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I've just switched us over to Octopus Agile. I resisted for a while because I thought we'd have to move to either Agile outgoing or fixed, but it seems they are happy to leave me on flux export.
We have 10kwh battery so can avoid the 4-7 peak. as a result, our average unit cost has dropped from 19p to 13p.
I don't really understand how agile can be so much cheaper - but i'm certainly not complaining! Even the peak time doesn't go much over the capped rate at this time of year.
that's a mistake, Flux is a combined import/export tariff, you either need to go on fixed or agile export. expect a correction in the future IMHO
Look at the prices of agile during the fuel crisis, over xmas 22 into 23 😉 then you'll see how it could be
Check your figures though, most people with solar are saying Flux is a better deal as the weather turns, luckily i think you are only tied into a 30 day contract on smart tariffs
i'd expected to be moved for export, so if it happens i won't be too disappointed. agile import prices are definitely much cheaper than flux at the moment though - it's below the flux cheap rate for about 20 hours a day. we'll probably switch back to flux as the sun starts to come out and we export more. Hope the prices don't drop too much next month though as the credit we built up last spring/summer mostly paid for this winter.
You can switch away from our Agile Octopus tariff to one of our standard tariffs any time without financial penalty, but you can’t move back to one of our smart tariffs within 30 days
This is the TnC forSmart Tariffs from Octopus, so worth bearing in mind. You'll lose at least 2 months a year and possibly longer by the time the switch is made.
@Daffy That's what I thought, but i asked in an email and got the following reply, which seems pretty unambiguous:
"Thank you for reaching out to us. To switch from Octopus Flux to Octopus Agile, you can simply request the switch through your online account. There is no delay before you can switch back if you decide to do so in the future.
If you have any further questions or need assistance with the switch, please let me know."
I am on fixed output (15p) and just moved to tracker for 17p import.
i dont see how you can make agile work unless its big batteries?
Agile and electric car here. No special usage we just charge the car overnight or when we see pricing go very low (plunge).
average price paid over last 12 months with approx 7200kwh’s is 4.9p / kWh. Last 6 months is 4.5p / kwh
Our panels got fitted yesterday. 16 of them on the roof of the shed and now all we need to do is wait for the electrical bloke and his mate to turn up with a bunch of cables and a 10Kwh battery system and wore the whole lot together.
Nice.
If anyone is interested, I’m about to sell on my LG RESU 6.5 battery pack. It’s a low voltage DC battery with a usable capacity of 5.9kWh.
This is the current generation of pack and is highly efficient in all weather conditions.
It’s 10months old is still at 98-99% state of health and comes with the brackets and connectors to fit it. It was installed outside, but in an enclosure so whilst it has signs of use, they’re highly minimal.
I’m only selling as I’ve bought a bigger one.
£1100 plus postage or collected/meet up. I’m near Bath. It cost over £2700.
Finally... The "Chaps" are finishing off the day's work work installing the inverter, battery and assorted cabling that makes up our solar installation. This comes about a week after their crew came and installed the roof framework and the 16 panels that we have on the shed roof.
After a slight hiccup with the box for the 10Kwh battery (built to the size of the actual battery and not what the battery _requires_ to prevent overheating), our bit of the installation was just to make sure there was WiFi for the Huawei inverter to connect to which, thanks to a long Cat6 cable and a new AP, it can.
I just need to put the AP somewhere out of the way, but still in sight of the router, and tidy up some cables and it should all work fine. If there was sun.
has anyone had any info about next month's Flux rates?
I think the cap has dropped 15%, which would take the peak export to about 25p/unit, but I don't know if that's how it works.
Had an email today
Import changing to 14.794/24.656/34.519
Export changing to 5.373/15.149/25.098
SC to 61.268
On the Octopus forum there's been some muttering about how the drop in rates but increase in SC is going to actually increase the amount low importers will pay each year.
Yeah, mine's gone up by £34/yr. Object to having a standing charge that's 78% higher than London when the electricity is produced in our backyard and posted down to the South East.
Slightly regretting the order of an extra battery and bigger inverter now. £2,900, but I don't like the batteries under the stairs. I was tempted to do it myself and save £1000, but not keen on cutting and re-terminating the solar PV cabling. High voltage DC scares me a lot more than AC, and I don't think "wait until it's dark" is in the IET guidelines.
I have a 10.25kWp solar and 6.9kWh battery installation booked for early April. Just trying to work out the best tariff... is Octopus Flux still the go to?
Object to having a standing charge that’s 78% higher than London when the electricity is produced in our backyard and posted down to the South East.
