15 hours ago, joth said:

Axle bids in numerous energy supply / demand control markets. They'll only pay out for grid events in the time windows they "won" the bid to supply energy into. Which may not be the window of peak demand on a given day, if someone else (e.g. a good old gas peaker) won that time slot.

Similar for octopus, except octopus also have their own internal market balancing supply and demand for their own customers.

Given last night's event was out of the normal peak period of 4-7 pm, It's hard to understand(for me) how they can bid such high prices in a competitive market unless they are getting some sort of subsidy to be operating on a trial basis?? We're the guinea pigs for the trial and being paid to help out??

Just to add last night's event went off seamlessly with the Solis inverter reverting back to normal straight after the event. 

52 minutes ago, Dillsue said:

Given last night's event was out of the normal peak period of 4-7 pm, It's hard to understand(for me) how they can bid such high prices in a competitive market unless they are getting some sort of subsidy to be operating on a trial basis?? We're the guinea pigs for the trial and being paid to help out??

But you also need to look at the bigger picture and the weather - no wind near us at all yesterday, no wind, no wind power, big hole to fill. Your just looking at the tea time expensive period, but other things happen.

 

I've had events 0600-0700, 0800-0900, 1700-1800, 1800-1900, 1900-2000, 2000-2100, 2200-2300. So almost any time of the day. But mostly morning and evening.

 

Axle have been operating quite a while now, they didn't start a couple of months ago.

I understand all of what you say but I'm trying to understand why there's a mismatch between the Axle event looking for grid support and the apparent lack of a need for grid support by Octopus.

 

If the grid needed supporting from 7-8 then I'd have thought Octopus would have been pricing to gain that support from their customers such as my mate who had spare battery capacity but didn't export because Octopus didn't price to encourage him to.

 

I appreciate Axle aren't new to this but I'm trying to understand if their seemingly illogical actions are due to them getting support for trialling this concept??

Edited October 12Oct 12 by Dillsue

There could be support in individual DNOs to relieve particular congestion, and Octopus and Axle may have different coverage in those areas, or due to a grid-wide lack of energy but Octopus is already hedged or participating another way...  I don't know.

 

Watch the turn-up and turn-down operations here for a while and you'll get to see/infer all sorts of strange things going on due to constraints, where renewables are generating or not, etc: https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/

This is what actually happened.

 

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

This is what actually happened.

 

Amazing how much wind energy we produce, until it drops. Presume our batteries are in others, insignificant on this scale

42 minutes ago, Bonner said:

Presume our batteries are in others, insignificant on this scale

Yes, along with some very small emergency generators.

 

Gridwatch only shows metered generation, so a lot of domestic PV and micro wind generation is not shown.

 

I joined Axle in the last month via a referral in this thread (thank you)

Since then we've had 4 events paying about £5 each time, therefore so far had about £45 (Note to self - change to a tariff with better export rate)

NICE!

Had notification earlier this afternoon of an event tonight. I guess with4.5 hours notice something unplanned has happened to the grid/generation??

I've messaged Axle to see if it's possible for them to include an explanation of the need for grid support when they send out an event notification email.

Nothing obvious here: https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/events

24 minutes ago, Dillsue said:

something unplanned has happened to the grid/generation

They may just be arbitraging, does not mean something has gone wrong.

On 27/10/2026 at 16:52, SteamyTea said:

They may just be arbitraging, does not mean something has gone wrong.

I asked Axle if they could share their reasons for each event and they said no to the one I asked about.

Had an event notified at short notice for 5-6pm tonight and it seems to have gone wrong!! With 40% SOC the battery was disabled and we drew the full house load from the grid at peak rates during the evening peak demand.....exactly the opposite of what was supposed to happen. Fortunately I'd turned the HP off for the hour and we'd already had an early tea with the grandkids.

Anyone else had problems tonight??

No event for us tonight. But if the export is set to a pre defined % and you hit it, the battery will just sit at that mode, until the timer expires.

I've been bitten by that before as well. If your battery is low, adjust the 40% to something lower manually.

1 hour ago, Dillsue said:

asked Axle if they could share their reasons for each event

They are likely just bidding for slots, and if they win, they sell them to people that subscribe.