Many thanks

Useful videos - thanks Tim & Kate. I wonder if you can advise why our system didn't work during our recent power cut. We switched it across to off-grid but nothing happened... could it be to do with the fuse-like switch under the flap on the right of the main switch? Advice very gratefully received! The power was off for over 11 hours and we resorted to Gaz lamps and a camping stove!

You can't always get what you want.......

you are good looking couple :)

Great work and very clear. I am about to order 19 panels and 9.5kwh battery via EON and this comes with a tarriff of 6.9p off peak and 40p export rate. Adding additional battery's is therefore a no brainer to exceed the break even position achieved via octopus

Who knew statistics were such a valuable tool in football player recruitment?! Respect to LFC for being such good sports 😂

I've played with remixing 😂

You’ve persuaded me to take the plunge with IOF instead of Agile as I have a much higher generation than consumption. Submitted my application a couple of days ago but it failed at the GivEnergy enrolment - have messaged Octopus and am awaiting their reply. We generated 1400kWh in May with 530kWh of home consumption for a -£135 consumption bill. Interesting that our hot water heating is less than half yours, 53kWh for the entire month - the ASHP is much more efficient than the immersion heater.

We have a similar generation and use as you. Our 19th May generation curve is probably the most perfect I've ever seen...

Been curious about East West generation for a while as opposed to purely south, and there it was. Great, keep it up!

Tim, why didnt you say about the ball at the beginning as I nearly stopped at the end.

Tim, please do not consider putting/fitting house mounted wind turbine. Having now been on a Wind Turbine course and the complexity and minimum requirements for any decent wind generation, I can say with confidence that your property and land is most certainly not suitable. Happy to share why with you directly.

Also for the compassion on the May bill from last year remember that the price was higher for electricity compared to this year

Fondant fancy or lady lumps

who the hell slices a fondant fancy? That's just not right :)

As always I came for the Solar stuff and ended up watching a football video. That has messed with my head. 🤪I honestly thought Tim would be buried in a secret government bunker working out how many pencils the civil service get through. Tim, thanks as always for sharing your knowledge and promoting green technology.

oh I didn't know you could see individual strings in the inverter web interface. I'll have to have a dig. I finally got my SEG switched on after being stuck on FIT for ages so I'll keep an eye on your results for the summer with intelligent flux - looks interesting

Thanks Tim, well your E W array easy out performs my South facing array. In fact May was cloudy up here in central Scotland so it not surprising . So my 5.1 kWp south facing array produced 573 kWh . Compare that to April at 504kWh its not as much of an increase as I was expecting . On the plus side we were in paid for export £43 so a negative bill for May. As I have said previously we have moved from Agile to Intelligent Go and as usual my Octopus app no longer shows weekly or monthly usage , it always seems changing tariff causes the app to faulter.

Coming to the end of autumn here in Adelaide, South Australia. Been quite dry this May so solar generation has been quite good. Generated just over 1 mwh for the month. Generated 579 kwh from the 6.3 kw north facing panels on the house and 506 kw from the 6.5 kw east west panels on the shed. Total generation is 1.08 mwh.

I do wish GE would put the battery in the middle of that flow chart…

7.38kWp ground mounted south facing solar array. Octopus Flux tariff. Production 962.7 kWhs Consumption 230.38 kWhs Export 721.01 kWhs Import 6.04kWhs. From Octopus bill credit £134.80 - £1.78 import - £19.22 standing charge = £113.80cr

My brothers been keeping records since 2018 when his mostly E/W array was installed. This May was 85% of the previous worst May and 75% of the average (and 65% of the best which was 2020). So its not that your last May was exceptional, but that this year was exceptional, except in a bad way. Hopefully next May will revert to the mean, though so far June is running worse than May for me on a day for day basis, which is bad when you consider it should be better.

Sadly, my setup does not believe there is a 'home' sat in the house. It believes it is somewhere out and about. Mind you, the mobile has taken half an hour to even find the 'away' connection capability. Doing anything else is a waste of time. I wondered about using the cheap rate nighttime to charge the battery. So far, I am none the wiser, just very frustrated.

How does the eddi know what temp is in your water tank

As always a well balanced and informative video Tim. You obviously don't believe in the "logic" of renewable tariffs and I don't blame you. But I give them a bit more rope because, OK we know that some of the electricity we use will be coming from gas (and payed back later with renewables). But this subterfuge will have to be fixed as we approach net zero. And actually some of my renewables comes from biomass so not weather dependent. As for accounting you are so right about each person's calculation being different. "Predictions are difficult, especially when about the future". Suppose your gas/oil boiler needs replacing, it is cheapest to replace like with like - sure. But suppose the gas is turned off sometime towards 2050 or oil becomes very expensive, then you replace the boiler again this time with a heat pump, so now, in the long run (and in retrospect) it was the difference between (gas/oil boiler + heat pump) versus (heat pump). Voila! (Though it might not happen like that!)

