Octopus Tesla Energy Plan

[ACarneiro]

Yes, I have the same constraints due to the 100A limit

Would have considered upgrading to 3 phase but the Powerwalls don’t play well in three phases at the moment.

 

[Dilly]

with 2 full electric cars and a PW the 4hr window was not big enough to fit within a 100 Amp breaker + hot tub and other appliances, over the year, 8p 24x7 works best for us.

I can see that would be real problem, particularly if both cars need a decent charge. The other annoying factor is that Powerwall charges are a bit ad hoc even in cost saving mode. There is no definitive control.
being retired, I can pretty well plan ahead. Last night I filled the Outlander with 7Kw and topped up the M3 with 9Kw. The Powerwalls took about 14Kw but only filled to about 80%
I staggered the two car charges so they didn’t overlap to allow the PW’s a free run but they just did their own thing based on reasonable solar yesterday.
Solar is poor today and they’re at about 72% now and just about charging. To be fair, it will still see me through to the next off-peak period.

 

[Steerpike]

The round trip efficiency on my Powerwall has averaged about 85% over the last 3 (cold winter) months.

At this rate if the Tesla Energy Plan filled and discharged the Powerwall once a day it would cost me about £60 per annum being the difference between the energy imported and exported.

In my case we would also lose the deemed FIT export which is also about £60 so for now I am sticking with Octopus GO.

 

[ACarneiro]

That’s disappointing performance...

 

[Steerpike]

I expect Powerwall to be more efficient in warmer weather perhaps around the advertised 7.5% round trip loss, 15% loss in winter does not seem too surprising.

Of course any rate of loss is unwelcome if the battery is being used by a third party (Tesla Energy Plan) to make money buying and selling electricity using my energy account and (my) Powerwall and as temporary storage.

 

[KennethS]

Any loss is unwelcome, but not unexpected. I view it as a component in the overall package that allows Octopus to give me an 8p rate 24/7 and without any standing charge. The aggregate loss is more than offset by the absence of a daily standing charge.

 

[Fly.guy]

Having 4kW of PV and a Powerwall II we have been quite efficient at time shifting most of our household electricity consumption to the early hours of the morning - and as such Octopus Agile has been quiet good to us over the last year.

However, the last few months have seen sometimes eye watering rates and now, even in the small hours we seem be paying over 12p / kWh + standing charge. Which its just a bit crazy...

One alternative is the Tesla Energy plan - that we would be eligible given the PV, PWII and Model S. I quite like the idea of contributing to a virtual load balancing plant and maximising CO2 reductions. But would appreciate some 'real world' feedback from someone with first hand experience.

I appreciate that we will loose the 5.5p/kWh deemed 50% feed in tariff that we are currently paid but will keep our FIT payments. The deemed feed in currently adds up to about £90pa, even though actual feed in is much much less than this. So its likely that we will loose some income.

Am I also correct in thinking that the electricity purchase and feed in payment prices are the same ? If so, then if Tesla force our PW to charge off peak and then discharge into the grid during the evening peak, the charging losses associated with this (10-15% ?) are entirely at our expense in addition to the wear and tear associated with cycling the PWII. This would seem to be a bit of a mugs game... is this something that Tesla do regularly ??

Also, given the need to own a Tesla car, does this mean that Tesla also start / stop and change the charge limit on your car in order to generate grid load at certain times ? Is this the case ? Will they honour a request to charge to a certain % by a certain time in preparation for a trip for example, or do you just get what your given ?

Finally, will Tesla try to 'leave room' in the PWII in which to store daytime solar generation [as they currently do for Advance Cost Saving mode] or would daytime PV just get exported ? If so, might this make up for the lost deemed export mentioned above ?

Sorry for what may be silly questions, but any insights into what actually happens would be most appreciated...

Cheers.

 

[Dilly]

I‘m not fully up to speed with it, but I did consider it. My understanding is that the power you buy costs the same 24/7 and the power you export is paid at the same rate. In essence, it matters not where your power comes from because it all costs the same. Had your PW filled from solar it will have lost you export income doing so. Therefore it’s all even and doesn’t really matter. What needs addressing is the backup limit for warding off power cuts.

Having said that, what matters is how your usage and export income now balances against the Tesla plan In terms of annual cost.
for me, it wouldn’t work. I generally export way less than deemed 50% and my charge routines fit nicely with Octopus Go or summer solar.
hope I’m right and it helps.

