Octopus Energy Saving Sessions

[Stranger Dings]

Does anyone know how the Octopus ”Power Hour” energy saving sessions are actually calculated?

I’ve taken part in all of them, but the results just seem totally random.

I’ve had sessions where we’ve switched off as much as we can and gone out, only to be told that we didn’t manage to save anything.

Some sessions, we’ve made very small savings, Including one where virtually everything was switched off and the whole family was in another country.

One session I forgot it was happening despite signing up, only to be told I’d managed to save 93% of my normal usage and be credited with over £16 off!

I’ll continue to sign up for them and don’t really do it expecting to save much as we are already quite energy efficient. It all just seems so random.

 

[Lumos]

ACarneiro said:
From a comfort perspective that makes sense.
From a thermodynamic perspective, heat loss is an exponential process so keeping the house warm all the time just means you lose more heat all the time.


Are you sure about this? I always thought that Newton's Law of Cooling states that the rate of heat loss is directly proportional to the difference in temperature of the body and its environment. Of course if your house is really well insulated it won't make that much difference as the heat losses will be quite low.

 

[ACarneiro]

ACarneiro said:
From a comfort perspective that makes sense.
From a thermodynamic perspective, heat loss is an exponential process so keeping the house warm all the time just means you lose more heat all the time.


Are you sure about this? I always thought that Newton's Law of Cooling states that the rate of heat loss is directly proportional to the difference in temperature of the body and its environment. Of course if your house is really well insulated it won't make that much difference as the heat losses will be quite low.

I may well be wrong with regards to the exponential side of things, but the principle stands. If the house stays warm then the delta between inside and outside is bigger, therefore the cooling rate is higher.
(Thank you for correcting me )

 

[PITA]

Heat our house to 21-22 degrees ... pretty much all day every day... all year round.

 

[Pink Duck]

Three more Saving Sessions to go, but seems nothing in the available data to suggest how ESO will be selecting them.

Any guesses?

 

[PITA]

Three more Saving Sessions to go, but seems nothing in the available data to suggest how ESO will be selecting them.

Any guesses?

Dunno...but can they be £4 per kWh and two hours long please

 

[Pink Duck]

That would indeed be lovely just suspect we’ve now matched the two that happened earlier on last time around.

Grid margin forecast here on is at least 15 GW, with 5× December events this time vs 4× January sessions of 2022–3.

Demand is likely to pick up again above 40 GW between Mon 29th–Th 1st Feb then descend week beginning 12th Feb.

The minimum price guarantee ended on 1st Jan, so ESO is free to set higher/lower as needed to vary demand.

 

[Pink Duck]

The next three forecast minimum-margin days ahead:

We 24th 10.0 GW
Fr 26th 12.8 GW
Mo 29th 12.0 GW

 

[thewishy]

Those are some pretty healthy margins, healthy amounts of wind coming around at the moment.

My assumption is that they'll keep the remaining test events in the bank, and if DFS isn't particularly needed by then, they'll blow when in march on a "how much does size of payment affect engagement" trial.

 

[Pink Duck]

Mon 29th margin forecast dropped notably to just 9.1 GW today, so that may be chosen perhaps while demand is higher.

Agree that they may experiment with acceptance price variation to test demand response. Better than that early weekdays or weekend events.

Nearing a week on and still no settlement outcomes from last Wed 17th event.

 

[thewishy]

Still a very heathy margin.

Interesting to see coal on the grid still. Ratcliffe-on-Soar is closing in september, wonder if they're just burning whatever coal they have "in stock" before the Sept 24 closure dates...

 

[Pink Duck]

The lowest margin for quite a while still and only tight margin really matters for triggering Live events. Test event could be anytime.

 

[Oxid8ter]

I do find it interesting that with Octoplus there was mention of free electricity sessions. Electroverse has had some "plunge pricing" events due to surplus wind energy on the grid, but nothing for the home Octopus customer up to this point.

 

[thewishy]

I do find it interesting that with Octoplus there was mention of free electricity sessions. Electroverse has had some "plunge pricing" events due to surplus wind energy on the grid, but nothing for the home Octopus customer up to this point.

Extended plunge pricing tends to be more summer than winter, but there doesn't seem to be a hint of anything so far

 

[Zilla91]

Looking at agile rates, I’m surprised there hasn’t been any negative pricing since it’s been blowing a gale this last week. You’d think there would be loads of excess green power in the system

 

[ACarneiro]

Looking at agile rates, I’m surprised there hasn’t been any negative rates since it’s been blowing a gale this last week. You’d think there would be loads of excess green power in the system

Demands are quite high as it's winter, though. I guess we're more likely to see negative agile rates in the summer.

Do you remember if we had negative agile rates "back in the day" before the energy crisis started?

 

[phil4]

I do find it interesting that with Octoplus there was mention of free electricity sessions. Electroverse has had some "plunge pricing" events due to surplus wind energy on the grid, but nothing for the home Octopus customer up to this point.

The free electricity stuff is for a few places over on the east side of the country, and is one specific supplier, in specific postcodes. As it's not even blanket "one electricity provider" it doesn't surprise me it hasn't spread further. The area it applies to is midway down this page: Octopus Power-ups | Free green electricity in East England

 

[Oxid8ter]

Extended plunge pricing tends to be more summer than winter, but there doesn't seem to be a hint of anything so far

Demands are quite high as it's winter, though. I guess we're more likely to see negative agile rates in the summer.

Do you remember if we had negative agile rates "back in the day" before the energy crisis started?

Whilst I do appreciate demand on the grid is higher as it is winter, there have still been Plunge Pricing events in late December when it first launched on Electroverse, as well as during "Storm Isha"

The free electricity stuff is for a few places over on the east side of the country, and is one specific supplier, in specific postcodes. As it's not even blanket "one electricity provider" it doesn't surprise me it hasn't spread further. The area it applies to is midway down this page: Octopus Power-ups | Free green electricity in East England

This would make sense, annoyingly it looks like I fall just outside of the postcode area nearest me (Peterborough/March) though our supplier I thought was still UKPN

Edit: @phil4 basically answers the questions raised in the first half of this post.

 

[ringi]

Octopus IO reduces the need for Plunge Pricing to blance grid.

 

[Fred2]

The free electricity stuff is for a few places over on the east side of the country, and is one specific supplier, in specific postcodes. As it's not even blanket "one electricity provider" it doesn't surprise me it hasn't spread further. The area it applies to is midway down this page: Octopus Power-ups | Free green electricity in East England

For what it's worth, there has been a lot of it the past few days in my area

thursday: 9am-12pm
saturday: 1pm-4:30pm
sunday: 7pm-11pm
monday: 4am-9am
tomorrow: 9pm-11:30pm

 

[NewbieT]

Still a very heathy margin.

Interesting to see coal on the grid still. Ratcliffe-on-Soar is closing in september, wonder if they're just burning whatever coal they have "in stock" before the Sept 24 closure dates...

I thought that until I saw a piece in the news recently - testing the water for biomass subsidy. My mind worked like this: New nukes not ready yet. Old nukes getting older. Can we keep Ratcliffe a bit longer if we pay them to burn wood pellets like Drax? 2GW Ratcliffe on Soar hasn’t heard the fat lady sing yet.