Octopus Agile

Pat38493

Scot_39 said:

Pat38493 said:

Looks like there might be some better pricing for Agile users on Friday and then for most of next week.  Maybe not plunge pricing levels but better than the last days.

Given prices seem to be estimated or are they actually set a day ahead - if a  number of turbines shutdown due to high winds on Friday - given large swathes of Souther Scotland and Northern England covered by an amber warning - if the other areas don't make up the shortfall - what day does that go into pricing - the Fri or the Say.

The pricing is driven by a number of factors, but for wind, I guess it's driven by the best available wind generation forecast at the time of the auction, so the pricing for Friday will be driven by the wind forecast as of about 3pm or so on Thursday (amongst other factors).  If turbines are expected to be shut down for safety reasons, I would expect this to be reflected in the forecasts that they use, but of course real winds could be different than forecast.

As far as I know, this is a rolling pricing process based on forecasts.  If the real generation is different to the forecast, this does not have any impact on the following day price so there is no "catch up" element to it.

QrizB

Ripple's Kirk Hill wind farm (in Ayrshire) currently shows negative generation

The forecast, though, shows decent output from late morning tomorrow, so things might start improving before the weekend.

Friday's output forecast is ~80% of nominal capacity ...

Spoonie_Turtle

wrf12345 said:

Anyone into power tools, you can get an inverter on Aliexpress that allows you to slide in a Dewalt, etc battery and gets up to 100W of power depending on battery capacity - for a tenner or so.

Electricals off AliExpress and similar sites - including Amazon, for cheap stuff - are a dubious recommendation.  Anyone considering it needs to first look into how to tell if something meets UK safety standards (if that's even possible without taking them apart.  Even CE marks by themselves aren't an indication, as they can stand for Chinese Export).

teaselMay

Spoonie_Turtle said:

wrf12345 said:

Anyone into power tools, you can get an inverter on Aliexpress that allows you to slide in a Dewalt, etc battery and gets up to 100W of power depending on battery capacity - for a tenner or so.

Electricals off AliExpress and similar sites - including Amazon, for cheap stuff - are a dubious recommendation.  Anyone considering it needs to first look into how to tell if something meets UK safety standards (if that's even possible without taking them apart.  Even CE marks by themselves aren't an indication, as they can stand for Chinese Export).

Absolutely this. I'm a great fan of a bargain and of a gadget but it's just not worth the risk of fire with many of these things. I'd also bet the inverter costs significantly more than just using the telly as normal during all of the expensive days, my houses' total power consumption is usually around 50W whilst watching telly so the telly itself is using about 35W

TheElectricCow

wrf12345 said:

Anyone into power tools, you can get an inverter on Aliexpress that allows you to slide in a Dewalt, etc battery and gets up to 100W of power depending on battery capacity - for a tenner or so. Also has USB ports. So can charge phone and run a monitor for a few hours. My 32 inch monitor only consumes 25W and allied with the laptop running on its own battery gets you a better TV experience than squinting at a mobile and better sound than the laptop on its own.

Putting aside any potential quality concerns with AliExpress electricals, one also needs to consider whether an actual saving is being made once the cost of purchasing such an item is taken into consideration.

Assuming the battery is charged at 20p/kWh and discharged at the current 100p/kWh cap, by a very quick & rough calculation taking some charge/discharge losses into account, I make that to be less than a 2p saving for an hour running your monitor. If we round to 2p for simplicity, that gives a payback time of at least 500 hours if used with practically worst case daily rates (of which we've not had that many of over the past year).

That same £10 used to purchase the inverter would run the 25w monitor for 400 hours at the maximum Agile rate of 100p/kWh (and obviously much, much longer than that when Agile isn't at the cap).

This also assumes the equipment is still functional over those hundreds of hours and doesn't factor in any possible degradation of the battery, which would probably cost more to replace than the cheap inverter and power costs combined.

Don't get me wrong, I do like what you're going for there and it's certainly got the right spirit for a ToU tariff, but in a practical sense it would be more cost effective for anyone considering this to stick that £10 in their Octopus account and enjoy the free flowing mains electricity.

bristolleedsfan

Octopus Agile Predictor  On X

Tomorrow's Prices: ( Friday 24th)
Overnight low ~ 7p
Morning peak ~ 27p
Afternoon low ~ 20p
Evening peak ~41p

Newbie_John

Yep, and also the entire cost of battery - let's say someone paid £5k for 10kWh battery, inverter etc.
If we assume battery lasts 15 years - max you can top it up is 3650kWh* a year, so 54750kWh over it's life.

£5000 / 54750kWh = 9p/kWh

So each kWh actually costs at least 9p + charged rate..  

*sure, you can charge more than once a day, but that shortens the battery life.

EssexHebridean

Thanks to others for mentioning the risk from cheap electricals - I have to say that these days if buying even from Amazon etc I will only buy known brands either direct from the manufacturer or direct from amazon. Just too great a risk otherwise. 

As much as I want to get the best out of Agile - there are two things I won't do to achieve that. one is impacting my quality of life by allowing things to get obsessive around energy use, and the other is risking the safety of our household! 

northernstar007

tomorrows prices are out,  a few cheap slots during the night, but was expecting a lot cheaper in the 24hrs than what we are being charged

EssexHebridean

I'll take it - washing machine tonight then, and a bit more scope for some cooking tomorrow!