Export tariffs - FIT, SEG, Octopus Outgoing Agile

70sbudgie

Although it won't be enough to to export, I am still generating. 😀

Magnitio

Screwdriva said:

That's insanely high! Anyone know what the driver for this is?

Energy production from wind yesterday was particularly low (less than 4% at some points) so there was a greater reliance on gas and coal. Wind generation has picked up a bit today, resulting in a drop in the rates althought they remain relatively high. Not sure there has been a significant increase in demand: aircon/refridgeration will be up, but I would expect there is also a reduction in use of cookers/kettles.

QrizB

I see that https://www.energy-stats.uk has updated their charts to reflect the new 55p Agile cap:

Tracker is also capped at 55p now. (Customers with previous versions of Agile or Tracker will, I guess, keep their old capped rates of 30p/ 35p / 40p until their 12 months are up.)

Lastonestanding

It's certainly interesting if a 25 year contract can be changed from 50% deemed export to measured export.
With 11.7% RPI inflation, it may become desirable to break the contract in a few years.

QrizB

Lastonestanding said:

It's certainly interesting if a 25 year contract can be changed from 50% deemed export to measured export.
With 11.7% RPI inflation, it may become desirable to break the contract in a few years.

I'm not entirely clear on what you mean.

The domestic solar FITs have always allowed you to opt out of deemed export in favour of metered export, and allow you to surrender export payments entirely and join another scheme, all while continuing to receive generation payments. None of this is "breaking the contract".

If you did "break the contract" you'd lose the generation payments too.

For those of us with early FITs it's the generation payments which are the lucrative part.

gefnew

That is true the fit payment for people who took the risk and pricing then, will reap the rewards E.G. £881.41p for the last quarter ending June, if I also went from deemed export could maybe add more to the pot.
At present the saving on bills and gas have a diverter all add up, last month gas and electric bill total was £43.41p 220 kwh gas
121kwh electricity.

QrizB

I'm reminded of why I started this thread

QrizB said:

My FIT is old enough that my current deemed export is at 3.95p/kWh, so in a typical year of generating 2500kWh my deemed export is 1250kWh export payment is ~£50. Nothing to get too excited about I realise. However E.ON's SEG tariff is 5.5p/kWh. At that tariff, the same 1250kWh would be worth almost £69. Not a huge increase but worth having, particularly if my metered export turns out to be less than the deemed amount (and I have no real clue what my actual export is).

However that got me looking at Octopus's Agile Outgoing tariff. From the data here it looks as though Agile Outgoing is almost always a better rate than 5.5p/kWh during daylight hours when PV is doing its thing.

My smart meter was fitted on the 26th of July 2021, so it's a year old today. Happy birthday 🥳

This means I've got a full year of export data, to go with my full year of generation. (OK, it's still daylight, but today is dull enough that the next seven hours isn't going to have an appreciable effect). What are the scores on the doors?

• Generation: 2596kWh
• Export: 1172kWh, 45.1% of generation

And what has that earned me? This is slightly complicated because my FIT export tariff changed in April.

• Deemed export: 868kWh @ 3.95p/kWh + 430kWh @ 4.25p/kWh = £52.56

If I'd been on metered export with the FIT tariff, I'd have been worse off. If I'd taken SEG instead, the numbers change.

• 1172kWh @ 5.5p/kWh E.ON SEG = £64.46

But of course I'm being supplied by Octopus. Here's where it gets really interesting (I know the fixed rates were lower for part of the period, I'm overlooking that):

• Octopus SEG: 1172kWh @ 4.1p/kWh = £48.05
  
• Octopus Outgoing Fixed: 1172kWh @ 7.5p/kWh = £87.90
  
• Octopus Outgoing Agile: 1172kWh @ 15.65p/kWh = £183.42
  

Because I'm currently on Octopus Go, I'd only qualify for the lowest payment rate and my 4.25p/kWh FIT export rate is more lucrative. However, if I was on a more conventional tariff I could have chosen Outgoing; Fixed would've been worth an extra £35, and Agile would add another £96. (Agile would probably have been better than that; I've picked the 365-day average price for 1500-1530 from Energy Stats but the export rate was higher than that for every other slice where I'd be generating).

As it is, Go has saved me a fair bit more than £130 over the year so I'm still ahead. However I'll have to weigh everything up carefully in September when my current Go fix expires.

70sbudgie

There is a website that uses the Octopus API to compare your actual smart meter data with historical agile prices. So you can see exactly what you would have earned / payed over the last year. I read about it on the Octopus blog when they were developing the new dashboard, but I haven't been able to find it again. I didn't have enough data when I found it to really play around with it. 

Magnitio

70sbudgie said:

There is a website that uses the Octopus API to compare your actual smart meter data with historical agile prices. So you can see exactly what you would have earned / payed over the last year. I read about it on the Octopus blog when they were developing the new dashboard, but I haven't been able to find it again. I didn't have enough data when I found it to really play around with it. 

I use the Octopus Go Agile app for android. This uses your consumption/export figures using an API key and calculates your costs/income.

NoobSolar

If you are not an octopus customer (so you get their 4.1p rather than 7.5p tariff) you have an account which shows itself to be in credit. You then can email them to ask them to pay it out to you.