Octopus Saving Session

michaels

TheElectricCow said:

Interesting that with at least two test sessions left they didn’t schedule one at what seems like the ideal time for one to put a dent in at least some of the demand seeing as they’ll have to happen at some point this month anyway. 

Purely speculation on my part but I wonder if the remaining test dates have already been predetermined to take place another day, or perhaps NG are expecting even worse supply/demand conditions later on and are looking to get the most value from the last tests?

Are there a max number of sessions or could they just add extra if conditions required them -  yesterday evening would appear to have been a much better candidate for the sessions than most of the ones we have seen so far.

Alnat1

There were to be 2 test sessions each month and then "real" sessions as necessary IIRC

razord

michaels said:

TheElectricCow said:

Interesting that with at least two test sessions left they didn’t schedule one at what seems like the ideal time for one to put a dent in at least some of the demand seeing as they’ll have to happen at some point this month anyway. 

Purely speculation on my part but I wonder if the remaining test dates have already been predetermined to take place another day, or perhaps NG are expecting even worse supply/demand conditions later on and are looking to get the most value from the last tests?

Are there a max number of sessions or could they just add extra if conditions required them -  yesterday evening would appear to have been a much better candidate for the sessions than most of the ones we have seen so far.

I think yesterday night's supply constraints surprised the ESO, as they only issued the coal warmup request yesterday morning.

The DFS doesn't really have the ability to react that fast by default, requiring at least 24 hours notice (although, I did think it was supposed to be able to handle this short notice incident... but I guess they've not run a test of that, so didn't want to risk it with a live event?)

TheElectricCow

michaels said:

TheElectricCow said:

Interesting that with at least two test sessions left they didn’t schedule one at what seems like the ideal time for one to put a dent in at least some of the demand seeing as they’ll have to happen at some point this month anyway. 

Purely speculation on my part but I wonder if the remaining test dates have already been predetermined to take place another day, or perhaps NG are expecting even worse supply/demand conditions later on and are looking to get the most value from the last tests?

Are there a max number of sessions or could they just add extra if conditions required them -  yesterday evening would appear to have been a much better candidate for the sessions than most of the ones we have seen so far.

My understanding is there’s 2 test sessions each month which are more just to make sure the systems work if they are needed for a live event and prove that such a event is worthwhile to run, I don’t think there’s a defined limit on the live ones should an actual DFS event be required.

razord said:

michaels said:

TheElectricCow said:

Interesting that with at least two test sessions left they didn’t schedule one at what seems like the ideal time for one to put a dent in at least some of the demand seeing as they’ll have to happen at some point this month anyway. 

Purely speculation on my part but I wonder if the remaining test dates have already been predetermined to take place another day, or perhaps NG are expecting even worse supply/demand conditions later on and are looking to get the most value from the last tests?

Are there a max number of sessions or could they just add extra if conditions required them -  yesterday evening would appear to have been a much better candidate for the sessions than most of the ones we have seen so far.

I think yesterday night's supply constraints surprised the ESO, as they only issued the coal warmup request yesterday morning.

The DFS doesn't really have the ability to react that fast by default, requiring at least 24 hours notice (although, I did think it was supposed to be able to handle this short notice incident... but I guess they've not run a test of that, so didn't want to risk it with a live event?)

I’ll agree it does seem a bit counterproductive if a DFS event can’t be put into action at very short notice. Seeing as the idea is to be able to reduce demand on the grid at times when they can’t guarantee enough supply will be available, it would make sense for them to be able to start an event quickly should they find they’re not able to ready enough backup generation capacity. 

I imagine we’re unlikely to face a situation  where such measures would genuinely be needed for the time being, but it does seem like this would have been the best time to test a scenario like that in preparation for a potential time in future where it really is necessary. At the same time I’m sure the people running NG probably know a lot more than me about the subject and I may well be talking nonsense.

70sbudgie

I wonder whether the data collected so far influenced their decision. Apologies if I'm wrong, but weren't the coal fired power stations generating all day - even during the window when the in day adjustment would have been? Perhaps they were needed to supply extra power for more than just 1-2 hours. 

Scot_39

70sbudgie said:

I wonder whether the data collected so far influenced their decision. Apologies if I'm wrong, but weren't the coal fired power stations generating all day - even during the window when the in day adjustment would have been? Perhaps they were needed to supply extra power for more than just 1-2 hours. 

Yes - they ramped up from around 4AM in the morning - and were delivering 1-1.5GW most of the day - c2GW peak at tea time IIRC - when the £1950 peak price happened. So when we were exporting almost 4GW for several hours to Europe via the French interconnect - they were on stream.

The dynamics around the peak were actually quite interesting.

The folly of the blind belief in cheap renewables infrastructure - i.e. without any significant and very expensive storage to help smooth out the inherent varaibility (which would make the costs significantly higher - unsutainably so in reality) - laid bare by the output dip - from c4:30 to c9:30pm from wind. To a trough of c1.3GW on Tues night as temperatures plunged below 0 across most of the UK - from c28GW installed - thats less than 5%.