Think about how we feel in north of Scotland then. When largely the green energy is produced here and sent daan south and they want to up our standing charge to pay for the new mega pylons they want to put in our gardens to get the power down south .
59.031p a day.
And I'm not "allowed" a larger inverter......
I've been looking for quotes for solar panels recently but it's worse than double glazing, for pricing and tactics.
Could those of you who've recently had solar panels fitted please quote the cost and installed kWH? @Northernraider @Willard
Thanks
feel you on the cost and difficulty benchmarking. We used a company called green building renewables.
North Yorkshire. 8.7kwh inset panels, 6kwh solar edge inverter, solar iboost and Tesla power wall. £17k including scaffold.
I’ll try and dig out the costs, but it will be in SEK and not UKP
£8k for 12 panels, 3.7kW inverter, and 5.kWh of battery storage about 18 months ago. Biggest single expense was the scaffolding.
If more than 3.7kW you may need a G99 application. Northern Powergrid charge £680+ VAT for the assessment based on their website. However, my installers did say that they don’t always charge but it was unpredictable. If you have a lot of solar nearby there may be issues with export, but you can still use the full output privately.
If you have a plug-in socket tester with a voltage reading (or your smart meter or car will show you), then you will hit issues if it’s above 250V on a sunny day as your inverter may disconnect.
Northern Powergrid didn’t charge us for g99, but they did insist our inverter capped us at our export. So we are capped to 6kw
but they did insist our inverter capped us at our export
Your inverter is simply limited to a 6kW output [into your house] surely?
The inverter has nothing to do with the amount of power that's exported.
Your inverter is simply limited to a 6kW output [into your house] surely
No it'll be export capped at 6kw.you can sometimes get a software limited export approval to have a large inverter with a limited export - but seems to be rare they seem to want to limit the hardware.
It's a nonsense though. I'm capped at 3.6kw export "because infrastructure". But everyone around me could put 3.6kw solar on their roofs and "infrastructure" would still be overloaded.
But half those houses(or more) are in the north lee of the hill and get about 15 minutes of sun a day so solar would be a horrible investment for them
But what can I say..... No one's ever checked - which is probably why they want to insist on point one beinga hardware limit because I for one would have no qualms pressing a few buttons and making full use of the Hardwear.
We live on a new-build estate of 25 houses all with above average arrays. It took 2 years to build all the houses and while SSE accepted the first 9 houses for export, they refused the rest. The developer had to pay to upgrade the transformer to accept the export.
Sounds fishy to me, if it's capable of delivering the power to that number of houses I'd have thought that the pipes would be big enough to transport the juice in the other direction. (Can you tell I'm not an electrical engineer?)
There was talk of installing a 500kwh grid storage battery as part of a local experimental program but it never materialised.
Anyway, it was eventually approved 18 months after we moved in on the basis of the max export from the specified inverters - in our case we are limited to 6kw.
@sharkbait - if the inverter can only deliver 6kw, surely that means we can't export any more?
@ransos with 10kw/p you will be producing more than you need for a lot of the year so your focus should be on maximising your export price, which means Flux. The exception might be if you are a high mileage EV driver as flux off peak window is short and not that cheap.
We are an electric only house, without an EV, and energetically self-sufficient from mid April to mid October including heating and hot water so import prices are less important. For the "shoulder" months, agile is cheaper though.
Thanks @lodger. There was a mistake in my post, it's ten panels of 425W each so 4.25 kWp. My annual electricity consumption is about 3,800 kWh so we should generate roughly the same, obviously not at the same time. We don't have an EV.
I'm a little confused with regards inverters, I've got a 5kw inverter, 5kwh battery and currently 3.2kw of pannels (8x0.4). I am considering adding more panels, but is it pointless adding more than another 1 8kw of panels? also grid connected for export if that makes a difference
But what can I say….. No one’s ever checked – which is probably why they want to insist on point one beinga hardware limit because I for one would have no qualms pressing a few buttons and making full use of the Hardwear.
To be fair this led to an argument with my installer when they told me that the inverter settings would be locked behind a PIN that they refused to divulge, in case I changed the export limit.
Anyway, this is a very good example of why you never pay in full up front for any electrical work.
Second installers compromised with me and said that the DNO requires a PIN, but nothing says that it has to be changed from the factory default setting.
If you have space go for the most amount of panels you can - panels are cheap now. 60-80 quid a unit for the standard stuff.
You'll be clipping in summer
But in lower light conditions each panel will produce a given % of rated amount.
