Outgoing Octopus is changing to a variable rate tariff

mmmmikey

pensionpawn said:

NedS said:

At the point export becomes worthless, storage will become a lot more viable. At the moment, the grid is acting like a huge battery at a SEG rate that is close to import rates.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I have had my panels for 9.5 years and have enjoyed metered export over the last two years. Never at any point during that period have I been able to fiscally justify the cost of a battery, even though as a tech geek I'd love one. The best scenarios take at least 8 years to return on investment, with the worst exceeding their 10 year warranty. Also, since moving to metered export, I have read numerous posts of people using the time shifting margin to justify adding to their battery farm / improve their ROI timeframe, and hopefully it has worked for some? However I fear that for many the recent reductions in the export rate (due to excess solar...?) will have scuttled those calculations way before they break even..? So, unless there is a drastic reduction in domestic battery cost, I will continue to wait for bi-directional charging to become a fiscally beneficial option, and then invest in my first EV. With a 50kWhr battery (min) I will then be able to store more of my ~4 Mwhr pa export and power my house for longer during grid outages. Until then, I'm sitting on the fence!

Hi - if you look at battery storage purely as a way of storing your own excess solar generation then the economics are probably fairly marginal. But if you look it as a way of buying electricity when it's cheapest to use at a time that suits you then the pay back can be much quicker - a matter of 5 years or so in my case. In fact, I'm currently using my battery to store cheap overnight electricity (at ca. 7p/kWh) and selling my spare generation (at ca. 17p/kWh) back to the grid and hardly using it for solar at all. It's just a different way of thinking. 

Given the huge growth in solar that is planned for the next few years I personally would think carefully before installing solar now. Why pay for your own solar panels that are going to be generating solar energy at the same time as everyone elses, increasing supply and driving down the price? But if you were to invest in batteries instead you could could buy that grid-wide surplus for peanuts for use whenever you choose. The same applies to wind power which can make energy dirt cheap at times when there is over supply.  IMHO there are likely to be more and more opportunities for reducing energy costs by using battery storage to make best use of TOU tariffs.

pensionpawn

mmmmikey said:

pensionpawn said:

NedS said:

At the point export becomes worthless, storage will become a lot more viable. At the moment, the grid is acting like a huge battery at a SEG rate that is close to import rates.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I have had my panels for 9.5 years and have enjoyed metered export over the last two years. Never at any point during that period have I been able to fiscally justify the cost of a battery, even though as a tech geek I'd love one. The best scenarios take at least 8 years to return on investment, with the worst exceeding their 10 year warranty. Also, since moving to metered export, I have read numerous posts of people using the time shifting margin to justify adding to their battery farm / improve their ROI timeframe, and hopefully it has worked for some? However I fear that for many the recent reductions in the export rate (due to excess solar...?) will have scuttled those calculations way before they break even..? So, unless there is a drastic reduction in domestic battery cost, I will continue to wait for bi-directional charging to become a fiscally beneficial option, and then invest in my first EV. With a 50kWhr battery (min) I will then be able to store more of my ~4 Mwhr pa export and power my house for longer during grid outages. Until then, I'm sitting on the fence!

Hi - if you look at battery storage purely as a way of storing your own excess solar generation then the economics are probably fairly marginal. But if you look it as a way of buying electricity when it's cheapest to use at a time that suits you then the pay back can be much quicker - a matter of 5 years or so in my case. In fact, I'm currently using my battery to store cheap overnight electricity (at ca. 7p/kWh) and selling my spare generation (at ca. 17p/kWh) back to the grid and hardly using it for solar at all. It's just a different way of thinking. 

Given the huge growth in solar that is planned for the next few years I personally would think carefully before installing solar now. Why pay for your own solar panels that are going to be generating solar energy at the same time as everyone elses, increasing supply and driving down the price? But if you were to invest in batteries instead you could could buy that grid-wide surplus for peanuts for use whenever you choose. The same applies to wind power which can make energy dirt cheap at times when there is over supply.  IMHO there are likely to be more and more opportunities for reducing energy costs by using battery storage to make best use of TOU tariffs.