 

[KennethS]

As a customer on the Octopus Tesla Energy Plan (OTEP) for the past 9 months, I will try and answer. We have a 3.5kW solar PV array installed in late 2010, one Powerwall2 (PW) and a single EV (Tesla M3P). We took delivery of the Tesla in August 2019 and bought the PW in August 2020 with the intention of immediately going on the OTEP. At the time of the purchase, we were offered an incentive of a £500 Octopus Energy credit and a free Tesla Wall Charge point (we already had one but I was happy to take it to install as a second charge point for a future second EV). We use an embarrassingly large amount of electric in our house despite my efforts to curb it as much as reasonable (two teenage boys, lots of computers and gaming, etc). My basic back of envelope maths going in to the PW2 and OTEP decision was that it should save approximately £1,100 per annum on our electric bill compared to staying on an ordinary tariff. That so far has proven to be if anything a bit conservative. Again, our electric usage is far from national average. I am not opposed to time shifting, but trying to push the highest appliance usage to wee hours off peak was not going to be feasible and I find a discounted 24/7 rate makes the OTEP idiot proof.

Our experience has been that the PW is arranged to be fully charged by 4pm whereupon it kicks in and will run at around 3.5 - 4.0 kW to serve the house and dumping power to the grid. BTW, I was told by Octopus that they have no control or access to my Tesla equipment and all the charging and discharging decisions are done by Tesla. The PW runs until it depletes to 20% and then it stays there as a reserve for power outages (presumably). Whether this is the norm or was done because when the switch to the OTEP happened I had the PW set to always maintain a 20% reserve I do not know. The PW gets some charge starting around 1.30am. In the dark winter it often filled to 90% overnight but now that we have sun it frequently will stop charging at 40-50%. So there is some algorithm being applied but as you can imagine it is not precise and there are many days where the house use and solar production mean it wouldn't get to 100% by 4pm so the system errs on the side of refilling the battery at some point during the early afternoon to ensure it is at 100% by the magic 4pm when it then kicks in to feed the house and the grid. I find more often than not that we end up having a full PW and excess solar during the afternoon which gets fed to the grid. It really doesn't matter to me since power in is 8p and power out is paid at 8p. I recognise there are round trip losses in any battery storage system, but the PW seems efficient and the entire arrangement has halved (or better) my electric bills.

I went into this expecting the M3P charging would also get tweaked by the system, but thus far they have never adjusted anything relating to how and when we charge the car. I believe they have the permission to do so as part of what I signed up to but they have never done it so far.

Our export portion of the FIT scheme was insignificant in comparison to the overall savings and with no daily standing charge under the OTEP I viewed the loss of that as a wash.

The OTEP makes clear that nothing they do will affect the PW warranty. And since they cycle the battery from 100% to 20% once per day, which is no greater stress than I would have done if I were not on the plan, it doesn't worry me.

To be honest my bigger concern is that the 8p deal won't last as many years as I would like. But there is no tie in and I can opt out whenever I want so if the OTEP is to continue in some guise there will need to be some inducement to stay with it. I would have purchased the PW regardless of the OTEP, it just made the decision easier for us. I suspect for a home using closer to or less than the national average electric consumption the numbers are harder to make work. For us and a savings on the magnitude we are getting it made sense.

As someone who enjoys gadgets and technology, the one negative is we lose the control over the battery settings via the Tesla app. But we are very happy with the OTEP.

I hope this is of some use and not just my normal, rambling mess. I am happy to answer or clarify anything.

 

[Dilly]

As a customer on the Octopus Tesla Energy Plan (OTEP) for the past 9 months, I will try and answer. We have a 3.5kW solar PV array installed in late 2010, one Powerwall2 (PW) and a single EV (Tesla M3P). We took delivery of the Tesla in August 2019 and bought the PW in August 2020 with the intention of immediately going on the OTEP. At the time of the purchase, we were offered an incentive of a £500 Octopus Energy credit and a free Tesla Wall Charge point (we already had one but I was happy to take it to install as a second charge point for a future second EV). We use an embarrassingly large amount of electric in our house despite my efforts to curb it as much as reasonable (two teenage boys, lots of computers and gaming, etc). My basic back of envelope maths going in to the PW2 and OTEP decision was that it should save approximately £1,100 per annum on our electric bill compared to staying on an ordinary tariff. That so far has proven to be if anything a bit conservative. Again, our electric usage is far from national average. I am not opposed to time shifting, but trying to push the highest appliance usage to wee hours off peak was not going to be feasible and I find a discounted 24/7 rate makes the OTEP idiot proof.

