When should I stop my battery drawing power from the grid between 2.00am - 5.00am FLUX

thriftytracey

Hi helpful people

We are on Octopus flux tariff, we are starting to get some sunny days now and achieving good solar on those days - as much as 39 KwH.  I am just wondering whether to turn off the battery drawing power from the grid during 2.00am - 5.00am on the cheaper rate.  Today is back to thick cloud and rain though.  When would you turn it off?

Magnitio

I would leave it. Charge battery when cheap and grid is greener. Then export all your excess during the day.

Reed_Richards

Can you export for more than you pay to import between 2 am and 5 am?  If so, the answer is that you don't turn off the battery charging.

Clive_Woody

Magnitio said:

I would leave it. Charge battery when cheap and grid is greener. Then export all your excess during the day.

This is what we do too. Charge battery at 7p/unit and export any excess at 15p/unit.

Screwdriva

I don't have a battery. If I did, I would set it to charge between 2am-5am alongside running our heavy appliances (dishwasher, washer, dryer etc.). Then, let Solar top up from 11am till 4pm, after which I would force discharge to ~50% capacity, depending on evening consumption habits.
 
This approach prevents deep discharge of the battery while capitalizing on the lucrative 4-7pm export window. Then, rinse and repeat. 

Alnat1

I haven't changed back to Flux yet this year, as Agile prices have been good and the weather bad. I'm ready to switch whenever the forecast shows we're going to have "summer".

When I do change, I won't fill the battery from the grid at all unless the forecast is really bad. With our 3.6kW inverter the system caps quite a bit on sunny days once the battery is full, so it's better for us to let it charge slowly (there's an option to set charge speed between 0-100% with Lux) at 5% until around 1pm and then up the rate to 25%. The battery is usually full by around 4pm this way.

If it's a good day I often won't get any battery discharge until after 6pm anyway (SW panels get a lot of evening sun) as the maximum amount is still going to the grid direct from the roof. It will be set to discharge 4-7, in case there's a cloud, and I'll send back as much as possible during the peak rate.

You need to discover what works best for you and your system, it's not always as obvious as some people think. Try a few things out, for example I can remember emptying what was left in the battery after breakfast worked well for us in high summer. If you have bigger batteries/inverters this probably wouldn't be necessary though.

EcoScruples

I'm stuck contemplating this exact problem.
I have been topping my battery up over the autum/winter between 2am - 5am and ran low only on a few occasions unlike last year when my battery spent most of winter empty.
I was planning to stop the charging and rely on solar after the clocks changed but I'm still charging as I want to see what happens this April compared to last April.
Currently it looks like I'll be about £23 worse off this year but I did make a lot more solar last April compared to this year.
Honestly I think I'll do a whole year now as I am and then compare.
I'm expecting big things between May to Aug

Exiled_Tyke

I always top up the battery over night throughout the year. In summer it means I'm usually buying around a unit of electricity a day which more often than not I could do without. However if I don't do a full charge and get it wrong the night before a gloomy day then I end up importing at nearly four times the cost.  This way I don't have to worry about chasing weather forecasts each day and trying to predict how much electricity to top up with.

thriftytracey

Thank you for your responses.  I was quite surprised as I thought most people would switch off the battery charging during the cheap period.

We pay 4.98p per kW/h between 2.00am - 5.00am 
5.11p for SEG export

I do run the washing machine and bread maker during the cheap period.  Used to run dishwasher then before it started leaking!

Be nice to get 0.15p SEG but we installed our panels last July and we didn't get the SEG finalised until November.  I wonder as time goes on Octopus will reduce the SEG rate even further for new solar panel adopters....

If only we had done it 20 years ago!

noitsnotme

thriftytracey said:

Thank you for your responses.  I was quite surprised as I thought most people would switch off the battery charging during the cheap period.

We pay 4.98p per kW/h between 2.00am - 5.00am 
5.11p for SEG export

I do run the washing machine and bread maker during the cheap period.  Used to run dishwasher then before it started leaking!

Be nice to get 0.15p SEG but we installed our panels last July and we didn't get the SEG finalised until November.  I wonder as time goes on Octopus will reduce the SEG rate even further for new solar panel adopters....

If only we had done it 20 years ago!

I only had my panels and battery fitted in November and SEG finalised this January and I’m on Octopus Outgoing with the 15p/kWh export rate.

I export 100% of solar at the 15p rate and fill my battery up overnight at 7.5p rate (Intelligent Octopus). 

theboylard

thriftytracey said:

Thank you for your responses.  I was quite surprised as I thought most people would switch off the battery charging during the cheap period.

We pay 4.98p per kW/h between 2.00am - 5.00am 
5.11p for SEG export

I do run the washing machine and bread maker during the cheap period.  Used to run dishwasher then before it started leaking!

Be nice to get 0.15p SEG but we installed our panels last July and we didn't get the SEG finalised until November.  I wonder as time goes on Octopus will reduce the SEG rate even further for new solar panel adopters....

If only we had done it 20 years ago!

Move the export to Octopus outging Fixed at 15p/kWh? Surely your not stuck on the seg rate?