Power Saver Events

[6Tricia]

The OVO one is for today too. Are you sure the eon one is tomorrow scrumpyjack?

I'm going to unplug my fridge/freezer for the hour to see if that makes much difference. It's so cold in my kitchen I don't think an hour without power will affect the contents.

Tricia

[scrumpyjack]

The OVO one is for today too. Are you sure the eon one is tomorrow scrumpyjack?

I'm going to unplug my fridge/freezer for the hour to see if that makes much difference. It's so cold in my kitchen I don't think an hour without power will affect the contents.

Tricia

You're right, it is today. Just had a reminder from EON. Topping up the battery now so I can switch over to it fully at 5:30pm

[scrumpyjack]

Pathetic. They tell me I cut my consumption by 84% and so are giving me 37p.

[servodude]

Pathetic. They tell me I cut my consumption by 84% and so are giving me 37p.

Can you explain to me how this is meant to work?
And why you are disappointed?

Putting my stall out first though... I do think most of how consumers are charged for leccy is just bollox. Or more correctly it's a market that pretends to work differently from how it actually operates, with perverse targets and pricing.

So if you've actually been PAID for literally "not doing stuff"
- irrespective of how measly the funds...
- and aren't happy about it.?
- I'm going to have to factor this in to my Mental "Heath Robinson" Model of Electricity Supply

.... It was all so easy a decade ago when demand response loading was done on a large (MW plant) scale and we controlled stuff with literal (remotely controlled) switches!
Now days it seems like there's a a lot of fannying about on the fringes.... bloody fake markets

[scrumpyjack]

They paid me £2.49 last time, so yes 37p is disappointing. Obviously it is all trivial but it is something for nothing I suppose

I don't know how they calculate it, but it is lowering consumption relative to ones previous comparable consumption.

[TurboukToo2]

Very happy with my Saver events through Octopus Energy. In November I was able to charge up the home battery one hour before the event at 7.5p per KWh and then export from the battery for the duration of the event being paid £4.00 per KWh. Subsequent events have been less generous at £2.25 per KWh but if you can charge up the battery in advance it's worth the effort.

Just switching stuff off is less lucrative if you are usually frugal with electricity at peak times. (AIUI They assess this using the previous 10 days usage at the same time of day and determine the saving you have made).

[ayshfm1]

I did very nicely, I managed to export 4.1KWH, so got 7384 Octo points, which I changed into a £9.23 credit. I was also in the top 20% so will get another 400 Octo points 50p and was paid export rate on my 4.1K, so another £1.14. For a total of £10.87. It could have been better as my wife fired up the oven mid way through.

Go me!

This is the first one I've actually managed to take part in properly because I've so much meter trouble. It was scheduled to be replaced at the beginning of Feb, before it miraculously started working. The meter would only send back import readings when Octopus requested them and never sent back any export. For a while I range up Octopus us and got them to do a force read. This ended up meaning that sometimes Octopus could get my saver reading details and sometimes they could not. When they could I got next to nothing, when they couldn't I got 800 points (or £1)

The key point here is if Octopus can't read your meter and you've opted in then they will give you £1. Clearly there is a small profit to be had by manipulating Octopus' meter reading abilities.

For anyone with a powerwall 2 you will have discovered that is smart and wants to control how things work, this makes it simple for the average person who wants to set and forget but handling saver sessions is rather more problematic.

If those running home assistant there is a tesla module that allows control to be wrested back. First you need to figure out the logic of what you want to happen.

Here is the normal logic I'm using, I'm on Flux

Force powerwall to charge to 100% by setting time backed control to 100% between 2am and 5am

This causes the house to run on cheap electricity (I often scedule the dishwasher to run at this time). Meanwhile powerwall fully charges.

At 5am switch back to TC 90%.

This allows the powerwall to discharge again (I use stored electricity at circa 17p rather than the 28p it selling for). If it's a good solar day the powerwall quickly comes to 100% and starts exporting Solar, if not it feed the house cheap electricity. Left to it's own devices it would sometimes not charge on cheap electricity because it decided it would be sunny and given the UK climate that forecast would turn out to be wrong.

At 4pm I have set the buy price in Time based control to be high for 30 minutes, the powerwall will then export if it believes it can spare the energy for half an hour.