Our experience has been that the PW is arranged to be fully charged by 4pm whereupon it kicks in and will run at around 3.5 - 4.0 kW to serve the house and dumping power to the grid. BTW, I was told by Octopus that they have no control or access to my Tesla equipment and all the charging and discharging decisions are done by Tesla. The PW runs until it depletes to 20% and then it stays there as a reserve for power outages (presumably). Whether this is the norm or was done because when the switch to the OTEP happened I had the PW set to always maintain a 20% reserve I do not know. The PW gets some charge starting around 1.30am. In the dark winter it often filled to 90% overnight but now that we have sun it frequently will stop charging at 40-50%. So there is some algorithm being applied but as you can imagine it is not precise and there are many days where the house use and solar production mean it wouldn't get to 100% by 4pm so the system errs on the side of refilling the battery at some point during the early afternoon to ensure it is at 100% by the magic 4pm when it then kicks in to feed the house and the grid. I find more often than not that we end up having a full PW and excess solar during the afternoon which gets fed to the grid. It really doesn't matter to me since power in is 8p and power out is paid at 8p. I recognise there are round trip losses in any battery storage system, but the PW seems efficient and the entire arrangement has halved (or better) my electric bills.

I went into this expecting the M3P charging would also get tweaked by the system, but thus far they have never adjusted anything relating to how and when we charge the car. I believe they have the permission to do so as part of what I signed up to but they have never done it so far.

Our export portion of the FIT scheme was insignificant in comparison to the overall savings and with no daily standing charge under the OTEP I viewed the loss of that as a wash.

The OTEP makes clear that nothing they do will affect the PW warranty. And since they cycle the battery from 100% to 20% once per day, which is no greater stress than I would have done if I were not on the plan, it doesn't worry me.

To be honest my bigger concern is that the 8p deal won't last as many years as I would like. But there is no tie in and I can opt out whenever I want so if the OTEP is to continue in some guise there will need to be some inducement to stay with it. I would have purchased the PW regardless of the OTEP, it just made the decision easier for us. I suspect for a home using closer to or less than the national average electric consumption the numbers are harder to make work. For us and a savings on the magnitude we are getting it made sense.

As someone who enjoys gadgets and technology, the one negative is we lose the control over the battery settings via the Tesla app. But we are very happy with the OTEP.

I hope this is of some use and not just my normal, rambling mess. I am happy to answer or clarify anything.

I can see that as a large user, you can definitely benefit. With most of my grid draw during off-peak, I’ll bide my time. In due course I’m sure costs will level out and make it more viable. I’m just a bit concerned that we sometimes get prolonged power cuts and like to stay buffered in case.

 

[Fly.guy]

Many thanks indeed for this very useful input Ken. Much appreciated.

It’s interesting to hear about what Tesla are doing to the PW2 and that they don’t touch the car charging side of things (yet).

Currently, with long sunny days, our own household usage is more or less covered by a combination of PV and PW2, with any excess being dumped into the car during the day (working from home mostly these days). So any savings are going to be marginal. As such, while I like the idea, I’m still a little hesitant....

We are however currently quoting for an air source heat pump system with auxiliary solar thermal to replace our gas boiler. So electricity consumption, especially during the heating season, is going to increase considerably. At which point the OTEP starts to sound much more viable...

 

[Fred2]

We are however currently quoting for an air source heat pump system with auxiliary solar thermal to replace our gas boiler. So electricity consumption, especially during the heating season, is going to increase considerably. At which point the OTEP starts to sound much more viable...

I have an air source heat pump & it was pretty great to be on 8p/kWh on some of those cold days in jan/Feb when the house consumed 80-90kWh and only generated 2-3kWh!

The heating draws way more in the winter months than the car (my wife has still been commuting daily) & unlike the car you can’t just do all in the wee hours of the morning.

 

[Adopado]

Having 4kW of PV and a Powerwall II we have been quite efficient at time shifting most of our household electricity consumption to the early hours of the morning - and as such Octopus Agile has been quiet good to us over the last year.

However, the last few months have seen sometimes eye watering rates and now, even in the small hours we seem be paying over 12p / kWh + standing charge. Which its just a bit crazy...

On Octopus Go for the past month my charge is £56.91 .... on Agile it would be £83.10 ... (for 531.17kWh) ... that's a huge difference especially since we don't make any attempt to time shift our house usage ... the Go period is purely for the car!

 

[Cuban8]

The TEP has just changed with rates of 10 to 12p/kWh for non Tesla EV owners and a daily standing charge of 22p/day. My 7kWp array and Powerwall2 comes in at an annual cost of £508 per year. if I ignored SEG, my annual non TEP cost is less than £120 per year. I can only think that there must be something wrong with the amended calculator.

