Switching suppliers - Now have Solar+Battery Installed

Anomnomnomaly

Will be switching suppliers at the end of Sept because Eon are worthless and incompetent and can't get anything right.

We're coming to the end of a 2yr fixed rate deal. So have been able to avoid the energy crisis so far, and because my mum came to live with me and my partner is disabled. We've had those extra cost of living payments that we put on the bill.

Then we had a solar/battery system installed earlier in the year and I've not bothered setting up a seg as from what I was reading and what my neighbours who have them got paid... it just wasn't worth it. We'd be earning in the region of £50 for the year.

Currently paying about 16p for electric and 23p standing charge, similar standing charge for gas, but can't remember the unit rate of the top of my head.

Over the course of the year so far (Feb-Aug) we've used about 1050kwh of electricity and gas is hard to state because we switched from cooking by gas to electric back in May... around the same time we stopped using the heating.

Estimates from eon are worthless as we only bought the house end of Sept last year, it was empty for about a year prior to that... and we still get mail for previous owners chasing a 7k debt. So eon haven't got a clue about actual use (even though we have smart meters)

Based on electricity use last winter (Nov-Jan) we're somewhere in the 12-13kwh a day... but as we've switched to electric for cooking. That's more like an avg of 16-17kwh per day now.Which is somewhere in the 500kwh range per month. Less what we can generate from solar & battery.

In Feb of this year we generated in the region of 178kwh and used 162kwh of that directly to the house or battery. Even sent back 16kwh to the grid. Avg use for the month was 480kwh, and about 34% of that came from solar.

In May (our best month to date) we generated 668kwh and used 408kwh directly from solar/battery and only imported 77kwh from the grid. Approximately 85% of our power came from solar/battery.

It's really hard to predict what we will generate in this unpredictable climate crisis. We live near to the sea (about 6 miles) and mountains are only about 20 miles away. So weather can change quite quickly here.

I know this is a long post... sorry about that.

Started doing my research into new suppliers... We need one that is part of the warm home discount scheme (for my partner). I'm getting a little confused with all of the variable tariffs that change prices through the day. Are these better than a fixed rate 24/7. We know we'll be paying in the region of 61p a day standing charge.

Seems everyone has gone back to charging huge fees for leaving with the avg being £150 per fuel on a lot of the tariffs. Which really disgusts me...

So far octopus seem reasonable, mainly for their SEG rates... During the winter I was thinking that their variable tariff would allow me to charge up the battery during the night to power the house through the morning. Solar can take over running the house from around 10-11am (if weather is ok) recharge the battery if possible, then top up battery from grid before 4pm... and the battery will power the house during the peak rate time from 4-7pm.

I'm also thinking of adding extra battery capacity next year as the 5.2kwh one was within budget with a 4kw PV system... but I've realised that doubling it would be more efficient use of solar than exporting it. We've exported almost 1000kwh so far this year... which is worth about £35 so far with eon (we never bothered setting up the seg as we knew we were switching)

tl:dr  need to switch suppliers this month, best company that is part of WHD scheme and offers best SEG/unit/sc tariffs for PV/Battery system owners.

Thanks

MultiFuelBurner

Octopus are paying up to 15p kWh export depending on the tariff. 

It sounds like you have a good setup that could fit nicely with one of the Octopus many solar related tariffs especially with a battery you could charge in the winter at a lower rate to use later in the day at peak 4-8pm times.

markin

Looks like you missed out on far more than just 50 a year, but even 50 would be worth the effort to most people

Anomnomnomaly

MultiFuelBurner said:

Octopus are paying up to 15p kWh export depending on the tariff. 

It sounds like you have a good setup that could fit nicely with one of the Octopus many solar related tariffs especially with a battery you could charge in the winter at a lower rate to use later in the day at peak 4-8pm times.

Gave them a call, they have a flux tariff  https://octopus.energy/smart/flux/  that looks promising.

	Import	Export
Day rate	31.1p / kWh	20.1p / kWh
Flux rate (02:00 - 05:00)	18.66p / kWh	7.66p / kWh
Peak rate (16:00 - 19:00)	43.53p / kWh	32.53p / kWh
Standing charge	60.18p / day

Figured if I charge the battery up by 5am and set it to discharge from 7-8am, solar will be supplying the house by 10am during winter months (we idle around the 500-600w range on avg due to working from home and people in most of the day). We can delay dishwasher/washing use to run overnight.  Make sure the battery is recharged by 4pm to cover peak rates... and only export anything at all once house is covered and battery fully charged.

I worked out that if our best month of 260kwh exported was just at the 20.1p rate... we'd have earned £52 from it. Out bill for May was £23 for gas/electric/sc/vat (admittedly on a fixed rate deal of 16p/kwh 23p/sc) ... and that 260 export would have been worth at best.. £9

Have to go onto their standard tariff to begin with... once they' got everything set up and connected to the smart meters (new ones fitted to this house 2yrs ago apparently) we can switch to the flux tariff.

Might not need to worry so much about increasing battery storage... just need to figure out some automation for my givenergy setup.

MultiFuelBurner

Nice one 👍

Anomnomnomaly

markin said:

Looks like you missed out on far more than just 50 a year, but even 50 would be worth the effort to most people

It wasn't worth setting up the SEG whilst we were on a fixed rate deal. Octopus were offering 4.1p, Eon claimed 5p but my neighbour is with them and is actually getting about 3.5p. He's got about 5.6KW panels and over 8kwh of battery. He's diverting most of his excess solar to heat the hot tub instead of sending it back to the grid.

I was going to add another 9.5kwh battery to my system. But did the math and with a 4KW setup, the max we can expect to generate on the longest days of peak production... is around 30kwh.  We avg 16-17kwh of use per day. As my mum is home nearly all the time, I work from home and partner is disabled and home a lot. So we avg around 480kwh a month.

Having 14.7kwh of battery storage means we'd never be able to fully charge it from solar anyway... negating the extra expense.  But adding another 5.2kwh one drops us into the range of being able to charge it... and a battery of that size would pretty much run the house inc cooking during winter months from 4pm to around midnight. If exporting could generate around £300 a year, I'd use that to cover the £2500 cost of the extra battery, making the ROI much better. Energy crisis already means the ROI on the £9200 investment has come down from 10yrs to under 8yrs to recoup the expense... Figure around £11500 total adding the extra battery and £300 a year return would drop that to around 6-7yrs