Yep, I have looked into using batteries to time shift energy in addition to minimising import. Given that I have 7.1 kWs of panels with an 8kWs export limit I've modelled, down to the individual charges periods each day, export every day for a whole year, with a view to achieving 24 kWhrs (3 hrs x 8 kWs) of peak export every day, from a blend of pure solar in bright third of the year, to time shifted night import over dark third of the year. Of course, this required 1 PW3 and extension pack. I also modelled a scaled down scenario for just 1 PW3. The ROI figures came out at 7 and 6.3 years respectfully, which is way too long given that the maths is hostage to fluctuating import / export margins, which are likely the change, to the detriment of this analysis, over those periods. 

MWT

pensionpawn said:

The ROI figures came out at 7 and 6.3 years respectfully, which is way too long given that the maths is hostage to fluctuating import / export margins, which are likely the change, to the detriment of this analysis, over those periods. 

I can only tell you that almost 5 years into my own journey, I've found ways to make money from having installed a home battery/solar PV/EV that I never expected and another couple of years to recoup my investment really doesn't feel like a whole lot of time...

mmmmikey

pensionpawn said:

mmmmikey said:

pensionpawn said:

NedS said:

At the point export becomes worthless, storage will become a lot more viable. At the moment, the grid is acting like a huge battery at a SEG rate that is close to import rates.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I have had my panels for 9.5 years and have enjoyed metered export over the last two years. Never at any point during that period have I been able to fiscally justify the cost of a battery, even though as a tech geek I'd love one. The best scenarios take at least 8 years to return on investment, with the worst exceeding their 10 year warranty. Also, since moving to metered export, I have read numerous posts of people using the time shifting margin to justify adding to their battery farm / improve their ROI timeframe, and hopefully it has worked for some? However I fear that for many the recent reductions in the export rate (due to excess solar...?) will have scuttled those calculations way before they break even..? So, unless there is a drastic reduction in domestic battery cost, I will continue to wait for bi-directional charging to become a fiscally beneficial option, and then invest in my first EV. With a 50kWhr battery (min) I will then be able to store more of my ~4 Mwhr pa export and power my house for longer during grid outages. Until then, I'm sitting on the fence!

Hi - if you look at battery storage purely as a way of storing your own excess solar generation then the economics are probably fairly marginal. But if you look it as a way of buying electricity when it's cheapest to use at a time that suits you then the pay back can be much quicker - a matter of 5 years or so in my case. In fact, I'm currently using my battery to store cheap overnight electricity (at ca. 7p/kWh) and selling my spare generation (at ca. 17p/kWh) back to the grid and hardly using it for solar at all. It's just a different way of thinking. 

Given the huge growth in solar that is planned for the next few years I personally would think carefully before installing solar now. Why pay for your own solar panels that are going to be generating solar energy at the same time as everyone elses, increasing supply and driving down the price? But if you were to invest in batteries instead you could could buy that grid-wide surplus for peanuts for use whenever you choose. The same applies to wind power which can make energy dirt cheap at times when there is over supply.  IMHO there are likely to be more and more opportunities for reducing energy costs by using battery storage to make best use of TOU tariffs.

Yep, I have looked into using batteries to time shift energy in addition to minimising import. Given that I have 7.1 kWs of panels with an 8kWs export limit I've modelled, down to the individual charges periods each day, export every day for a whole year, with a view to achieving 24 kWhrs (3 hrs x 8 kWs) of peak export every day, from a blend of pure solar in bright third of the year, to time shifted night import over dark third of the year. Of course, this required 1 PW3 and extension pack. I also modelled a scaled down scenario for just 1 PW3. The ROI figures came out at 7 and 6.3 years respectfully, which is way too long given that the maths is hostage to fluctuating import / export margins, which are likely the change, to the detriment of this analysis, over those periods. 

Hi, I think your last sentence is particularly significant here - a lot depends on what your crystal ball tells you about future pricing.

Mine is telling me that TOU tariffs are likely to be aggressively marketed to encourage take up so there will be some cracking deals. It's also telling me that there will be an abundance of cheap electricity available and that the combination of these means that as long as you are prepared to monitor available tariffs and switch periodically the savings you make on non-sunshine electricity usage will make the case very favourable. If export rates go down that will also improve the case for battery ownership as it will make it more worthwhile to save any spare generation for later use than to export it.

