Get paid to cut your energy use

Netexporter

If you can export then you are getting £4/kWh. You get paid £4/kWh for anything you save over your normal consumption for that time of day.

£4 is for yesterday and tomorrow's sessions. The first session was at £2.50. 

Krakkkers

I got £1.03 for the first 1 hour test, all i did was shift cooking my dinner from 5pm to after 6pm.
Its up to you whether its worth it.
I use about 3 kwh a day in the winter (from the grid) as i have solar, so that £1 has paid for my daily electricity.

snowqueen555

How do they work out how much you get, do they look at your typical usage and compare, or is it some metric that they apply to all households?

Netexporter

do they look at your typical usage and compare

Previous 10 days (saving sessions excluded) for weekdays. Previous 4 weekends if it occurs at the weekend.

Obviously you have to have a smart meter.

MikeJXE

snowqueen555 said:

How do they work out how much you get, do they look at your typical usage and compare, or is it some metric that they apply to all households?

From what I have read they take your average usage between the hours in question for a set number of days 

If you haven't used any between those hours you get nothing, if you have then you get something, 

If you have reduced your consumption 

snowqueen555

I'm wondering why they don't utilise a reduced kwh overnight as standard on all tarrifs, that would change my usage habits long term.

E7 tarrifs are not as attractive as I thought, as the daily rate is higher and offsets the benefits of night usage and during the spring/summer you would not be using storage heaters anyway. 

Netexporter

I'm wondering why they don't utilise a reduced kwh overnight as standard on all tarrifs, that would change my usage habits long term.

There are plenty of tariffs that have off-peak low rates. Just choose one.

MultiFuelBurner

snowqueen555 said:

How much money are people saving, is it worth changing your habits for £30 quid over the winter?

For some it's not about the money it's about a collective use less energy = burn less coal and gas.

Every little helps 

If it's just thought purely in monetary terms then I can't speak for yourself as to whether it's worth it or not to you or others.

We never mind "doing our bit"

TheBanker

MultiFuelBurner said:

snowqueen555 said:

How much money are people saving, is it worth changing your habits for £30 quid over the winter?

For some it's not about the money it's about a collective use less energy = burn less coal and gas.

Every little helps 

If it's just thought purely in monetary terms then I can't speak for yourself as to whether it's worth it or not to you or others.

We never mind "doing our bit"

This is why I take part. Last winter I was working from home, so my usage during the time these usually run was higher, so I made a small amount of money (about £20 over the winter, nothing to get excited about). This year I don't work from home, so my usage around 17:00 - 18:00 is low as I don't get back from work until 18:30 most days. The first session generated the grand total of 32p. 

But my view is that through our collective efforts, we can achieve several good outcomes:

1. The National Grid may be able to reduce the amount of gas (or worse, coal) that would otherwise be burned. This is a good thing.
2. When there is a shortage of electricity, it costs National Grid a lot of money to buy extra at short notice to make up the shortfall. I'd rather this money went to consumers, and it's likely that running the DFS is cheaper than purchasing electricity during these peak times. So everyone should benefit through slightly lower bills.
3. National Grid have a range of options to manage peaks. The DFS is one of these, but if it doesn't work they will implement other options, ultimately resulting in rolling power cuts. I'd like to avoid this outcome if at all possible.
4. In the future, as we become more reliant on renewable energy and phase out gas, there will be times when the National Grid need to manage demand. There are various ways they can do this - the DFS is one, smart tariffs like Octopus Agile and Intelligent Octopus are others. National Grid need to understand how consumers respond to this kind of incentive. I think by demonstrating that we are able to be flexible about when we use large amounts of energy, we can help to move towards a cleaner and cheaper energy supply. 

I think unless you have batteries (so can benefit by exporting electricity), or you have electric heating, or you have something like a swimming pool, or you're a very careless energy user, you won't make much money from these schemes. But it's still worth taking part in my view.

CSH1

We just don't use our cooker at the times its on, we probably save about up to 1 kwh by doing this, we normally have it on between 5 and 6 so will have early or late dinner.  we still watch the TV and low power stuff like that and I usually run the dishwasher and washing machine in the mornings.