With 1 powerwall (I may add another) I can really only spare 2.5KHW at most and often not even that so 30 minutes is a good window. Saver events also work on averages of the previous 10 days, so I don't want to export during that window. SO far no saver event has started before 16:30. I can thus export from 16 -16:30 without impacting my saver event returns.

When Octopus announce an event, I opt in and adjust the schedule accordingly (I stop the 16:00 discharge by changing the sell price, adjust TC schedule to cover discharge time and set a decent sell price and look at state of powerwall charge and if necessary set Time based control to 0% to fully charge powerwall from grid.

[ayshfm1]

Forgot to say why 10% rather than 0% and thus using all the powerwall capacity

The powerwall has 13.5 KWH Usable capacity, but it supposed to come with 14KWH. Mine however reported 14.5KWH when new. this does three things, it allows Tesla to market the full usable capacity, prevents deep discharge which would degrade battery faster and provides warranty protection. Maybe they upped the battery size from 14KWH - 14.5 because they wanted a bit more warranty protection. Moreover the app lies about how much you have, it will retain 4% to cover off restarting it under cold conditions. It gradually mis-reports battery charge level, you can query the actual batter charge level and see this. 0% in the App is 4% according to battery

The powerwall will do whole house backup, if I run it to 0% then there is a window for a power cut that would find the powerwall drained, it's circa midnight to 6am. By holding back 10% I cover this off as usage is really just the vampire load. Secondly I feel more comfortable only discharging at worst to circa 20% of the powerwall's capacity, which as mentioned is in my case 14.5KWH. I'm not that precious about it... Anyway here is the math.

20% of 14.KWH is 2900WH

14% of 13.5K (4% Tesla holds back 10% I do) is 1890WH
1KW that Tesla is over provisioning for I assume warranty reasons
2890 WH is thus not used just short of 2900WH. It's seldom actually tripped.

[Dod101]

I did very nicely, I managed to export 4.1KWH, so got 7384 Octo points, which I changed into a £9.23 credit. I was also in the top 20% so will get another 400 Octo points 50p and was paid export rate on my 4.1K, so another £1.14. For a total of £10.87. It could have been better as my wife fired up the oven mid way through.

Go me!

This is the first one I've actually managed to take part in properly because I've so much meter trouble. It was scheduled to be replaced at the beginning of Feb, before it miraculously started working. The meter would only send back import readings when Octopus requested them and never sent back any export. For a while I range up Octopus us and got them to do a force read. This ended up meaning that sometimes Octopus could get my saver reading details and sometimes they could not. When they could I got next to nothing, when they couldn't I got 800 points (or £1)

The key point here is if Octopus can't read your meter and you've opted in then they will give you £1. Clearly there is a small profit to be had by manipulating Octopus' meter reading abilities.

For anyone with a powerwall 2 you will have discovered that is smart and wants to control how things work, this makes it simple for the average person who wants to set and forget but handling saver sessions is rather more problematic.

If those running home assistant there is a tesla module that allows control to be wrested back. First you need to figure out the logic of what you want to happen.

Here is the normal logic I'm using, I'm on Flux

Force powerwall to charge to 100% by setting time backed control to 100% between 2am and 5am

This causes the house to run on cheap electricity (I often scedule the dishwasher to run at this time). Meanwhile powerwall fully charges.

At 5am switch back to TC 90%.

This allows the powerwall to discharge again (I use stored electricity at circa 17p rather than the 28p it selling for). If it's a good solar day the powerwall quickly comes to 100% and starts exporting Solar, if not it feed the house cheap electricity. Left to it's own devices it would sometimes not charge on cheap electricity because it decided it would be sunny and given the UK climate that forecast would turn out to be wrong.

At 4pm I have set the buy price in Time based control to be high for 30 minutes, the powerwall will then export if it believes it can spare the energy for half an hour.

With 1 powerwall (I may add another) I can really only spare 2.5KHW at most and often not even that so 30 minutes is a good window. Saver events also work on averages of the previous 10 days, so I don't want to export during that window. SO far no saver event has started before 16:30. I can thus export from 16 -16:30 without impacting my saver event returns.

When Octopus announce an event, I opt in and adjust the schedule accordingly (I stop the 16:00 discharge by changing the sell price, adjust TC schedule to cover discharge time and set a decent sell price and look at state of powerwall charge and if necessary set Time based control to 0% to fully charge powerwall from grid.

