Renewables: "talking 'bout my generation"

k66

tunnel wrote: »

What hours are your eco 7 rates? I don't have an immersion heater but might be worth looking at swapping to E7 as we still "buy" about 6-10 kWhs(wife an 2 little kids), mainly in the eves and night. Actually isn't there still E10 rates or have they now gone forever?

11kWh today. Or 2.75 O's

Hi Tunnel, our night time (low rate) hours are 1.40 until 8.40 this suits us fine in the summer. Our area does not have E10 tariff.
I used to have washing machine, dishwasher and dryer on timers at night in the winter but with solar I am taking advantage of 'free electricity'.
I am with LOCO2 for electricity.

InVestor_2

15.7 kWh today

shafeeq

7.02 kwh or 2.34 O's

legoman62

Nice 'n sunny in the morning, then dull, cold and windy after lunch so 2.65 O's today:D

Oscargrouch

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

The "easiest" thing to do is fit a transformer (as in low voltage used on construction sites) as suitable switching would mean the 3kW immersion was still available for emergencies (this water has run cold ......!!) but the inverter could be used in summer cloudy conditions.

Fortunately my generation meter is next to my importing meter, so it is easy to see if spare electricity is available and then counting the flashes gives the discount (ie 1 import flash to 3 generation flashes means electricity at 25% of normal price).

Let us know your decision:D

All the above makes sense, but sometimes people are not in the house to be able to count the flashes. The best person on this thread to request an opinion on this subject is Eric Mears ; he has just started using an OptiPlug on his immersion heater, I believe. I don't know if Eco tariffs really work well with PV in the summer months, especially if you have a system of 4 kWp or above; in theory you should have enough 'spare' to do what you need to do each day. Unless, of course, you have Sunday Lunch at 23:00 hrs.

InVestor wrote: »

Another good day 23.6 kWh (£11.44)

Oh what * don't start quoting in £; that will be total confusion, do you not realise how many rates of FIT are going about?

k66 wrote: »

At the moment I am favouring the Wattson with a couple of Optiplugs.

Best thought for a long time...... Welcome home, hope you had a good visit to your family..

Only 2.48 O's today......:mad:

EricMears

As ever, weather wasn't quite as forecasters told it although broadly speaking it really was less sunny than yesterday so I guess they'd claim a degree of 'accuracy' - although how you can square a forecast of >90% cloud cover all day with my 10.63 kWh eludes me.

I have indeed used one of my optiplugs to feed a 3kW immersion heater via a 230v/115v transformer so am heating @750W whenever I have that much spare. Difficult though to report exactly how much benefit that gives as I can't measure my Heatbank temperature with any great degree of accuracy or be quite sure whether it's all heating up or just the area around the heating element. But there is certainly some electricity going into the system and it can't help but do some heating so I guess I must be saving some oil (but I can't measure oil usage accurately either).

John_Pierpoint

I must have been one of the early adopters in the 1970s

As explained in the link, one should aim to get 2/3rds of the electricity supplied via the night time register of the meter. Something that is challenged by the availability of "free" day time electricity - I guestimate that I use less than 1/3rd of my "free" electricity, and at least half of that saving reduces cheap rate usage.
A recent survey suggests that a large number of economy 7 users are not saving any money, due to insufficient night time consumption.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7

My system used to be similar to to the one illustrated in the link's picture and below, completer with spare replaceable wire fuses on top of the "time clock". Note that the time clock is kept on time by a radio signal.

My 1970s system differed in that it had a visible rotating clock with levers that switched on and off the lower rate register on the rotary meter. In theory it had a spring mechanism that mechanically controlled the clock, when the power was off.
As the last house on the circuit, I suffered an abnormally high frequency of power cuts - the "hurricane" of 1987, the van that took out the transformer and the kid in Tilbury, over 10 miles away, who hammered a 6 inch nail into the big black cable on the railway bridge, come to mind. [It was some compensation, if the cut lasted long enough for the time clock to stop, as it took a meter reader to notice and then an electrician to reset it].

About 10 years ago the rotary meters in the area were replaced by red flashing electronic ones.

The mechanical time clock found the installation of solar panels to be the last straw, it started going slow, made increasing grinding noises, and died.

So now I have a red flashing light electronic generation meter and a combined electronic remote controlled time clock and meter. It has two red lights, one that flashes and one that indicates the cheap rate. It also has a display that cycles through "R1 999999.99", "R2 999999.99", "hh:mm" , "dd-mm-yy" , "RT 8 88888888" , "rEd" ; where register 1 is the cheap rate kWh, 2 is the day rate kWh, GMT, date, ??????, warning of fraud - perpetrated by those panels.
A blue button enables the meter reader to freeze the display and then step through the cycle.
Unfortunately the remote control now keeps my clock on midnight to 07:00 GMT, I used to get 7 hours and 20 minutes out of the old clock.

Current generation and importing meters look similar to these:

KevinG

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

As explained in the link, one should aim to get 2/3rds of the electricity supplied via the night time register of the meter.

My break-even point is way below that, about 35% I think, which I can easily achieve.

[Deleted User]

15kWh yesterday, forgot to post earlier... Looks like more of the same today

John_Pierpoint

Just for the record, I am paying Scottish Power 6.07 & 12.15 pence per kWh inclusive of 5% vat plus roughly £10 a month inclusive of VAT; a standing charge disguised as a surcharge of about 100% on the first small number of day time units.

KevinG wrote: »

My break-even point is way below that, about 35% I think, which I can easily achieve.

Are you allowing for the uplifted price on the day time units, which are only then halved to create the price of the night time units?