Mitsubishi have released a system in europe that includes the DHW, seems difficult to get hold of, but can currently order the outdoor unit from shopclima. If you search multi split PXZ, should find most of the details. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pqKxYouwo5arjdU&ab_channel=Domingd.o.o.

Great Red Dwarf reference! Intelligent Flux is EPIC! Our May energy bill was -£77. Yep - = credit. And we have an EV.

Could we have a "Tim and Kat's Green Walk" video with the two of you in green fields or forests, walking arm in arm, pointing out things to each other off-camera and laughing, perhaps soundtracked by Greensleeves or similar?

Interesting to see similar thoughts in terms of Enphase for additional panels in awkward places. Had a little look at GIS for panels on the other side of the house (North East) and the figures are surprisingly good overall, nearly 2/3rds of the production of our south-west array. But it seems that all of that will be in the summer when I have plenty of solar anyway, and production is pitiful in the winter when some extra capacity would be super-useful.

I mentioned in a previous video that Octopus were not charging the batteries during the free “power up” periods. I queried this with them and this was their response. “ I just wanted to let you know I have received an update regarding your power ups query and can confirm, battery/EV schedules will not be updated to charge during a Power-up! Customers that want to charge during a Power-up need to boost charge / overrule the charging schedule and it's their responsibility to ensure the charging stops when the Power-ups ends” We all know that you can make changes but in a short period of time, the setting fall back to their own. It’s disappointing that Octopus are telling customers lies!!

Thanks Tim. I’m on IOG and my generation, consumption, import and export are similar to yours. Doing the IOG maths for your numbers Import 419.17 x 0.075=£31.43 Export 698.51 x 0.15 = £104.77 104.77-31.43 = £73.34 Better than £66.08 you received on IOF. Have you included the standing charge in your calculations?

Thanks Tim, Ive just changed to Intelligent GO so all my charging (home and car) dishwashing and washing machine are done from 11:30 pm. May was a disappointment for solar but Agile tariff still returned £45 in export and £34 in import so at least I`m in credit for May. Be interesting to see how Intelligent GO performs.

Tim how do you monitor all the different electricity demands within your house (towel rails, cooker, heat pump etc). I expect someone has already asked this , apologies, but there are too many videos and too many comments for me to find the answer.

Another great video. We are not doing quite as well as that since we are just about breaking even now but it is early June. However we have only half the solar panel power, (same battery), we don't have an electric car, but we don't use any gas, (just heat pump and electric cooker.) We also live in chilly Yorkshire! A lot of swings and roundabouts , broadly similar end result!

What a great effort , well done. Unfortunately my system has an "intelligent" heat pump controller (Homely) which optimises heat pump activity for different tariffs, so I guess it would be virtually impossible to make a prediction spreadsheet. I don't know how common such controllers are. Anyone know?

I installed a air to water heat pump about 18 months ago. And just got a few solar panels this week. I am wondering why you went for air to air since you already had radiators for the gas boiler (I presume). Air to water seems simpler in that it gets plumbed into existing radiators (or new ones if the old ones weren't big enough.) Goes straight to your heated towel rails. Heats your water (new cylinder required. ) There was a bit of disruption putting in the bigger bore pipe but I guess there was similar disruption putting in your air ducts. In my first year I reckon we are paying about 20% less for fuel however we previously had a gas Aga for cooking and hot water which was rather inefficient. Anyway 20% .... it would take till the second coming to repay haha. The big saving is in CO2 emissions (main reason I did it). I calculated we cut our household emissions by 97% which I was pretty amazed at. That is over 10 tonnes less CO2 from our house per year. This is more that you could likely achieve by giving up flying AND getting an electric car. Even if we'd had a normal gas cooker I calculated the CO2 reductions would still be about 95%.

Hi Tim thanks for this video and the video about the app; both really useful, but I did not see whether it answered the question that I have about resetting back to Eco after forced export It seems absurd that if you set up the system for a forced export, it cannot run in Eco mode until the forced export at 16:00 and then back to Eco after the forced export is finished - either due to time or SOC limit being reached This seems surprising as it will switch back to Eco after a timed charge After some research, I have found a site - Wonder Watt, currently free, where you can set up your schedules to charge or forced export and the instruction from WW resets the inverter to Eco after the forced export. If a third party can do this, why can't GE? WW also allows you to set up schedules to charge or export using a solar PV forecast The inverter is a GIV-AC3.0 - no idea whether this is a Gen 1 or Gen 2, but as the system was installed in September 2023, I would hope that it is a Gen 2 As you have spent more time on this - and spoken directly with GE staff, I was wondering how you have set up your system so that it automatically reverts to Eco after the forced export I have spent quite a bit of time with GE support and they say that you had switch Eco off and on manually - and that there is nothing that they can do about it I hope that you can help me! On rereading the comments section in more detail it sounds as if your inverter does automatically switch back to Eco after export - as you have a Gen 2 inverter - maybe mine is a Gen 1....