This is clearly some sort of club where the message is known only to members. This might as well be written in Swahili as far as I am concerned but I hope those who are members get a lot out of it.

Dod

[TurboukToo2]

For anyone with a powerwall 2 you will have discovered that is smart and wants to control how things work, this makes it simple for the average person who wants to set and forget but handling saver sessions is rather more problematic.

I do have a couple of Powerwall 2 and have yet to try Home Assistant automation. For saving session I just manually adjust the Utility rate plan for the saver session slot (an additional "mid-peak" rate does the trick) with the Sell price at the Saver session amount. Powerwall does the rest and then I delete the mid peak rate when the session completes.

Been paid £96 for saver sessions so far which has nicely offset against my £115 December electric bill. (consumed 1338 KWh)


Recommend these sorts of videos if this battery discussion isn't making sense to other contributors....

https://youtu.be/3vwDrfuXyik?feature=shared

[DrFfybes]

Just noticed their is an Octopus Power Saver event this evening 6-6:30.

I've also now worked out how to set the battery to discharge to grid, albeit manually rather than automatically, so will try that and see what happens.

Paul

[Niksen]

...so yes 37p is disappointing. Obviously it is all trivial but it is something for nothing I suppose

37p. That's riches. I got 6p.

But then I am using damn all electricity or gas as I haven't been home in months.

[Redmires]

Just noticed their is an Octopus Power Saver event this evening 6-6:30.

Paul

I've not had one since 8th Feb. Is it region specific then ?

[yorkshirelad1]

Just noticed their is an Octopus Power Saver event this evening 6-6:30.

Paul

I've not had one since 8th Feb. Is it region specific then ?

It's just appeared on the Octopus WhatsApp channel (17:06); no e-mail though (yet).

[Redmires]

I've not had one since 8th Feb. Is it region specific then ?

It's just appeared on the Octopus WhatsApp channel (17:06); no e-mail though (yet).

Same here. On the app now but no email. It's a bit haphazard. Glad I checked in here otherwise I'd be about 30p down

[DrFfybes]

I've not had one since 8th Feb. Is it region specific then ?

It's just appeared on the Octopus WhatsApp channel (17:06); no e-mail though (yet).

I only saw it as I logged in to reduce my monthly payments.

No email, might be on the whatsapp thing but MrsF has the smartphone and hasn't commented..

[yorkshirelad1]

Another Octopus one today (it's just come in on the WhatsApp channel) (NB: the original posting a few minutes previusly on the WhatsApp channel had yesterday's date 29 Feb, but they've updated it to put today's date 1 March)

SURPRISE SAVING SESSION alert, 6:00PM TODAY
Opt in online or via the app
1/3/24 6:00PM-6:30PM

[DrFfybes]

Another Octopus one today (it's just come in on the WhatsApp channel)

Oddly I still can't get that to work on the phone. I only saw tonights as I was seeing how much I exported during yesterday's session.

Oh, just thought, I suppose I'll get paid for the 'peak period' export as well as 'reducing my use'?

Just noticed, on Flux tariff charging the battery 2-4pm and exporting 4-7pm makes me 0.25p/kWh, similarly charging 2-5am and exporting 5-7am does the same. That'll soon cover the install charge

[DrFfybes]

Well I just got my rewards through for 3 consecutive evenings last week.

Apparently I cut my use by 100%, which as I'm usually on battery power anyway between 6-6:30 shows their software can cop with DIV 0 errors.

In the 3 x 30 min slots I managed to export 2.89kWh, which seems low but the battery ramps up on mains import/export rather than going directly to the full 2.5kW. This earned me 4048 nectar points, worth a rather oddly converted £5.06. Also 73p for the peak rate exported energy, although that is really a null input as it meant the battery went flat sooner and I used imported energy at the same cost later on.

So, not going to make me rich, not pay for the battery any time soon, but not bad for spending about 10 min in total faffing with the smartphone.

Paul

[kempiejon]

So, not going to make me rich, not pay for the battery any time soon, but not bad for spending about 10 min in total faffing with the smartphone.

Imagine if everyone did it. I'd automate it, get those 10 minutes back, probably make it auto enrol, opt out.