Solar panel FITs and smart meter

Bimbly

I have solar panels and get FIT payments. Smart meter started working at the beginning of this year. I still get my FIT payments. I'm with Octopus.

Reed_Richards

Lets be a bit clearer with terminology.  Anyone on the FIT scheme will have been paid for Generation and for Export.  When you joined the FIT scheme the amount of export was deemed to be half of what you generated.  Since you actual export was not metered it paid you to use all the solar electricity you could.

A SMETS2 smart meter can measure your actual export.  With such a smart meter you can choose to be paid for actual rather than deemed export but you will still get your FIT generation payments (for as long as you remain eligible).  I have seen one or two posts from forumites whose FIT provider has obliged them to move from deemed to metered export but this seems to be rare.  And with some FIT providers and usage patterns it may pay you to move from deemed to metered export.  Quite a few forumites have posted about doing this, mostly those who use Octopus as their electricity supplier as well as their FIT provider.      

Petriix

Reed_Richards said:

Petriix said:

Unless you have a battery or waste loads of energy by unnecessarily heating water with a solar diverter ....

I'm struggling with the concept of "unnecessarily heating water".  The only context I can think of where this might make sense is an outdoor swimming pool that is heated but never actually used.  

Put it this way: people who have an iboost (or similar) tend to have a very hot airing cupboard housing their hot water tank, especially in the height of summer.

Generally using water heated in advance encourages inefficiency because it's not possible to heat exactly the amount of water you need. Either you heat too much or you will run out before you've finished whatever you were doing.

When that hot water is ostensibly 'free', the tendency is to be frivolous with it. I suspect not many people switch off their iboost when they are going to be away for the weekend.

The FIT register can show one of three statuses for export: deemed, metered and negotiated. The rules state that you should notify your provider as soon as you have a valid export meter. In practice they won't do anything unless you prompt them (possibly by accident in my case). Once it's changed from deemed you can't voluntarily go back, but you can change between metered and negotiated with a minimum of 12 months between changes.

I'm currently receiving my FIT payments from Ecotricity but my exports are set as negotiated and I get paid for actual exports by Octopus at 15p per kWh, fixed until January 2025. If the export price offered next year falls below the level of the FIT export rate then I can easily switch back to metered. 

Despite having an EV (with a Zappi) and someone working from home we've actually exported ~ 1150kWh of our total generation of ~ 1600kWh so far this year.

Around 80% of our imports are on the Intelligent Octopus Go cheap rate of 7.5p per kWh. Where practical we shift our usage to the cheap rate and maximise our solar exports. This instinctively feels better than the previous paradigm of trying to use as much of the 'free' electricity as possible because we're now incentivised to minimise our usage. 

Reed_Richards

I'm with Eon Next for my electricity supply and Octopus for my FIT payments, both generation and export.  In both cases this is because my previous supplier/payer went bust and I was passed on.  After some difficulty I got a smart meter last August.  Although my smart meter can measure export it doesn't have an export MPAN.  I haven't told Octopus I have a smart meter; they never asked but presumably could look me up.  @Petriix, you seem to imply that "negotiated" export means metered export at a negotiated price.  So does "metered" mean metered export at your standard FIT export rate??? 

I bought an EV last October and moved to Eon Next's "NextDrive" tariff which gives me 7 hours of cheap electricity overnight.  I use the last hour to heat my hot water.  In the winter all my solar power is used to heat my house and I have negligible export.  At the moment my solar electricity mostly goes to charge my EV, although quite a lot still gets exported.  I'm using about 1 kWh per day of day-rate electricity, the rest comes from either solar or night rate. 

I tend to agree that a lack of incentive to minimise your usage is not the best paradigm but I have never been entirely comfortable with the paradigm that you pay more to import than you get paid to export.        

Petriix

Reed_Richards said:

@Petriix, you seem to imply that "negotiated" export means metered export at a negotiated price.  So does "metered" mean metered export at your standard FIT export rate??? 

Yes, that's right. Negotiated essentially means you've opted out of the FIT export payments leaving you free to sign up for any other export scheme (such as SEG or similar) while Metered is paid by your FIT provider at the set rate which increases at RPI each year. I suspect the latter will become more lucrative in the future if energy prices drop to more normal levels.

Edit: what my FIT provider called "metered" is actually recorded on the FIT register as "Standard Tariff". There are also "off-grid" and "no export" options. See https://www.ref.org.uk/energy-data/notes-on-small-scale-green-generators