Discount for using electricity away from peak times?

The last payment for reducing consumption was on the 19th Jan

E7 runs from midnight to 7AM. Peak electricity consumption is late afternoon - early evening, which is the time that the discount is running over. But you have to be able to show that you're using less electricity than you usually do, i.e. you have to be on a smart meter.

BBC red button also announced that three coal-fired power stations have been asked to warm up. So much for relying on renewables, then.

There’s another session this evening.

Tim

Looks like coal has been running a cycle of 36 hours on, 12 hours off, for the last fortnight.

Might they have pulled some "demand cut" levers between 6 and 8 am today?

It is a hot topic today. They will pay you not to use electricity tonight provided that you have a Smart meter (I do) and the right supplier (very few) which I don't. It is a half cocked policy.

Because that won't take the edge off the 6pm peak load when everyone and their dog gets home from work and puts the oven on. They are also warming up no less than 3 coal fired power stations because after the extent of this cold snap we must be getting a bit low on gas by now.

Maybe time to change supplier then?

Tim

I have economy 7, and anything that runs from around half past midnight to 7 am ish is charged at around 10p a unit compared with 26p for day units. I think many were thinking of non time critical uses that could actually get a feed from the UK power networks as to ad hoc short term low usage through the day, and allow them to run then, Say topping up charges, or maybe running fridge compressors if possible. I don't think it would be much good if you needed it to be time critical. Brian

And volunteer to pay today's usurious energy prices? No thank you.

I might shift when my fixed price deal ends provided that there is still at least one supplier offering this discount that hasn't gone bust.

Yep, £3.37 per kilowatt hour of reduction (I believe based on the average consumption of the last 10 days during the time period when you have been asked to reduce electricity usage).

The supplier is not discounting. The "national grid" is paying suppliers/customers. Today's rate is £3.37 per KWh of reduction in usage.

And there's the problem. We've been asking our electricity supplier for many months whether we can have a smart meter and what is involved. They never respond to emails on the address that they give out for the purpose.

We are thinking of investing a bit of money in solar panels. I imagine that a side effect of that is to get a smart meter, or at least a way of regulating which times of day we draw electricity from the grid as opposed to using our own generated or battery-stored electricity.

As a matter of interest, would having solar panels with a battery isolate us from the effects of frequent 1-second power cuts on the mains supply? Every year, in the late summer / early autumn the village has a rash of brief power outages which have been variously attributed to overhanging tree branches shorting the HT feed or to exuberant cattle scratching themselves on wooden poles carrying HT. Or do solar panel installations cut the locally-generated power the instant that the mains feed is interrupted, and only restore the local power when the mains supply resumes (maybe plus a reboot time)?

The payment for the reduction in usage is at specific times - today it's between 5 and 6pm.

Well of course it does rather depend on your current deal!

I think Octopus will be around for a while.

Tim

But you won’t get it unless anyone can tell if you’ve reduced your consumption for that period.

Tim

That seems a very good price (by current standards). Are you sure you’re still on this rate or were you fortunate to lock into a favourable rate for a year before the prices shot up?

Tim

Brian Gaff snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

It depends where you are in the country as to exactly what the E7 hours are. npower had a page on their website listing the times for different regions. Unfortunately, for round here, there were two possible time periods listed, making it hard to set timers on the Village Hall storage heaters.

Possibly but I wouldnt count on it. Our system is meant to constantly monitor the house consumption and provide the energy from (in order) the solar panels, the battery or the grid. The actual house usage fluctuates so you often find that on days where this isnt an abundance of solar, there is a very small amount of power being drawn from the grid (a few watts) throughout the day before the inverter realises it can supply the load change from the battery. In theory, if you were running off the solar panels or the battery and the grid outage was quick enough that the inverter didnt notice then you would be OK. If the inverter noticed the grid outage it would stop outputting power so it doesnt electrocute someone working on fixing the grid supply. I am guessing that it will automatically resume after the grid power is restores. We havent been in a position to test this yet.

There are additional devices that can be added as part of some systems which will automatically isolate the house from the grid when it detects an outage, allowing the inverted to continue supplying power to the home. We didnt bother with this as we dont seem to get many power outages (may be tempting fate now).

Out inverted has an EPS (Emergency Power Supply) that is fed power in the event of a grid power outage. The idea is that its only hooked up to a couple of power sockets (not part of the house system) so you can power some things if you need to. Again, we didnt bother paying the extra to get that connected. I could always do it myself if things changed and we started getting regular power outages.

I've chosen to stick with my standard meter. I'm tempted to switch everything on between 5 and 6pm, to offset those who have been persuaded to switch everything off!