On-grid domestic battery storage

Solarchaser

Thats a very good point Scott.
Even though I've been waiting 7 months for octopus to change my smart meter, I was assuming id go onto agile rather than go.... this is a good reason for going with go!

cdunne

Missing the point but why go not agile? I'm also awaiting  a smart meter.. I did have an appointment in Julybut in the day they cried off due to the technician having a late night. Then the assistant spotted the Leicester in my address and stated that due to local lockdown they wouldn't fit it.. even though I live 12 miles away from that zone!
I keep chasing them but no progress ...

EVandPV

Solarchaser said:

Thats a very good point Scott.
Even though I've been waiting 7 months for octopus to change my smart meter, I was assuming id go onto agile rather than go.... this is a good reason for going with go!

7 months !!??
Guess they must still be behind after the lockdown.
We switched from Go to Agile in July to try it but just switched back to Go this month as we were averaging 8p a unit. On Go, we average 6p a unit so even with the slightly higher standing charge, it works out better for us. Makes deciding when to charge the EV so much easier too.
Agile pricing has been much higher lately than it was in the spring with the peak price often at or around the max of 35p.
I suppose it might work for folk who don't have a battery and can keep their useage from 4-7pm to a minimum.
The great thing is that it's really quick and easy to switch between Go and Agile. Takes seconds online and your switched by midnight.

ASavvyBuyer

We swiched from Go to Agile in April and benefitted from the low rates through the Spring. However, during August we monitored the rates and could see them gradually rising. Not helped by National Grid paying the nuclear power stations, that were not closed for maintenance, to reduce output, so that the gas & coal power stations could make up the difference & increase the Carbon Intensity of generated power!

We switched back to Go Faster at the beginning of September, but are still monitoring the Agile rates.

Our average since moving to Go Faster is 7.21p/kWh compared with the estimated rate of about 10p/kWh if we were still on Agile for our usage profile.

Solarchaser

cdunne said:

Missing the point but why go not agile? I'm also awaiting  a smart meter.. I did have an appointment in Julybut in the day they cried off due to the technician having a late night. Then the assistant spotted the Leicester in my address and stated that due to local lockdown they wouldn't fit it.. even though I live 12 miles away from that zone!
I keep chasing them but no progress ...

Due to the import at dinner time with induction hobs.

I've been tracking agile too... though not religiously, and feel its probably a bit cheaper if I track the rates every day and adjust charge times, but while that may be fun for a short while, I know ill tire of it quickly,  so I feel a set schedule is better.

I've also noted from the energy stats page a notable trend upwards for all agile pricing.

7 months isn't ideal, and generally id be quite unhappy about it, but the virus isn't the fault of octopus 

EVandPV

Solarchaser said:

cdunne said:

Missing the point but why go not agile? I'm also awaiting  a smart meter.. I did have an appointment in Julybut in the day they cried off due to the technician having a late night. Then the assistant spotted the Leicester in my address and stated that due to local lockdown they wouldn't fit it.. even though I live 12 miles away from that zone!
I keep chasing them but no progress ...

I've been tracking agile too... though not religiously, and feel its probably a bit cheaper if I track the rates every day and adjust charge times, 

I had a python script running during July and August to do exactly that with the Lux but Go still would have worked out cheaper.
I've simplified the script to work with Go so that it just checks the Solcast API for a forecast of our pv generation for the following day and sets a charge during the Go cheap period accordingly.

Solarchaser

And this is something you could manufacture, and distribute to those of us who don't know what an api is??

EVandPV

Solarchaser said:

And this is something you could manufacture, and distribute to those of us who don't know what an api is??

It's fairly specific to my setup as it gets the battery data direct from the pylons via serial cable and also controls my zappi ev charger but there's a script available that will work with any Lux inverter and can be run on a raspberry pi ....... https://github.com/celsworth/octolux
Although I have my own python script, I use 2 of the ruby modules from octolux to enable and disable ac charging on the Lux.

Solarchaser

I was with you until script, then in my head I just "the man who can't be moved" 😂😂

Seriously though, I've never messed with that kind of thing, done a bit of programming back in the day, but that was a while ago.
Is there anywhere you would recommend for an idiots guide to Ruby's. Raspberries and pi's?

I've read about them for often enough, I really should have looked into them by now

EVandPV

Solarchaser said:

I was with you until script, then in my head I just "the man who can't be moved" 😂😂

Seriously though, I've never messed with that kind of thing, done a bit of programming back in the day, but that was a while ago.
Is there anywhere you would recommend for an idiots guide to Ruby's. Raspberries and pi's?

I've read about them for often enough, I really should have looked into them by now

😂
I actually only started dabbling in programming again myself recently. Haven't done any proper coding since the good old days of BASIC on bbc micros and the C64. Tought myself a bit of python during the lockdown and started messing about with rasp pi's this year too.
If you've used Linux before, you'll get on fine with a raspberry pi. The latest OS is pretty user friendly and Windows-like.
You don't really need to know much about coding to use octolux. It's just a case of editing the info at the start of the config file such as your inverter and datalogger serial numbers. Then setup a task schedule so that octolux runs every half hour.