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Octopus Energy, including Intelligent and go

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First need to register at octopus.energy/saving-sessions to take part, and their wording indicates that per daily session they can inform of a variable price reward, likely in a range such as £4–£6/kWh. Interestingly they will also adjust the trailing hourly average by the current day demand level varying from normal itself before the demand period.

One slightly immoral thought that occurred was it might be a good way of choosing when to have some home-delivered cuisine :)
 
We’ll look at your historical smart meter data leading up to a Session, and calculate what you usually use at that time of day, on average.

If the Session is on a weekday, we’ll look at your half-hourly usage over the last 10 weekdays (excluding saving session days). If the Session is on a weekend, we’ll look at your half hourly usage over the last 4 weekend days. These half hourly averages are then subject to an ‘In Day Adjustment’ which will make adjustments based on how much energy you’ve used on the day of the session.

If I read this right, the day of a ‘Saving Session’ is also a good day to charge the car to maximise the ‘In Day Adjustment’?
 
‘Savings Sessions’ now live from 1st Nov. About £3/kWh.


The thing is they will use the last 10 days average usage ahead of each session to calculate the savings (BSC P376 'Utilising a Baseline Methodology to set Physical Notifications').

Do I load shift most days to on-peak so that I increase my average and maximise ‘savings’? Not morally right but unintentional consequences of the approach chosen.
I don't use grid power between 4pm and 7pm as I'm running off battery in those periods. I guess I'm out.
 
In-day adjustments likely involve exact compensation per kWh if you match typical use on that day, just shifting it outside of targeted ‘peak’ time window. Using more overall is counter to the aim, so will pay less - and may simply be subtracted from the energy savings in the announced time frame. Using less overall but same/more over peak should give no discount too. The T&Cs haven’t made this explicit.

A thermal storage idea: Boil water and store in a sizeable Thermos earlier in the day to offset hot drinks.
 
In-day adjustments likely involve exact compensation per kWh if you match typical use on that day, just shifting it outside of targeted ‘peak’ time window. Using more overall is counter to the aim, so will pay less - and may simply be subtracted from the energy savings in the announced time frame. .
The aim is to shift usage away from a certain period to a time when the demand on the network doesn’t need costly extra generation to be spun up.

The Octopus FAQs also say that as it’s all based on 30 minute windows if you compact all your usage into one window and cut it for the rest you’ll still get credits for the windows where you usage was lower than usual. So if you normally make tea at 5pm but instead start the oven at 4:50pm to preheat it you’ll still have helped a bit and get some level of reward.

It’s going to be interesting at least, and deffo good for the local chippy :D
 
“These half hourly averages are then subject to an ‘In Day Adjustment’ which will make adjustments based on how much energy you’ve used on the day of the session”

Presumably there’s only so much stored energy (hydro/battery) to help buffer peak times. Still seems counter to use more than typical on such a day. As I wrote, they haven’t stated how they’re calculating this yet, or their reasons behind doing so.
 
I know energy is expensive right now but I have not figured out the link between that and why we need to cut usage at these times.
is it because this is when we use the most fossil fuel based power so we want to smooth demand so more can be based on renewables and reduce gas use?
 
The network grid operator wishes to reduce peak demand because of concerns that it simply won’t have access to the necessary energy production capacity, in order to avoid brown/black-outs. That's why this is all happening. Those times happen also to be the most polluting/costly type of energy production if they fall back to diesel/oil generators.
 
It’s an alternative to National Grid paying for example Short Term Operating Reserve (STOR) contracts. In some cases running up banks of diesel generators. There are several different kinds of Reserve contracts.



Costs (in mWh)


I’d still treat this as a ‘pilot’. National Grid aren’t relying on it yet. In future if we can lower peak demand by smoothing then we don’t have to contract with more generators to fulfil peak demand + margin. Lower cost to balance grid = lower bills for all of us.
 
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Thinking about this, the maths don’t add up. In simple terms, National Grid can pay for more generation at say £4/MWh or pay customers £4,000/MWh to turn off. Savings Sessions aside, in the medium term I can only see National Grid offering this if there is no alternative (I.e no more generators to turn on) or at much lower incentives like the original Octopus pilot.

Also, looking at this another way. We all pay for National Grid to balance the network as part of our bills. So if this costs National Grid a wedge, their costs go up, and in turn our bills go up. Everyone not benefiting from Savings Sessions is paying for those who are to turn down.
 
For those with battery storage it would be useful if this got scheme got extended to include some sort of 'Virtual Power Plant' scheme, where if demand is high batteries could put some power back in the grid and be paid a higher rate than the standard feed in tariff.

I know Tesla Powerwalls are used in VPP's in California, Texas and Australia. Apparently quite helpful for stabalising grid during peak times and can reduce need to switch on the gas peaker power generation plants.

Hell between the above and the 30+ pence difference between peak and off-peak rates payback period on batteries is getting a lot shorter
 
For those with battery storage it would be useful if this got scheme got extended to include some sort of 'Virtual Power Plant' scheme, where if demand is high batteries could put some power back in the grid and be paid a higher rate than the standard feed in tariff.

I know Tesla Powerwalls are used in VPP's in California, Texas and Australia. Apparently quite helpful for stabalising grid during peak times and can reduce need to switch on the gas peaker power generation plants.

Hell between the above and the 30+ pence difference between peak and off-peak rates payback period on batteries is getting a lot shorter
If only batteries were actually available!
 
First need to register at octopus.energy/saving-sessions to take part, and their wording indicates that per daily session they can inform of a variable price reward, likely in a range such as £4–£6/kWh. Interestingly they will also adjust the trailing hourly average by the current day demand level varying from normal itself before the demand period.

One slightly immoral thought that occurred was it might be a good way of choosing when to have some home-delivered cuisine :)

Hmmm, I've just tried to register for saving sessions but was met with a page that said that I wasn't eligible with a link to a series of potential reasons why that should be. None of those are true in my case and a quick look at the Octopus app shows that there hasn't been a gap in meter readings over the last 20 days.

Anyone else had this happen?
 
For those with battery storage it would be useful if this got scheme got extended to include some sort of 'Virtual Power Plant' scheme, where if demand is high batteries could put some power back in the grid and be paid a higher rate than the standard feed in tariff.

I know Tesla Powerwalls are used in VPP's in California, Texas and Australia. Apparently quite helpful for stabalising grid during peak times and can reduce need to switch on the gas peaker power generation plants.

Hell between the above and the 30+ pence difference between peak and off-peak rates payback period on batteries is getting a lot shorter
Sadly it’s not quite that simple. Locally, our infrastructure isn’t up to the task of sucking much power back into the grid. Our DNO wouldn’t let me on a trial.