Power Consumption.xlsx
I've put together a comparison of three different electricity price plans: Octopus Agile (I averaged the entire year worth of sample data they give to get each half-hourly price), Octopus Go, and Bulb E7. I live in London, so all the prices I've used are for London. The inputs to the spreadsheet are:
- Your average load (this would be how many kWh you consumed in a month excluding car charging and any "heavy" overnight stuff you do, divided by 30 divided by 24). I chose 0.4kWh because that is what my GlowStick tells me I am consuming most of the time (I have some servers running 24x7 which bumps that up a bit from most normal people would have). This is your lights, washing machine, dishwasher, etc.
- Your car charging. I have set this to 32A x 240V = 7.68kWh
- "Heavy" Load: this is overnight stuff you would do, like night store heaters, heating up under-floor gigantic concrete pads, etc. I've set this to 3kWh (I have no idea what a good figure is, I just made this up).
- The actual electricity rates themselves, in half-hour increments.
You then get to specify (using Xs) which half hour slots of the 24h of the day are consuming the "car charging" and "heavy load" portions. I've chosen 3h for car charging, and 5h for heavy load stuff. In each of the 3 price plans, I've put these loads in the cheap zone (well in Agile I tried to pick what roughly looked like the cheapest block of rates).
Two main conclusions:
- Agile doesn't seem cheap, at all. Maybe averaging across the whole year is the wrong approach, but I don't know how else to analyse it apart from some complex modelling over an entire year.
- There is not a huge difference between Go and E7. In fact I would say there may not be much point in getting too excited about the whole thing, as long as you have a plan that offers you a cheap rate for at least a few hours of the day. Charging the car at daytime rates is triple the cost, so it makes clear sense to charge during the off-peak. But which particular off-peak plan you choose seems to be less interesting.
Let me know what you think, and if you find any mistakes or have any ideas for improvement.
I've put together a comparison of three different electricity price plans: Octopus Agile (I averaged the entire year worth of sample data they give to get each half-hourly price), Octopus Go, and Bulb E7. I live in London, so all the prices I've used are for London. The inputs to the spreadsheet are:
- Your average load (this would be how many kWh you consumed in a month excluding car charging and any "heavy" overnight stuff you do, divided by 30 divided by 24). I chose 0.4kWh because that is what my GlowStick tells me I am consuming most of the time (I have some servers running 24x7 which bumps that up a bit from most normal people would have). This is your lights, washing machine, dishwasher, etc.
- Your car charging. I have set this to 32A x 240V = 7.68kWh
- "Heavy" Load: this is overnight stuff you would do, like night store heaters, heating up under-floor gigantic concrete pads, etc. I've set this to 3kWh (I have no idea what a good figure is, I just made this up).
- The actual electricity rates themselves, in half-hour increments.
You then get to specify (using Xs) which half hour slots of the 24h of the day are consuming the "car charging" and "heavy load" portions. I've chosen 3h for car charging, and 5h for heavy load stuff. In each of the 3 price plans, I've put these loads in the cheap zone (well in Agile I tried to pick what roughly looked like the cheapest block of rates).
Two main conclusions:
- Agile doesn't seem cheap, at all. Maybe averaging across the whole year is the wrong approach, but I don't know how else to analyse it apart from some complex modelling over an entire year.
- There is not a huge difference between Go and E7. In fact I would say there may not be much point in getting too excited about the whole thing, as long as you have a plan that offers you a cheap rate for at least a few hours of the day. Charging the car at daytime rates is triple the cost, so it makes clear sense to charge during the off-peak. But which particular off-peak plan you choose seems to be less interesting.
Let me know what you think, and if you find any mistakes or have any ideas for improvement.