So your total production in lower light conditions will be better - and that area will be will be where you most need the production most likely
To be fair this led to an argument with my installer when they told me that the inverter settings would be locked behind a PIN that they refused to divulge, in case I changed the export limit.
Well in my inverter that would also prevent me from changing import export limits. They can get to buggery with that.
Ah, that's a bit less generating capacity so you have to be a bit smarter about load shifting to make the most of it. Solar water heating, running stuff in the daytime etc which is more labour intensive than just exporting.
If you're already with octopus you can run the Compare app to see which tariff works best for import, but it doesn't account for generation so it's limited use.
Tracker + fixed export may work better than flux if you can keep out of the peak evening window
This was a day in June last year showing the effect of the inverter limit. To be fair, it doesn't happen all that often, because we have an E/W split, but we were restricted for about 4.5 hours that day for example.
I think our limit is hardware rather than software.
We took the attitude of more panels for the reasons above. On a normal grey day, we will still produce 5-8kwh.
We are already clipping in the middle of the day in full sun, which is the downside! Our set up is 5.2kw facing straight south and then 1.6kw facing east and 1.6kw facing west. Whilst we bump up against the 6kw inverter in the middle of the day, we start quite early and finish quite late. February was our first month of having it, we produced 305kwh in North Yorkshire
But inverters are cheap relatively, in 5-10 years maybe stick a 8 on if they’ve upgraded the network or changed the rules. Then we will have sufficient panels.
No it’ll be export capped at 6kw.
Explain that to me then.... How does that work?
If the inverter doesn't limit what goes to the house how does it limit what goes to the grid?
Serious Q as I thought all inverters just converted the DC to AC and sent it into the "house". Anything the house doesn't use naturally goes out to the grid.
If the inverter doesn’t limit what goes to the house how does it limit what goes to the grid?
You don't have batteries do you ?
A hybrid battery pv system constantly monitors generation (natively) demand and export via CT clamps.
It knows how much the house can have it controls how much can be exported and manages it based on the settings.
It has to Otherwise your Batterys would just drain to grid.
If the inverter doesn’t limit what goes to the house how does it limit what goes to the grid?
The inverter measures the electricity flow in and out of your house. If it senses electricity flowing in, it’ll increase its output (drawing from the batteries if necessary) until the incoming measures zero, or it’s reached its physical limit.
For exporting power to the grid, it can have a different (lower) limit and it’ll just put power out to reach that limit and no higher. If there’s spare solar generation it’ll go into the batteries, or your hot water tank, or ultimately it’ll just be ditched as heat.
so with 8kw panels and 5kw inverter I could export 5 and use 3 in the house ? or visa versa?
No. With a 5kw inverter the max you could use from the panels is 5. So 3 to the house then 2 to the grid. For example
Ok, updating this with details from our installation.
Panels: 16x 415W panels with a 6kW Inverter. Max effect approx 6.64kW. Total cost (including tax rebate for installation of green tech) 81K SEK, so about 12.1 k SEK per kW, roughly equivalent to 916UKP/kW.
Battery: 1x 5kW base unit (Huawei) with Luna2000 control module, plus 1 x 5kW (total of 10kW). Total cost, including in tax rebate for installation of green tech) approx 57k SEK, so roughly 4.4 kUKP.
Total installation is therefore about 138k SEK or about 10k.5k UKP. It's a big chunk of cash, but el is only going to get more expensive and it does mean we are a little more self sufficient.
The green discount is much more heavily focussed on the battery (it is effectively half price with that factored in) which is the reason we stretched to 10kW. We'll see if the panels actually fill that in summer with, given the S/SW orientation of the roof, should be possible.
It’s a big chunk of cash, but el is only going to get more expensive
I thought prices were coming down?
Seems quite good value for money to me.
to those wirh octopus, how often do you get export credits on your bill?
to those wirh octopus, how often do you get export credits on your bill?
Monthly
Hi, Australian solar performance here. Most people have panels on their roofs. I’m running 4 strings facing north, east and 5 degrees south totalling 18kw, 2 x Fronius inverters totalling 13kw and 14.5kwh powerwall. On the demand side I’m running air source heating and cooling, as well as an ev. Savings on paper are $4k per annum on a total system cost of $20k. If I add in ev charging savings and firewood savings, that doubles to $8k per year. 
Finally got the system up and running after confirming that the meter was configured and our supplier had ok'd things. Not the sunniest day for a start, but currently getting 1.2-1.8kW from the panels and managing to export a bit to the grid. Still not exactly sure why the panels/inverter are not charging the battery, but...
GF has not yet plugged the car in to charge, but that will be an interesting experience.