12 hours ago, Russdl said:

You can, but under current tariffs why would you? Axle buy it for £1/kWh, if I need to buy it back at peak rate it’ll cost me around 30p/kWh so effectively I’ve only got 70p/kWh instead of the whole £1. That’ll do nicely. 

Our inverter has a backup feature and I'd like to keep a minimum SOC to cover a few hours backup use from the battery, but not alot if Axle want it:)

12 minutes ago, Dillsue said:

I'd like to keep a minimum SOC to cover a few hours backup use from the battery

 

Ah, in case of power outage I presume?

 

My inverter is set to stop export when the battery reaches 10% SoC for just such an eventuality, I guess that would stop the export if Axle are taking the juice but not at all certain.

 

 

1 hour ago, Dillsue said:

Is the Octopus payment via agile outgoing??

Yes

2 hours ago, Dillsue said:

So do they pay for solar export on top of battery discharge if its running through the smart meter?? Their FAQs say they need access to your inverter for metering even if you are manually triggering battery export?

They pay for anything you export during the event. This will be battery discharge, any excess solar being generated and anything else, if you have a wind turbine for example. I guess they need to see what is going through your inverter to check you are not simply rerouting grid power from another supply. You can sign up here :- https://vpp.axle.energy/landing?ref=R-WHARJUFG

Edited September 29Sep 29 by Bonner

System is pretty simple

They trigger an export event at you battery/inverter.  It then exports battery power plus any other power being generated at that time, as your battery will not charge and discharge at the same time.

Axle pay an agreed amount per kWh and your energy supplier will also pay you the agreed export value. Plus if Octopus have an energy saving event, sign on to that, it sees you are exporting and you get a tick in the box, do 2 energy saving event and get weekend power for 1 hr for free.

 

Why procrastinate, sign up, if you don't like it you can stop - you get £25 for signing up anyway.

 

https://vpp.axle.energy/landing?ref=R-VYFYIHBL

Edited September 29Sep 29 by JohnMo

8 hours ago, JohnMo said:

Why procrastinate, sign up, if you don't like it you can stop - you get £25 for signing up anyway.

We're almost there......good things come to those who wait 

 

Anyone had any problems with Axle restoring original inverter settings after them taking control to force discharge?

34 minutes ago, Dillsue said:

Anyone had any problems with Axle restoring original inverter settings after them taking control to force discharge?

 

Yes, on one occasion, but with the evidence of future events it may well have been that I just wasn't giving the inverter sufficient time to revert, for some reason the settings don't revert straight away when the Axle event is finished - at least for me.

 

I now set a reminder for 15 mins after the event has finished and check the inverter settings then, all's been fine since.

42 minutes ago, Dillsue said:

We're almost there......good things come to those who wait 

 

Anyone had any problems with Axle restoring original inverter settings after them taking control to force discharge?

From the facebook group, 90% of people with issues with this have a sigenergy inverter/battery. But it seems (well) less than 50% of sigenergy users actually hit that problem.

I'm on SolatEdge and it's been rock solid. (Wish i could say the same for my attempts to take control of the inverter battery management locally via modbus. On paper that's a more robust setup, in practice SolarEdge just don't support it well - and seem likely to further cripple this in future)

 

1 hour ago, Dillsue said:

We're almost there......good things come to those who wait 

Normally agree however this can’t last. Axle are winning some bids at less than 30p/kWh and paying us £1. They have funding to prove the concept and get people on board. Eventually the rate they pay will fall in line with other companies variable export rates.

On 28/09/2026 at 17:02, Russdl said:

Axle buy it for £1/kWh, if I need to buy it back at peak rate it’ll cost me around 30p/kWh so effectively I’ve only got 70p/kWh instead of the whole £1. That’ll do nicely. 

That should be a warning about Axle.

6 minutes ago, Bonner said:

however this can’t last

It won't, and some people are going to loose their cash.