 

[browellm]

The TEP has just changed with rates of 10 to 12p/kWh for non Tesla EV owners and a daily standing charge of 22p/day. My 7kWp array and Powerwall2 comes in at an annual cost of £508 per year. if I ignored SEG, my annual non TEP cost is less than £120 per year. I can only think that there must be something wrong with the amended calculator.

25% unit rate increase?

 

[MBL80]

Hi All. Just sent Octopus an email re a SMETS2 meter, they tell me that they are only fitting SMETS1, is that true ?
R

Mehul

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Hi Mehul,



Thank you for your response,

Good to hear that you are interested in smart meters and standard meter installations.

We're planning to roll out SMETS2 meters to all of our customers, as these newer meters should - in theory - be compatible with all suppliers. This means you won't lose any smart functionality when you switch energy companies, as can happen with current SMETS1 meters.

We recommend waiting for the newer models if you can, but if you're keen to proceed, can you reply and confirm that:

• You're happy for us to replace your existing meter with a SMETS 1 smart meter.
• Smart meters come in pairs, so if you've got gas, we'll replace that with a smart meter too.
• You're happy with us taking half-hourly reads so that we have the most accurate picture of your energy usage. If you'd prefer less frequently, let us know.

We've partnered with Smart Metering Systems PLC (SMS) for installations in your area. Their engineers are highly qualified, with lots of experience, and they'll ensure your installation is done safely and professionally.

You can book your appointment by logging onto your account and clicking "Replace with a smart meter" on your dashboard.

The three-time slots we have available for installations are 08:00 - 12:00, 08:00 - 18:00 or 13:00 - 17:00.

The engineer can arrive at any time during that timeslot. We need clear access to your meter and the surrounding area, especially if it's in a tight corner or cupboard. Someone over the age of 18 needs to be present for the whole appointment - generally no more than an hour and a half for an electric and gas exchange.

For your gas meter, please could you confirm if it's a meter on the wall or in a box on the ground?

p.s. if you're interested in smart meters, you can read more about them on our blog, or you might like to read about our groundbreaking new tariff Agile Octopus!

Smart blog -
https://octopus.energy/blog/smart-meters-should-i-upgrade-now/
Agile tariff -
Introducing Agile Octopus: The 100% green smart tariff with Plunge Pricing



Please follow the link below to book your smart meter installation:



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[roadcred]

I have used GO and then Agile but moved to the TEP last Novmber. It is cheaper, 8p in and 8p out - no standing charge.
I used to have electricity bills of about £150 per month on Octopus standard tariff before I got a Model3 and then added a Kia Soul in November.
Apart from financial savings there is no energy anxiety, our electric DD has been reduced to £30 per month and with experience this summer will fall further.. Our 2 EVs get charged when they need charged. Whats simpler than that.
I only have one complaint. Tesla empty the PW between 4 and 6pm every day. They refill it in the morning. We have found in the summer that because the PW is discharging when the sun is still shining, the panels shut down so they do not exceed the export limit imposed by the DNO. We therefore have to increase energy usage in that period so that we still generate and use solar during that period. WE tend to charge the cars therefore after 4pm.
The system would be perfect if in the summer months you could get Tesla to delay the PW dump untilthe last 2 hours of the peak window.

 

[Fred2]

25% unit rate increase?

The old rate for non ev owners was 11p ( Octopus Energy ) so there's not a huge change to the unit rate (some may even see a cheaper rate). Standing charge is an unwelcome addition though!

There doesn't seem to be a separate rate for Tesla vehicle owners anymore - big change there!

 

[roadcred]

Hi All. Just sent Octopus an email re a SMETS2 meter, they tell me that they are only fitting SMETS1, is that true ?
R

Mehul

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That doesn't surprise me. They have had to replace so many SMTES1 with SMTES2 meters for Tesla owners, they must have a warehouse full of them. giving false readings. I got mine changed but frankly have noticed no difference in the readings.
Tesla and a few members here reckoned that the SMTES1 was

 

[Fred2]

I only have one complaint. Tesla empty the PW between 4 and 6pm every day. They refill it in the morning. We have found in the summer that because the PW is discharging when the sun is still shining, the panels shut down so they do not exceed the export limit imposed by the DNO. We therefore have to increase energy usage in that period so that we still generate and use solar during that period. WE tend to charge the cars therefore after 4pm.
The system would be perfect if in the summer months you could get Tesla to delay the PW dump untilthe last 2 hours of the peak window.

That's odd - I don't have that problem at all. It does like to max out export around those hours but only a small amount comes from the powerwall if the sun is shining (eg right now it solar is producing 3.8 house is consuming 0.4, powerwall discharging at 2.6, export is 6)