FREE Electricity with Octopus Energy. How Would You Use It?

[@LeeJonesNPT]

I usually run the house on the solar/battery during the day, but it was quite overcast so my battery was at about 80% and solar not generating much. I charged the car which was at about 70% and took it up to 90% and charged the home battery up to 100%, the dishwasher and washing machine both came on and did a cycle. I cooked my lunch at the same time. Not a lot of money saved but it all helps.

[@daniel_coe]

Sounds good. I did similar. I used about 11-12kWh I think.

[@matthewwakeham2206]

I just put a hot wash on, ran the dehumidifier, had a heater on in the lounge (it's cold here), put the immersion on, charged my solar generator (only 200 watts). Used about 60-70p. You are helping balance the grid and I guess it's a bit of an experiment to see how people respond. If it prevents curtailment then it's saving money somewhere along the line.

[@andrewdeans2179]

Charged car and had dishwasher and washing on as well as cooking. Had put battery to 100 % to stop it charging car. Accepted Solar was reducing power used. Look forward to hearing how it goes as usually consume from batteries during day. Cheers Andrew

[@daniel_coe]

Very similar here. I think I used 11-12kWh in the end, and house didn't blow up!

[@Deeje2]

Thanks for the heads up! I managed to get 6.6kWh into my car which is ~22mi, all completely free :) lovely jubbly!

[@daniel_coe]

Nice work!

[@gavjlewis]

Well I don't have an electric car or a battery so will struggle to use up a decent amount. Worse is I'm on Agile and the average over the hour is 3.5p/kWh. An hour isn't enough to run a full washing machine cycle or dishwasher cycle. So at best I'll probably use 2kWh extra or about 7p profit. Once you take into account the washing liquid and the dishwasher tablet it's not worth putting them on unless you planned to do a wash anyway. So on the face of it "free electric" there isn't much to be had, well for me at least.

[@chrisblunt7627]

Informative video as usual Daniel. I exported my battery to the grid earlier in the morning when the import rates (agile) were still higher, I feel better about that as the grid would be less green. I then set my invertor to prioritise export. At 1pm the battery was set to charge, dishwasher and immersion heater on, so I was drawing about 7kWh. It wasn't that sunny only about 1kWh coming in off the PV. If it had been sunny the PV DC to battery would have cancelled out my export, and again it wouldn't have been worth the trouble. I probably netted about 75p

[@daniel_coe]

Yes, it wasn't sunny for me either. Luckily. I think the wind turbines helped us get free electric today, it's been a bit windy here today.. I think my home peaked at drawing 13kW at one stage.

[@msscoventry]

Thanks for getting this out in time to be useful.

[@daniel_coe]

No problem.

[@judithsmith7385]

Just a thought - you’re pricing your savings at the lower rate but the price of electricity between 1 and 2 would be at the peak rate and that’s what you should get back. Your savings therefore will be a lot higher.

[@daniel_coe]

Yes, it will be interesting to see how they work it out. Just have to wait around 14 days to see though.

[@robinbennett5994]

I have a Solis inverter, and the app is just too clunky to bother changing the schedule for a pound or so. The problem here is that many of the people who can benefit from this (with an EV and home battery) already have solar, and are getting pretty cheap power already.

[@elliot330]

Charged the car and home batteries - 10.3kWh used x 7p = 72p saved. Did anyone else notice that we were still importing 3.9GW from Europe during the same hour, also, the unit rate was minus -£5.95/MWH. Does that mean Octopus gave us free electricity but made money for giving it away?

[@southwestsellers5475]

Will be discharging battery (can export 6kW minus household load) approx 5.8kWhs and charging during the "free hour". Unfortunately the "free hour" coincides with the highest solar gain so fingers crossed it is overcast and can make a modest financial gain.

[@daniel_coe]

The only time ever, solar panel users wish for cloud.

[@jamesbailey2601]

Thanks for the information But what about the VAT you will pay for all the extra KW?

[@daniel_coe]

Good question! I hope that's free as well!

[@davehan7039]

make sure you don't overload your incoming main fuse, normally 100A. Best not to go over 80A. 😬

[@chrismower5173]

Don't forget that if you have solar and are on say IOG you will usually be exporting at that time. So in fact the baseline Octopus will look at should be negative. So a few pennies more than your calculations.

[@lynnfisher4396]

We are on Octopus Go Intelligent so our import would be a 22.7p, it’s supposed to be cloudy here tomorrow so say solar gain is 1 kw, one hour with our 7kw EV charger would at a maximum put 6 kw of “free electricity into the car. We could do a tumble load perhaps 1 kw so a total of 7kw. We normally run off the battery with no grid use so no normal import. 7x22.7p =1.58.9p. Is it worth it?, it depends if you want to change battery sessions, switch the Zappi to Boost and help the grid. Monetarily it isn’t going to make much difference over a year. However, it’s the thought given by Octopus to actually do this that is important. Our EV could take some charge tomorrow so we have signed up just to see how it goes.