 

 

54 minutes ago, joth said:

90% of people with issues with this have a sigenergy inverter/battery. But it seems (well) less than 50% of sigenergy users actually hit that problem

That's statistics for you, what does mean in numbers a couple or a couple hundred

8 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

That should be a warning about Axle.

It won't, and some people are going to loose their cash.

 

 

You don’t put anything in and whatever is paid into your account can be withdrawn immediately. If you want you could sign on and take the £25 and opt out. Nothing to lose really 

1 hour ago, Bonner said:

Nothing to lose really 

The investors will loose.

Many thanks those that used my referral code.  Hope you make plenty of money off Axle.

 

https://vpp.axle.energy/landing?ref=R-VYFYIHBL

2 hours ago, JohnMo said:

Many thanks those that used my referral code.  Hope you make plenty of money off Axle.

 

https://vpp.axle.energy/landing?ref=R-VYFYIHBL

Thanks for the code and enjoy the ££:) Can't beleive they let you withdraw the credit as soon as it's there.

 

On 29/09/2026 at 18:20, JohnMo said:

That's statistics for you, what does mean in numbers a couple or a couple hundred

I think sigenergy is the most popular inverter on their network and they have over 300k users. So extrapolating, i think there must be thousands experiencing issues at least one time

 

1 hour ago, Dillsue said:

Thanks for the code and enjoy the ££:) Can't beleive they let you withdraw the credit as soon as it's there.

 

Its great, isn't it

Just rolled in to an email from Axle saying our first event is on tomorrow 7-8 pm. Just upped the max SOC to 100% so hopefully there'll be enough juice for them to take the max they  can

Just had a look at the local Octopus agile outgoing rates and their evening peak seems to be an hour earlier than Axles event. Anyone know why the Axle event and Octopuses outgoing peak don't align??

11 minutes ago, Dillsue said:

Just had a look at the local Octopus agile outgoing rates and their evening peak seems to be an hour earlier than Axles event. Anyone know why the Axle event and Octopuses outgoing peak don't align??

Does seem strange, just looked at ours, peak runs from 4pm to 7pm and drops 3p at the Axle event. No idea why

Check the area of the event, it could be very local. Not sure if octopus prices are nationwide for agile or whether they too are local. The VPP is designed to alleviate local grid stress rather than national 

4 minutes ago, MikeGrahamT21 said:

designed to alleviate local grid stress rather than national 

This is tonights event covers a pretty big area

 

Edited October 11Oct 11 by JohnMo

I checked with a local mate who's on Agile outgoing and in the area covered by Axles map and his rate peaks an hour earlier than Axles event. Seems odd to me.

I guess it could be a test to see the export response they get with lesser influence from those exporting in time with export TOU peak prices?

6 minutes ago, Dillsue said:

guess it could be a test

Doubt that very much, never seems to occur at exactly the same time as Octopus, maybe there is enough infill during Octopus peak, then all the smaller batteries have run out of energy.  I do know that grid voltage is always pretty low during Axle events by us, so electric is in short supply.

 

Don't really think about it much, Predbat generally exports for most of the 2 hours anyway.

 

But today we have loads of solar, and 2 hours free energy from Octopus from 1 to 3, and export rates care generally good all day, what's not to like.

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.

 

From Gemini:

 

Key Markets Where Axle Energy Bids

• Wholesale Markets: Bids aggregated battery and device flexibility into the day-ahead and intraday wholesale power markets (utilizing frameworks like CoP11 asset metering).

• Balancing Mechanism & Reserves: Manages real-time and near-real-time supply and demand balancing for the national grid operator.

• Capacity Market (CM): Contracts assets for availability to discharge or turn down during periods of severe system stress.

• Local Network (DNO) Flexibility: Bids into regional distribution network operator flex auctions to manage local grid congestion.

• Demand Flexibility Service (DFS): Coordinates short-term peak demand and export response events for households. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]