surge pricing

Verdigris

Adapt and survive. It's what Darwin would have wanted.

c_smith

Verdigris said:

Not everyone will be in a position to do that though due to work, family and other commitments.  Why should they be penalised?

You have the option of being penalised all the time by hanging on to a dumb meter. On the other hand a home storage battery could provide cheaper electricity during the peak hours, if you really can't adjust your lifestyle, and you have a smart meter.

Is that an option if you don't have solar?  A battery that stores energy when it's dirt cheap and then uses that energy when it's expensive?  I'm not averse to such a system, but like everything, it would have to be financially viable and how long would it take to recoup the costs of the battery system, bearing in mind that they have a finite lifespan.  

I'm always wary of companies touting these energy saving systems, it's great for them, they're making money out of it, but is it financially sensible for the consumer? 

Verdigris

Is that an option if you don't have solar?

Yes.

it would have to be financially viable and how long would it take to recoup the costs of the battery system, bearing in mind that they have a finite lifespan.

Well the financial viability depends on the differential between off-peak and on-peak prices. A crystal ball is required for that calculation but I don't think (on-peak) electricity is going to get much cheaper over the next decade or so. Batteries are now, typically, guaranteed to 6000 cycles, so 6000 days if you complete charge and discharge in 24 hours. However, if you only half discharge that would double the time, although the economics work best if the battery is matched to consumption and does cycle one a day.

Who knows what technology will be available in 16 years time.

[Deleted User]

Surge pricing is just alarmist journalistic speech. As yet, I have seen no sensible short-term suggestions from anybody of these forums about how the Grid should manage variable renewable supplies with demand. We could, of course, just ignore Global Warming and start harvesting the UK’s considerable reserves of gas by fracking, That would probably give us stable gas prices for the next 100 years.

In the past, we routinely paid coal and diesel-fired generators to sit on standby in case there was a need for extra supply. Today, when we have blue skies and gales, we pay wind farms to feather the blades on their turbines. 

Encouraging consumers to shift their usage to periods when supply exceeds demand is a ‘win win’ situation. Peak demand is reduced and consumers get to wash their clothes; charge their EVs etc when electricity prices are low. Equally, offering contracts with a peak power limit for a cheaper overall price will also suit a large number of consumers. The lower the peak limit, the cheaper the tariff.

I don’t buy into the argument that consumers cannot adapt. How would putting the dishwasher on at 8pm rather than 6pm impact a family household? Retaining standard unit pricing will never change consumer behaviour. Like others who post here, I saved a lot of money through the Agile tariff and I am doing do now on Octopus’ Go Faster tariff. I could do the same if I switched to EDF or Good Energy.

All that said, most countries with time-of-use tariffs still offer a standard tariff - but ‘do what you like when you like’ tends to come with a slightly higher cost.

QrizB

c_smith said:

Not everyone will be in a position to do that though due to work, family and other commitments.  Why should they be penalised? 

Electricity is already available on tariffs where it is significantly cheaper for seven hours a night; in exchange the other seventeen hours of the day are a bit more expensive. It's called Economy 7, has been around since 1978 and is available to pretty much everyone.

People who are unable or unwilling to make use of E7 have to pay the standard rate and typically end up paying more, on average, for their electricity. If you look at the April 2022 Ofgem cap tables, picking for example the North West region, the standard unit rate is capped at 28.0p/kWh while the E7 rate is capped at an average of 26.4p/kWh. For a typical 2900kWh/yr consumer the difference is £46/yr.

Smart tariffs are simply a more granular version of the same thing.

EssexHebridean

Yes - we currently pay a little over three times as much for the power we use between 7am - midnight. We’ve been on E7 for nearly 20 years now, it took a lot of getting used to but from the majority of comparisons I’ve seen with others in similar sized properties but using gas for heating we spend a good amount less than most of them on our bills.  We are in a position to use appliances overnight - I appreciate that this might not work for everyone but it does for us. (And no, this doesn’t include a tumble drier - we do have a washer-drier but it’s almost never used for drying, and on the odd occasions it is the cycle is set to run the dry into the 30/60 minutes when we are either closest to getting up, or are already up, for safety reasons). Having got thoroughly to grips with the system we’re now able to use something around 70% of our electricity on the cheap rate. 

wild666

icsys said:

This 'surge' pricing will be the norm soon... whether you want it or not!

"Ofgem will be granted new powers in May allowing it to change the way smart meters operate, so that data about usage is sent to suppliers every 30 minutes by default.

Suppliers will be able to use the data to change consumer energy prices as much as 48 times per day, allowing them to charge households more at peak times."

Huge smart meter shake-up confirmed

So... that will be the end of 'fixed rate' deals !

So will they allow energy companies to force entry into homes to  install the meters if the meters are installed inside the home and not in cabinets outside the property? This could get ugly if people resist especially if the meters are inside the property and a dog is leftt there whilst the people are out at work.

GingerTim

wild666 said:

icsys said:

This 'surge' pricing will be the norm soon... whether you want it or not!

"Ofgem will be granted new powers in May allowing it to change the way smart meters operate, so that data about usage is sent to suppliers every 30 minutes by default.

Suppliers will be able to use the data to change consumer energy prices as much as 48 times per day, allowing them to charge households more at peak times."

Huge smart meter shake-up confirmed

So... that will be the end of 'fixed rate' deals !

So will they allow energy companies to force entry into homes to  install the meters if the meters are installed inside the home and not in cabinets outside the property? This could get ugly if people resist especially if the meters are inside the property and a dog is leftt there whilst the people are out at work.

Easily solved by making the only rates available to dumb meters prohibitively expensive in comparison to smart meter rates.

QrizB

wild666 said:

So will they allow energy companies to force entry into homes to  install the meters ...

Energy companies are already permitted to gain entry for the purpoise of meter replacements, among other things.

wild666

Gerry1 said:

Astria said:

Oxy1 said:

 If the meter is capable of transmitting usage data in real time then I would say it is quite possible that criminals will get their hands on that data also in real time.

Even if you got the data they had, there's still a lot of work to be done just to find out if someone is home. Just use more traditional techniques, it's far easier.

Obvious not so, as demonstrated by Switchee who know all the times when their targets are likely to be in or out.

If usage denotes times people are not at home then some days between 08:00 and 18:00 my meter has registered around 0.02 and 0.04 kWh of usage per hour. I am at home in those times as well it's just that I am not using hardly any electric or gas, it might be because I am reading a book, on a kindle, or asleep because of the medication. Some elderly people might also use very little energy, both gas and electric, as they wrap up in multiple layers of clothing in winter and use a hot water bottle as extra heating for the body. I know my gran used to use multiple layers and a hot water bottle, she paid her heating bills and regularly got over £400 per year back every 12 months as she massively overpaid for her electric and gas every year.