Would a small home battery system (2kwh), without any solar, help with household energy bill crisis

Aussie_Tips

@ariarnia I've written another blog just for that, its a 5 minute read that walks you through measuring your consumption (no smart meter needed), sizing your solar/battery requirements, estimating savings & selecting a supplier 

https://pghintsandtips.blogspot.com/p/my-contribution-to-net-zero.html?m=1

markin

2KW is too small to make much difference on a personal level and 12kwh should be the sweet spot if you have Gas and not a heat pump, And VTG is picking up steam and makes far more sense.

Did it not used to be the case that Domestic users were subsiding Industry use, or has that ship sailed now they have all moved to china, shifting more power to off peak would hurt industry unless its all charged from the solar peak time.

This type of thread is usually at home in the Green board, where was it posted to?

QrizB

markin said:

2KW is too small to make much difference on a personal level and 12kwh should be the sweet spot ...

That's roughly Tesla Powerwall sized. If you've got £12-£15k sitting around for a powerwall and solar PV you can join Octopus on the Tesla Energy Plan and effectively eliminate your electricity bill.

Possibly worth it for higher-than-average energy users (someone using 5000kWh/yr could save £1400/yr) but not for most of us.

Sea_Shell

Just thinking out loud here...

Surely there will come a tipping point whereby so much power is taken overnight on "off peak" rates that they will become "peak" rates.

I just can't see the industry sitting back and letting everyone have much cheaper power overnight, if everyone's doing it.

Thoughts?

Aussie_Tips

Sea_Shell said:

Just thinking out loud here...

Surely there will come a tipping point whereby so much power is taken overnight on "off peak" rates that they will become "peak" rates.

I just can't see the industry sitting back and letting everyone have much cheaper power overnight, if everyone's doing it.

Thoughts?

That’s where the energy providers flexible offpeak tariffs come in. Octopus has Go Faster with a series of windows throughout the night. You can select one that suits you if it’s not fully subscribed. The result would be balancing consumption across periods to avoid peaks & troughs 

MWT

PGammage said:

Sea_Shell said:

Just thinking out loud here...

Surely there will come a tipping point whereby so much power is taken overnight on "off peak" rates that they will become "peak" rates.

I just can't see the industry sitting back and letting everyone have much cheaper power overnight, if everyone's doing it.

Thoughts?

That’s where the energy providers flexible offpeak tariffs come in. Octopus has Go Faster with a series of windows throughout the night. You can select one that suits you if it’s not fully subscribed. The result would be balancing consumption across periods to avoid peaks & troughs 

Just to be clear though, that is an EV tariff and is not open to those with home batteries.

Both Go & Go Faster are beta products on the route to the current 'Intelligent' tariff and I wouldn't bank on those being around too much longer after they get 'Intelligent' working with a wider range of vehicles.

QrizB

Sea_Shell said:

Surely there will come a tipping point whereby so much power is taken overnight on "off peak" rates that they will become "peak" rates.
I just can't see the industry sitting back and letting everyone have much cheaper power overnight, if everyone's doing it.
Thoughts?

The price of wholesale electricity relates to the balance between supply and demand. Looking at Nordpool, some of the highest prices today were between midnight and dawn, when you'd expect them to be cheap.

If we can move enough demand around, with smart tariffs and smart EV chargers to go with them, we should be able to reduce peak demand (and prices) but I would agree that off-peak prices are likely to rise in response.

Sea_Shell

PGammage said:

Sea_Shell said:

Just thinking out loud here...

Surely there will come a tipping point whereby so much power is taken overnight on "off peak" rates that they will become "peak" rates.

I just can't see the industry sitting back and letting everyone have much cheaper power overnight, if everyone's doing it.

Thoughts?

That’s where the energy providers flexible offpeak tariffs come in. Octopus has Go Faster with a series of windows throughout the night. You can select one that suits you if it’s not fully subscribed. The result would be balancing consumption across periods to avoid peaks & troughs 

I see.  So expensive all the time then 😉

k_man

PGammage said:

Sea_Shell said:

Just thinking out loud here...

Surely there will come a tipping point whereby so much power is taken overnight on "off peak" rates that they will become "peak" rates.

I just can't see the industry sitting back and letting everyone have much cheaper power overnight, if everyone's doing it.

Thoughts?

That’s where the energy providers flexible offpeak tariffs come in. Octopus has Go Faster with a series of windows throughout the night. You can select one that suits you if it’s not fully subscribed. The result would be balancing consumption across periods to avoid peaks & troughs 

This is why the work to move to intelligently managed usage. Which is one if the reasons EV tariffs are only for EVs. 
To see how this works, with a view to extending to more EVs and home battery solutions.

Otherwise, as suggested, off peak rates become peak, and with a really big spike at the start!
Go faster could suffer from this, albeit to a smaller extent

MWT

With the price of solar installations falling, the real win here is to get those who can install solar to do just that.

It doesn't help much in December, but otherwise you can still get meaningful amounts of energy from relatively modest arrays for the rest of the year.

After that you can look at the difference a small battery would make, but right now we really don't have an excess of energy at any point in the day it seems, so adding generation makes more sense than adding storage.