[@daniel_coe]

Hopefully, if it's a success, we might see more and for longer durations.

[@lynnfisher4396]

@@daniel_coe well we used 7.7kw, the clouds came in just as 1300 approached, we did our bit. This type of event would be great on cold windy winter afternoons just to top up before the evening.

[@lynnfisher4396]

An update. Just received my update from Octopus. They say I used 5.2 kw of imported electricity at a saving of £1.18p. The Powerwall and smart meter showed 7.7 kw as per my previous post above. Will be interesting to see what the billing shows for that day. Overall according to the email from Octopus their customers taking part saved £126,000 by using 531 MW hours of surplus green energy.

[@FClass]

Not so attractive to those of us on the agile rate, the two half hour rates for me was 4.19p & 3.17p/kwh, so close to free anyway. I’m more interested in when I get negative rates.

[@redshift3]

Thanks Daniel. I will be doing similar to you. Just for fun, there's not much profit Gas boiler for hot water has just now been switched off (normally runs every morning for 1 hour) and instead I will run my Eddi 1-2pm saving 9kWh x 4.35p/kWh of gas = 39.15p. I will charge my car saving 7.4kW x 7p/kWh = 51.8p. I will discharge my battery for 51 minutes in advance (remembering 15% round trip loss) earning 3kW x 0.85h x 15p/kWh = 45p and I will then recharge it for nothing during the next hour However, I will probably wipe out up to 6.5kWh (based on sunny Tuesday) of PV export, losing me 6.5kWh x 15p/kWh = 97.5p of export income Net gain is 39.15 + 51.8 + 38.25 - 97.5 = 31.7p whoopee!

[@daniel_coe]

If you're really lucky, it might be cloudy! No, I'm joking. Nobody with Solar wants a cloudy day. The wind is going to pick up, so I guess that may be the reason for it happening as well.

[@redshift3]

@@daniel_coe 🤣 I guess Octopus has a challenge due to too much generation locally (not sure which areas, it seems widespread). It would be even better if they incentivised us to reduce PV export during such times (if it makes economic sense). Such challenges are likely to become more prevalent, so this type of action could become more frequent, particularly if/when zonal pricing is brought in. It's all about flexibility to facilitate the energy transition.

[@ascot4000]

No email for me (Octopus Flux and signed-up). I would have done a dishwasher hot cycle, perhaps a washing machine quick wash, force an early export/recharge for the battery and use the immersion heater for the first time ever.

[@martinweston8147]

For me there is no need to strain my inverter so much, so I'll discharge my battery before at 2-3kw for a couple of hours, and then switch to solar charge for an hour or two, before then charging the battery flat out for an hour, there is no need to go straight from max discharge to max charge.

[@colingoode3702]

I got that e-mail as well. I'm really not sure if it's worth all the hassle changing all my schedules to max out the saving for just a 1 hour period at a time when we typically don't use a great deal of power &, whatever we do use is coming from batteries / solar. We do have an EV but it's just too much to consider for very little return plus, a fair chance I'll get something wrong which will land up costing me instead of saving me money!

[@daniel_coe]

Or if you're like me, will be doing something and completely forget about it.

[@Rubbernut]

I have a GivEnergy system can I divert the solar straight to the grid in this session

[@zamankhan4444]

Your thinking of a wrong offer. They have too much energy they don't want more. They want you to use it

[@peterjones6640]

Be useful to know when you have the results from the session how much Kw you used and how much money you made.

[@zamankhan4444]

So I've used 1.5 kWh for home load and charged my my battery 3.3kWh with panels switched off according to home assistant, octopus live as usual not working. Hopefully octoplus will do a more accurate breakdown in a week

[@Rubbernut]

@@zamankhan4444 no I’m not

[@zamankhan4444]

I looked back a few weeks used 0kwh during those times apart from few days ago when prices went negative on Agile so I wonder how they going to work that out. But during the hour would have cost me 0.0419p and 0.0317p, guess I'll get home assistant to charge in the hour and turn off my solar panels. Solar forcast not looking too good either so good timing

[@redshift3]

Octopus isn't going to pay us for import, so there is no point turning of our solar panels to maximise import. Only import extra that is useful

[@daniel_coe]

It seems in the East the wind is going to be 18-19mph on the day, so maybe that what's paying for it.

[@zamankhan4444]

​@@redshift3. It would be easier to calculate how much I saved if I use only 1 source.

[@zamankhan4444]

​@daniel_coe . With Agile usually when it's windy prices are really cheap even negative. I think because they publish prices at 4pm and the wind picked up so they are offering it free to wider range of customers

[@terrymackenzie6784]

Do the opposite to a saving session so force discharge in the 2 hours before and recharge in the free hour and the car

[@daniel_coe]

Good plan.

[@peterjones6640]

Be useful to know when you have the results how much electricity you used and how much money you actually made.

[@daniel_coe]

Just have to wait around 14 days I believe.

[@JolaFasolaGroszek]

This company is not allowed to carry on regulated activities by Financial Services Authority, Look it up.