But crystal balls aren't always reliable and only time will tell. What I can say is that I'm using the same ball I used when I bought my battery system and if anything it was pessimistic.

pensionpawn

MWT said:

pensionpawn said:

The ROI figures came out at 7 and 6.3 years respectfully, which is way too long given that the maths is hostage to fluctuating import / export margins, which are likely the change, to the detriment of this analysis, over those periods. 

I can only tell you that almost 5 years into my own journey, I've found ways to make money from having installed a home battery/solar PV/EV that I never expected and another couple of years to recoup my investment really doesn't feel like a whole lot of time...

All these calculations are very individual, depending on miles driven pa that an EV could do cheaper than an Ice vehicle, a high electrical import that can be mostly displaced with a battery, etc so it will work for some and not for others. When I looked at solar, over 10 years ago, I knew that I had a guaranteed FiT that would be indexed for 20 years. That gave me reassurance that after RoI (7.5 years) I would be quids in. Unfortunately export margins are dictated by market forces and can't be relied on (e.g. Octopus binning their 15p fixed rate, for variable), so that rules out the long battery RoIs for me, especially when you could just chuck £10k-£20k extra into your pension and be 20% up (28% via salary sacrifice) straight away. If export margins vanished the day after buying a £7k-£8k battery, for me it would take longer than the warranty to RoI! Not for me, at present.

mmmmikey

pensionpawn said:

MWT said:

pensionpawn said:

The ROI figures came out at 7 and 6.3 years respectfully, which is way too long given that the maths is hostage to fluctuating import / export margins, which are likely the change, to the detriment of this analysis, over those periods. 

I can only tell you that almost 5 years into my own journey, I've found ways to make money from having installed a home battery/solar PV/EV that I never expected and another couple of years to recoup my investment really doesn't feel like a whole lot of time...

All these calculations are very individual, depending on miles driven pa that an EV could do cheaper than an Ice vehicle, a high electrical import that can be mostly displaced with a battery, etc so it will work for some and not for others. When I looked at solar, over 10 years ago, I knew that I had a guaranteed FiT that would be indexed for 20 years. That gave me reassurance that after RoI (7.5 years) I would be quids in. Unfortunately export margins are dictated by market forces and can't be relied on (e.g. Octopus binning their 15p fixed rate, for variable), so that rules out the long battery RoIs for me, especially when you could just chuck £10k-£20k extra into your pension and be 20% up (28% via salary sacrifice) straight away. If export margins vanished the day after buying a £7k-£8k battery, for me it would take longer than the warranty to RoI! Not for me, at present.

I certainly agree there are no guarantees and you have to do what you are personally comfortable with from a risk perspective. One of the factors for me was the protection against inflation. My thinking was that if energy prices were subject to high inflation then investment in the battery would make good sense. If inflation was low then the investment would make less sense, but I'd be better off elsewhere so wouldn't be too concerned. So I actually saw the investment as quite low risk and a good way of protecting myself against the inflation risk.

There are also tax considerations which are different for different people. An additional income of £100 per month and reducing your outgoings by £100 per month come to the same thing but the income is potentially taxable but the saving isn't.

My point here isn't to disagree with you, but just to throw something else into the pot and support your view that there are many considerations.

Netexporter

Another consideration is reliability of supply. I live in the middle of nowhere and we are subject to frequent power cuts, being at the extreme edge of a DNO area and six miles from the substation, with only a single 11kV line connecting us. By fitting a gateway with the batteries I'll be free of interruptions and able to keep the heat pump running even in the depths of winter. If the power cut was estimated to be of many days duration, I could use the woodburner for heating and run everything else for up to a week even without any solar input.

And them there's the Zombie Apocalypse to consider...

pensionpawn

Netexporter said:

Another consideration is reliability of supply. I live in the middle of nowhere and we are subject to frequent power cuts, being at the extreme edge of a DNO area and six miles from the substation, with only a single 11kV line connecting us. By fitting a gateway with the batteries I'll be free of interruptions and able to keep the heat pump running even in the depths of winter. If the power cut was estimated to be of many days duration, I could use the woodburner for heating and run everything else for up to a week even without any solar input.

And them there's the Zombie Apocalypse to consider...

I have only witnessed 2 power cuts in the near 28 years I have lived in my house, however you raise an important point, which is that part of the battery cost is insurance, which I see becoming more of an issue, if only due to rationing in the winter months and grid load balancing issues in the summer (one of the reasons for Octopus hitting the day export rate?)