Tuesdays £1950 - arguably far higher - if we had decommissioned the coal plants as scheduled last year - but their was headroom on interconnects afterwards to import more - probably from EDF nuclear in France for price - or burn more gas here.

But far lower - if New Labour had started construction of nuclear plants to compensate for the planned losses of old ones over last 15-20 years - on their watch. Cons under Major not blameless either.

To replace just 1GW of old nuclear, gas or coal plant permanently - so to decomission with a degree of certainty - but still risk - at Tuesday's nights low 5% output - we would need to build 20GW of wind. Solar out of it as was dark already.

To replace yesterdays peak gas supply - 21.3 GW - at that 5% "output" - another 426 GW of potential capacity on a like for like basis needed.  Thats 15x the current.

And on a good day - that 426 GW could deliver say 20/28*426 = 300 GW - or about 6-7x our daily peak demand in winter - far more than we would ever ever need.

The overcapicity needed to be built to cover the lows in output / actual power delivery - just doesnt stack up - in any rational energy model.

Even the EU - now counts nuclear as a green power source - in order to invest in it.

Approving Sizewell C - only the second in 13 years - is simply not enough.

But 2 is better than 0.

70sbudgie

Renewable energy isn't the silver bullet - nor is storage, nuclear or fossil fuels. There is no silver bullet when it comes to energy. We need a variety of solutions that complement each other.

And we need to be willing to change our habits. This is the main objective of the DFS scheme (Octopus savings sessions etc), imo. We know we have the technology for DFS. But how many households can be bribed to change their habits? How many households will maintain the new habit of load shifting once the financial rewards are less significant? For me, the most interesting data that will come out of the trials, will be what % of people that could take part, did. Overall and for each session. And what were the actual reductions in energy use? If that was extrapolated to everyone, what would that mean? And the trial this year has only dealt with in day load shifting. To get to where we need to be, we also need to be able to load shift across multiple days - perhaps even over a fortnight. That will be a lot more complicated to calculate the (bribes) rewards for.

We also need to look at why electricity demand increases when it is cold - yes I know it is because heating is working harder. But if we are to move more people onto electric heating, we need to be aware that the peaks we currently have will become more extreme. So what can be done to reduce those peaks as they are now?

I don't know how many households / businesses have electric heating, but I can't help but think that we should be looking at how we can make them more efficient before we move more people onto electric heating. 

patricia1066

Price has been the most effective incentive to lower gas use, in my case by 15% in last year. I thought I was adjusting my heating use before, but I really tried harder last year.

Until we forget how high electricity prices are, there is no way (politically) to get us to swop to electricity only.

As an incentive to use less electricity this scheme could not be more complicated. Just give us a basic daily low cost rate, and use price to manage the marginal use cases.

TheElectricCow

70sbudgie said:

And we need to be willing to change our habits. This is the main objective of the DFS scheme (Octopus savings sessions etc), imo. We know we have the technology for DFS. But how many households can be bribed to change their habits? How many households will maintain the new habit of load shifting once the financial rewards are less significant? For me, the most interesting data that will come out of the trials, will be what % of people that could take part, did. Overall and for each session. And what were the actual reductions in energy use? If that was extrapolated to everyone, what would that mean? And the trial this year has only dealt with in day load shifting. To get to where we need to be, we also need to be able to load shift across multiple days - perhaps even over a fortnight. That will be a lot more complicated to calculate the (bribes) rewards for.

I think this is more where the ideas for new Time of Use tariffs come in, which at least for the forum users here, is something that a lot of people are interested in getting involved in.

The DFS events, while a great principle, have been quite poorly executed by some suppliers with overall communication about the scheme not being that great (not to mention only being a short term, temporary, test with a lot of unknowns that many will be hesitant to take part in) and with the current rules is a very easily misused system.

Say there was a full energy tariff introduced that had clearly defined parameters about how/when the load shifting should take place over any given period, and had a well set out structure for any discount/rewards, accompanied by a set of agreed terms that the suppliers can be held accountable to if any issue occurs. That seems like a more permanent long-term solution which can allow for load shifting across a longer period than a few hours and would probably generate far more consumer interest than the not so well known and poorly understood winter scheme which only ran a handful of times. It's a great proof of concept but I don't see the one off cash bribes being the solution in the end.

E7 is a perfect example of how people can be convinced to change habits for a suitable financial incentive, so we know it does work in theory. We're just not quite there yet on the practicalities of a more modernised version which would support the kind of daily/weekly shifting we may need to look at rather than simply being a cheap night/expensive day thing. Octopus seems very much on the right track with this sort of thing and I am looking forward to what they come up with next.

In any case, the DFS data will certainly be interesting to see what kind of actual impact the sessions have had and how that may be applied on a wider scale.

steviebabes

Surely the way forward is for all households and businesses to have their own storage batteries. The charging of these could be controlled by the energy suppliers, much like Octopus Agile. The cost would be enormous of course but so is the cost of a nuclear power station.