How low can you go...Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Whatever... electricity grid import

ed110220

Magnitio said:

70sbudgie said:

When you say "minimise self consumption" do you mean by being efficient and reducing total electricity consumption, or is it kust because you've got an amazing export rate (is it Octopus Agile?)

I believe it is important for everyone to minimise consumption. It does help to have an incentive and Agile Outgoing Octopus rates does provide that. There are many discussions on this board about maximising self-consumption, particularly for people on the FIT scheme. Whilst I understand the reasons for doing this, it doesn't always result in efficient use of energy. There needs to be good incentives for people to export excess energy that they don't need rather than trying to find ways in which to use it.

By "maximising self consumption" I think most people mean maximising import-substitution, ie replacing as much of your import as possible with your PV generated electricity. Not wastefully using your own generation just for the sake of using it up.

Alnat1

Imported 16.01kWh electricity in July, not too bad as we had mostly grey, drizzly weather for the last 11 days of the month. Exported 369kWh.

We use gas to heat the water tank, 107kWh for the month, 3.45kWh a day. 

That's 38p a day (Gas Tracker V3) to heat the water. Agile Outgoing were paying that much for 1kWh of electric for most of July. I know using the solar to heat water is greener but until prices change I'm sticking with the gas.

Just thought, a bit of that gas is the hob. Even less reason to give up gas for water heating.

QrizB

QrizB said:

QrizB said:

History for 2021 here.

History for 2022:

• January 2022 - 219kWh imported, 84kWh generated, 17kWh exported.
• February - 169kWh imported, 142kWh generated, 51kWh exported.
• March - 146kWh imported, 246kWh generated, 99kWh exported.
• April - 132kWh imported, 300kWh generated, 179kWh exported.
• May - 106kWh imported, 335kWh generated, 171kWh exported.
• June - 40kWh imported, 338kWh generated, 114kWh exported.

July turned out great for generation - better than May or June, bothe of which were themselves good - but import was up (due to me substituting off-peak electricity for gas HW.)

• July - 50kWh imported, 341kWh generated (125.3 O's, 110% of PVGIS), 100kWh exported (29% of generation).

Import is up at 1.6kWh/day. Most of that was off-peak with Go, substituting 5p/kWh electricity for 11p/kWh gas.

Self-consumption of 241kWh (7.8kWh/day) is also improved on last month and total export since installation of my smart meter is now only 46% of generation.

Compared to last July I've imported 49kWh less and have generated 22kWh more.

My latest Octopus Go statement shows July-ish consumption of ~25kWh off-peak and ~10kWh peak, for an average price of 8.0p/kWh.

July has been a good month, but we're over the hump now. PVGIS has August roughly 10% down on July. We'll see how it turns out.

70sbudgie

Magnitio said:

70sbudgie said:

When you say "minimise self consumption" do you mean by being efficient and reducing total electricity consumption, or is it kust because you've got an amazing export rate (is it Octopus Agile?)

I believe it is important for everyone to minimise consumption. It does help to have an incentive and Agile Outgoing Octopus rates does provide that. There are many discussions on this board about maximising self-consumption, particularly for people on the FIT scheme. Whilst I understand the reasons for doing this, it doesn't always result in efficient use of energy. There needs to be good incentives for people to export excess energy that they don't need rather than trying to find ways in which to use it.

I completely agree. I was just curious what you meant as it seemed to differ from other's use of the term.

For me, getting PV was the latest step in reducing my electricity (energy) consumption. My husband calls it my hobby and tolerates it where it saves money. We do have different understanding on what contributes to an ROI as I include more than just the ££s.

mickyduck55

328 kWh Total used
6.1  kWh imported as stated previously I will never get to zero even if in theory I should because of response times from the inverter 
574.66  kWh generated 
158  kWh exported (down on last month
0.5 kWh Highest daily import (my Pi went a little nuts and imported unnecessarily) 
0.04 kWh Lowest daily import

73 % of generation used... 

PVGIS 532
Best day 25.3 kWh
Worse day 10.6  kWh

Gas usage .. 1.5 m3

Quite a bit of AC usage during the heatwave!

mickyduck55

Snapshot in time: Generation exceeded usage .. since battery install Feb 2020, numbers will probably reverse as winter is upon us but nice for me to see today.. (apologies to people who read all the threads but I have also posted this on talking about my generation)

mickyduck55

That irritating standing charge...  Guess it could be and will be a lot worse in future!

70sbudgie

mickyduck55 said:

That irritating standing charge...  Guess it could be and will be a lot worse in future!

That seems an amazing tariff - who's it with? And how long will you get to keep it?

QrizB

70sbudgie said:

mickyduck55 said:

That irritating standing charge...  Guess it could be and will be a lot worse in future!

That seems an amazing tariff - who's it with? And how long will you get to keep it?

It' looks like Octopus Go (or Go Faster) and, if so, it's a 12 month fixed rate deal.

I can't speak for mickyduck55 but mine expires at the end of September. Will have to see what's available then, I'm not expecting to get another 12 months at the same rates!

mickyduck55

Yes go faster expires next March