU wholesale price which is fixed for the day-ahead each Midnight CET.  The 2 is a markup of 100%; P is another uplift of 14p/kWh from 4-7pm GMT -- a time limited markup to discourage peak use.  The two markups combine to cover their distribution and service costs. This 2⁺ markup may seem a bit steep but it is less than the others charge.

 

This total price also capped to 100p / kWh inc VAT as per current UK legislation, but other than this, consumers on the Agile tariff don't have to pay a premium for buying future prices, so whilst they take the pricing risk, the expected price is less overall.

 

If I we doing this, I'd have had the markup 2 for W>0 and 1 otherwise, but I am not going to make this suggestion. 🤣

 

Edited July 17 by TerryE
Edit correcting Typo as per Mike Sharp's suggestion

[MikeSharp01]

36 minutes ago, TerryE said:

Agile price: 2W+P where W is the half-hourly EU wholesale price which is fixed for the day-ahead each Midnight CET.  The 2 is a markup of 100%; W is another uplift of 14p/kWh from 4-7pm GMT -- a time limited markup to discourage peak use

Aye up Terry. Which W above is meant to read P, suspect the second, or have I missed something? 

[SteamyTea]

Ultimately, if the vast majority of the nation could take advantage of local/distributed storage, the we could run the grid on a fixed price, and a few, very large, nuclear plants.

Now we know the that the 'strike price' for new nuclear is £95/MWh (adjust for inflation, with 2010 being the base year).

So call that £120/MWh.

If retailers double that, then it becomes 24p/kWh, or about what we currently pay.

We would be taking in a lot of debt at around £10bn/GW for the installed capacity, and we will need a lot more than today if we truly decarbonise.

We currently have about 80GW of capacity (not all of that is online at any one time).

So say we triple that, and round up, 250GW. £2.5tn.

That is about same as the current national debt. So instead of each person in the nation having £180,535 debt, that would become £361,070.

That is ridiculous.

The only real way out of both the climate and energy crisis is to drastically cut usage, so any scheme that pays people for over production is inherently wrong, we should really be rewarding medium and long term reduction.

Edited July 16 by SteamyTea

[TerryE]

23 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

the 'strike price' for new nuclear is £95/MWh

 

The LCoE for new solar and wind is about £30 / MWh, that's 3× less.  The revenue starts to come into on about a year after the mean investment point, that 10-15× less.  It is just really hard to make new nuclear numbers economically competitive, even SMR technology.  We can get up to ~90% renewable with investment in grid-scale battery and maybe pumped hydro, whilst running our existing gas peaker stock until EoL.  By then other options will be available. 

 

Edited July 17 by TerryE
Mindfart - memory vs checking

[SteamyTea]

38 minutes ago, TerryE said:

It is just really hard to make new nuclear numbers economically competitive

Apart from the reliability, and nuclear is very reliable, I cannot see a case for it in the energy mix anymore.

In other countries with less developed national infrastructure, and greater distances between population centres, there may be an economic arguement for nuclear, but not in the UK.

I think it is just used as a political tool. It was 2007 that Tony Blair started the ball rolling, and it still sounds good to the uneducated and disinterested that 'new, reliable, low carbon, nuclear generators' have been approved by 'this government'.

I am sure if we took £2bn a year and invested it in domestic PV manufacturing, over the next 5 years, we could easily manufacture 10 GW of capacity each year, with prices going down and volumes going up after that. That is, if managed right, a subsidy of 20p/W initially.  Pretty cheap considering the 7 mile stretch of the A30 down my end has just had £0.33bn spent on it (over 4 years).  Saves 4 minutes on my journey up country.

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> Apart from the reliability, and nuclear is very reliable, I cannot see a case for it in the energy mix anymore.

 

I just read No Miracles Needed by Mark Jacobson, the Stanford guy, and he comes to the same conclusion. From memory: more expensive than renewables, to slow to build to make a difference to climate change and, of course, security and contamination risks. A weirdly written book though - it may have been pitched at the lowest common denominator of US Congressmen.

 

In fact, on page 57, he says 'I agree with @SteamyTea on this'...

Edited July 18 by Alan Ambrose

[SteamyTea]

5 hours ago, Alan Ambrose said:

more expensive than renewables, to slow to build to make a difference to climate change and, of course, security and contamination risks

Same conclusion that Al Gore said in An Inconvenient Truth in 2006.

 

5 hours ago, Alan Ambrose said:

I agree with @SteamyTea on this

I am sure he did.