Hi Tim, have you thought of using the October-Aid App which can show the actual high rate, mid rate & low rate for import and the actual high rate & mid rate for the export for different time periods including customising !

Crazy low standing charge. Think we're paying 65p!

would octoprice web site sort out the best tariff based on your history use

(new to the channel, so apoligies if any of this has been covered in a previous video) Have you considered Octopus Agile? Pricing changes half-hourly, and import is occasionally down around 5p/kWh, sometimes getting as low as 0p/kWh or even negative. Agile export also varies and is usually around half of import, however Octopus do allow you to be on Agile for import and Fixed for export (15p/kWh all the time) meaning that there are times when import is significantly lower than export (at the time of writing this comment, import in my area is 6.16p/kWh) One thing to note with the tariffs is that you can't combine Flux export with Agile import. If you want to be on Flux, you need it for both import and export, but you can split up Agile. I've written a lot of my own code to manage my system myself, and determine what mode to put the system into at any time. I've personally not been doing any force discharge recently, but I'm wondering if I should do that at various points in the day, depending on pricing.

Have you considered other tariffs for your “Rule of Thumb” chart? I have recently moved to Octopus so am currently on the variable tariff. Unfortunately, I have an I-Pace and an unsupported Indra charger, so with the recent JLR API saga I cannot go to IOG. With my newly installed Solar/GE AIO, Octopus are waiting for my DNO export approval. So, my current setup is Variable tariff with “Economy 7” which is 30.91p day rate and 7 hours at 12.86p. I am a low usage EV charger, so solar and occasional Economy 7 rates suffice. As I am self sufficient during the summer months (so the day rate is irrelevant) and I have applied for the 15p export rate, I wonder if this would be better than moving to OG with only an 8p export rate? Notwithstanding the Flux packages may still be better once I am fully enrolled with Octopus, but it would be good to see how they compare.

Great video Tim, as you say the important part is the ranking, rather than actual figures. I am managing around 95% night rate use over the Summer months and am on Intelligent Octopus Go, as we use a lot of electricity.

Great video Tim. Can’t get IF due to having PWs (sad that the TEP has gone!). Flux for us during the summer, IOG (+ Outgoing Fixed Export) for the winter seems to be the best compromise for us

Very interesting thanks Tim for sharing your figures. On the GivEnergy forum other users of IOF have shared their experiences; some of the charging times seem weird and not aligned to agile/market rates so good to see that actually it has worked out best overall for you. I know you don’t want to include Agile in your comparison due to the variability, but plugging my May average agile price (11.82p/kWh) into your import and export figures gives a cost of -£55.25 which is very close to Flux but still not as good as IOF. My calculations of Flux vs Agile+Fixed indicated that there wasn’t much in it so I didn’t change from my winter tariff but with a consumption:generation ratio of 2.6 in May, I’m now wondering again about IOF. I have two inverters which I think IOF might not like. Oh decisions, decisions.

Your rule of thumb chart seems to be holding up well. I’m on intelligent go and find I’m only using about 20% max of my battery in the evening (Giv AIO) so definitely scope for some forced discharge in the evening before 11:30 pm. 5kWh per evening seems reasonable?

Back of my fag packet says i could generate an extra tenner a month by force exporting half my battery every day (4.5 x 7.5p x 30 ). (7.5p because import at 7.5p export at 15p) but aside the hassle of doing that (or spending maybe £200 on a HA setup to automate it?) I'm worried how hot my inverter gets in force export, an issue yours doesn't seem to have but I know from the forums others do. I have the GE 5kW inverter is yours the same or the 3.6? Anyway because of those two 'features' I'll stick with IGo. I only switched to iGo halfway through May and havent had a bill yet to see how it worked out, in practice, so this June will be my first full month. Also i dont know for sure what my gen/usage ratio will be but I'm guessing around 1.4 to 1.5 x gen over consumption so theres not much of a difference between IGo and IFlux at that ratio.

Hi there just about to make the decision to buy a Givienergy stack 3 (3 phase ) with inverter also 3. Phase. I live in holland and have 16*408 w solar panels on roof, and we have time here were we get grid overload at 253 V and the solar panels inverters would shut down if I used this system so that it is isolated from grid do you think the panels will keep charging battery and also supply house ? Best regards Mal Robbins

Don't mind what Octopus does with my battery outside of peak (e.g. 4pm-7pm) but I have also noticed something strange. At 4pm my battery is 100% SOC but constrained to 639W output (versus it's total 6,000W output). It's cloudy now, so if I boil the kettle I have to pay high rate for the electricity from the grid (after the first 639W of course). Or if I make an early dinner where I need to put the oven on using 3kW from the grid at Peak also. This does not make sense: 1 - As a consumer I don't want to pay a premium for my electricity when I have 13.5kWh in my battery 2 - The grid does not want me to draw from it at this peak time either. I don't get what Octopus is doing during the Peak time. Anyone else seen this constrained output with a full battery forcing Grid Import at Peak rate?