Off-peak energy discounts

[RJH]

I think there was a post on this recently? Anyway, just noticed this from my supplier:

[alan_m]

Octopus announced this a couple of weeks ago. You sign up, they send you and email saying when this to happen and they monitor your 30 minute readings from you smart meter to determine if a reduction in usage has been made.

https://octopus.energy/saving-sessions/ Quote We'd expect an average home's rewards over winter to be worth around £36 overall, but could be up to £100. /Quote

[The Natural Philosopher]

All the assurances that the UK would be fully able to meet demand by National Grid and the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Ministry are falling apart at the seams, it seems. Thanks to GreenCrap™

[Chris Hogg]

I'm waiting to hear from OVO, assuming they're going to do the scheme, but does the payment depend on your just have a low electricity use during the critical period, or do you actually have to reduce your use compared with what you normally use. As I live alone and have gas C/H, my electricity use is lowish anyway, and I'm not sure I could reduce it further if that is what they want me to do.

[Spike]

Does this mean that before you sign up, it’s worth using lots of electricity now in the peak times, so that you have a significant reduction when the scheme kicks in?

Hmm…

[alan_m]

Octopus quote We will calculate your Baseline using the BSC P376 ‘Utilising a Baseline Methodology to set Physical Notifications’ with an in-day adjustment for domestic customers, and without an in-day adjustment for business customers. This methodology looks at up to 10 days of your recent smart meter history, excluding days where a Session has taken place, to calculate your average consumption. /quote

[alan_m]

Or maybe a legitimate cost saving in times of high demand stress. However I tend to agree that most "green" in the UK doesn't work when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine.

Another Octopus quote The money customers earn in this project is paid by National Grid - it's a reward for helping to keep the energy grid in balance by switching off at the busiest times. Which makes sense: when energy demand is high, it's much cheaper to pay people to use a bit less power than it is to pay fossil fuel generators to switch on at short notice!

The cost to pay generators to help balance the grid can be incredibly high, particularly in the energy crisis. One day last winter, balancing costs went as high as £60 million. /quote

[Tim+]

I don’t think we’ll achieve that as we routinely time-shift all the consumption that we can to our off-peak time. Not that I think it’s a bad idea, just that it will benefit folk who currently don’t time shift consumption because they’re on a flat rate tariff.

About the only thing we can do is to avoid using the fan oven during the peak periods and turn off the beer fridge. ;-)

Tim

[Tim+]

Last winter when Octopus were trialling it it had to be a percentage reduction of your normal consumption during the peak periods which made it very hard for us to do much (that we weren’t doing already).

Tim

[Tim+]

Well if you’re on a flat rate but have a smart meter that does half-hourly readings, go for it. ;-) Of course it’s gaming the system and it wouldn’t make sense to waste electricity but you could certainly use power usefully in cooking, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers etc.

Tim

[alan_m]

The Octopus Scheme last year was a reduction in consumption over a much longer period - below the average* usage over the winter period and they had a list of energy saving recommendations.

*I'm cannot recall how they worked out the average but I think it may have been based on historic information from their records and from those from the failed companies from which they inherited customers. They had weekly prize draw and they distributed the rest of the money from a 1 million prize pot to all who signed up. I think I received around £7.50 :)

[alan_m]

As long as the actual usage is what you would normally do in a day/week.

Do they actually mean peak times such as when the country cooks their Sunday roast or do they mean at times when renewables are not producing or the interconnects cannot supply and there is most demand from gas generation. As my supplier is suggesting a warning a day before hand its possibly when the weather is forecast to change and it's colder or a day/week without wind.

[Theo]

Both. When demand is high and supply is tight. That's typically when people are having their dinner (4-7pm) and they have to spool up standby generation to cope with the peak load. That's likely to be when there is an insufficiency of renewables, because otherwise they won't have to spool up the standby generators.

(I'm not sure 'Sunday roast' is enough of a thing any more to stress the demand figures - if anything demand is lower on Sundays and there's no obvious spike for lunch)

Theo

[bert]

£36 saving on an electric bill of a couple of thousand. How exciting.

[Brian Gaff]

How is this different to economy 7? Brian

[Tim+]

This is a “bonus scheme” to incentivise people to reduce their power consumption at times of peak grid stress “on demand”, rather than a regular off-peak discount that encourages load shifting on a daily basis.

Tim

Brian Gaff [e-mail] wrote:

[alan_m]

The BBC got into the act this morning Thur 10th Nov

A mix of facts, half truths and what the presenter just made up.

Banner headline "Save £100 on your electricity bill". Qualified a bit later by the presenter saying "upto". Octopus state that they expect the average to be 1/3 of this.

Presenter explaining how it works - you use NO electricity for an hour between 4 and 7pm on the day after you get the email for each of the 25 events.

Presenter stating the British Gas is saying that customers could save

33% of their bill. BG must have a rather lot of low electricity usage customers if they only pay £300 a year, and that is if they participate turning all of their electricity* off 25 times during the winter :)

*And any alternative fuel boiler that relies on electricity to run the CH.

[Chris Hogg]

Switching off *ALL* your electricity use for the designated period? What, like throwing the main switch on the CU? Do they really expect to get any takers for that, with people groping their way around cold houses in the dark with torches, candles, camping stoves etc? Surely not.

[SteveW]

It's certainly not what it was originally suggested to be - which was moving heavy use (washing, drying, cooking, dishwashing, electric heating, etc.) outside the peak demand period.

[alan_m]

I was just commenting on the way uneducated Journalists at the BBC inform the public about the scheme!