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

Sea_Shell

QrizB said:

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.

So it could become self levelling, over time, at a more static price, rather than wild swings between peak and off peak.  

Chasing the cheap times, will increase demand for those times, which will then increase price, so people then chase the next cheapest slot... rinse and repeat?!

MWT

Sea_Shell said:

QrizB said:

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.

So it could become self levelling, over time, at a more static price, rather than wild swings between peak and off peak.  

Chasing the cheap times, will increase demand for those times, which will then increase price, so people then chase the next cheapest slot... rinse and repeat?!

This is why Octopus have developed the 'Intelligent' tariff for EV use, you tell it when you need the car charged by, and it works out the best combination of 30 min slots to achieve the set objective.

This is also why these tariffs target EV owners as the cars charging is already capable of being remotely controlled, so it gives them direct control over a very large aggregated load which it can turn on and off as needed. 

Sea_Shell

MWT said:

Sea_Shell said:

QrizB said:

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.

So it could become self levelling, over time, at a more static price, rather than wild swings between peak and off peak.  

Chasing the cheap times, will increase demand for those times, which will then increase price, so people then chase the next cheapest slot... rinse and repeat?!

This is why Octopus have developed the 'Intelligent' tariff for EV use, you tell it when you need the car charged by, and it works out the best combination of 30 min slots to achieve the set objective.

This is also why these tariffs target EV owners as the cars charging is already capable of being remotely controlled, so it gives them direct control over a very large aggregated load which it can turn on and off as needed. 

Which works whilst it's still a small percentage of customers.

I'm talking about X years time when EV ownership is main stream.

MWT

Sea_Shell said:

MWT said:

Sea_Shell said:

QrizB said:

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.

So it could become self levelling, over time, at a more static price, rather than wild swings between peak and off peak.  

Chasing the cheap times, will increase demand for those times, which will then increase price, so people then chase the next cheapest slot... rinse and repeat?!

This is why Octopus have developed the 'Intelligent' tariff for EV use, you tell it when you need the car charged by, and it works out the best combination of 30 min slots to achieve the set objective.

This is also why these tariffs target EV owners as the cars charging is already capable of being remotely controlled, so it gives them direct control over a very large aggregated load which it can turn on and off as needed. 

Which works whilst it's still a small percentage of customers.

I'm talking about X years time when EV ownership is main stream.

The more cars there are out there trying to charge, the more this technology will be needed to avoid overloading the grid.

This is something needed for the long term, it certainly isn't necessary now.

The current project is gathering data and is certainly priced artificially to attract customers and give them a large enough cohort to make the data meaningful.

Aussie_Tips

MWT said:

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.

Agreed, however that’s one of the proposals in the linked blog - introduce battery tariffs to allow the spreading of battery charging and provide cost incentives to get people to do it

Aussie_Tips

MWT said:

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.

The problem is solar requires a roof. If you live in a high rise flat or you rent a property your unlikely to be able to install solar, and if you do have a roof there’s shading, orientation,  pitch and geography issues (in Scotland benefits are less than in Cornwall so it’s not just December). Don’t get me wrong, I think solar is great (I have it installed), but not everyone can.

The objective of the post was to consider options that can help the majority and a battery install (with funding for those who can’t afford it) can do this.

MWT

PGammage said:

MWT said:

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.

Agreed, however that’s one of the proposals in the linked blog - introduce battery tariffs to allow the spreading of battery charging and provide cost incentives to get people to do it

The problem is that there is no way with the current energy costs and the way settlement works to be able to offer a 'battery' tariff as with the aim to time-shift it would work out too expensive for the suppliers to even contemplate.

The nearest thing at the moment to a tariff aimed at using a battery to time-shift would be the Tesla Energy Plan, but that only works if you have solar energy to draw on for at least part of the battery charging.

Sadly your premise of being able to get energy from the grid at 25% of the normal day time cost is false, that isn't possible now and there is no sign it is going to be possible in the future.

The Go/Go Faster model is not capable of being rolled out to a mass market and certainly isn't a profit maker even as it is now, and would make even larger losses if it was used to time-shift a mass of small batteries.

markin

How many people could do this before the grid dip becomes level/peak, The is around 10GW difference between the 2AM 25GW demand and 6pm day time low point demand, But the picture would be different anyway when the are 10m EV users charging up at 1AM

Still probably best to leave it to utility scale and V2G Deleted_User 'vehicle to grid'.

MWT

markin said:

How many people could do this before the grid dip becomes level/peak, The is around 10GW difference between the 2AM 25GW demand and 6pm day time low point demand, But the picture would be different anyway when the are 10m EV users charging up at 1AM

Still probably best to leave it to utility scale and V2G Deleted_User 'vehicle to grid'.

One big problem is that we are still having to use expensive gas/coal generation to supply even the lower demand overnight, so although we need less energy at that time of day it isn't necessarily cheaper energy right now.

Solar is obviously no help at night and the wind isn't strong enough often enough for wind generation to help all that much.

We have allowed our nuclear generation capability to fall too far below our needs and we are paying the price for that now.

V2G is still relatively expensive and uncommon as a car feature, and requires the car to actually be connected to the grid with sufficient energy to make it viable to consider taking it from the car, instead of charging the car which is generally why people have plugged it in ...

Section62

PGammage said:

MWT said:

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.

....

The objective of the post was to consider options that can help the majority and a battery install (with funding for those who can’t afford it) can do this.

I have to disagree with that.

The premise of the thread is whether this idea would "help with household energy bill crisis".

Firstly, the bill "crisis" (needs some definition) is here now.  A solution involving batteries will take time to roll out on the scale necessary to help a significant proportion of the population.  There's a risk that by the time the solution is in place, the "crisis" will have passed and there will be a different problem to solve.

Secondly, as various posters have pointed out, the economics and practicalities of the idea means that some (we could say a 'lucky few') will benefit from adopting the idea, but typically they will be people with the wherewithal and enthusiasm to take advantage of the opportunity. The "majority" won't be able to take advantage because mass take up kills the economics stone dead.

Thirdly, funding for those who can't afford it will inevitably come from either energy bill payers, or from the taxpayer. It is a form of redistribution of wealth, rather than a technological leap forward.  For there to be winners, other people will have to be losers.  Hence it will simply change the set of people who are in "crisis".

Fourthly, all policy ideas have to be thought through and checked for unintended consequences.  In this case, the demand for raw materials and manufacturing capacity to produce batteries for home storage will (at least in the short-term) put pressure on the cost and availability of batteries for vehicles, and may reduce the take up of EV's.  Switching to EV's is a policy priority because air pollution is having an effect on people's health in town and city centres.  Stopping people dying (and becoming sick) from air quality related illness will always trump saving people a small amount on their energy bills.

Fifthly, it will be quicker, and almost certainly cheaper, to simply further subsidise the energy costs of those most in "crisis".