Intelligent Electric Tariffs

Please educate me about clever tariffs, the ones that pay you to not use power when the grid is struggling, and pay to use lots when we have too much solar!

I’m interested as I have a work EV vehicle who credit me for charging it at home.  So I don’t want an EV tariff with low overnight rates (as I wouldn’t see the cost saving from overnight EV charging, and it would penalise me for daytime usage).

But I do have the ability to decide when to charge the electric van so could easily reduce/increase my consumption by 7kW to take advantage of these deals.

But for the other 360 days of the year when it’s just regular demand based pricing, how does that work out in terms of costing more/less and needing to monitor/adjust your consumption? I don’t have solar or battery storage in the house so I can’t set up automated stuff such as exporting to grid.

Finally, I’ve heard something about needing specific EV chargers for certain tariffs, mine is a SyncEV (and I can’t change it as it was supplied by my employer)

Thanks 🙂

In Octopus land the variable pricing one is Agile, the normal car one with smart charging is Intelligent Octopus Go, and the bog standard 5hrs off peak is called Octopus Go.

On the smart tarrif, you need a smart charger e.g. Ohme or a car with a supported API (VW, Tesla others).  This allows Octopus to schedule charging when it’s cheap, but you pay a flat rate that is lower than bog standard off-peak tarrif – 7p, from July apparently.

Agile Octopus gives you prices by the half hour each day.  Sometimes this goes negative or is super cheap, but the maximum theoretical is 60p I think. However it never goes that high.  I know some people can save a modest amount of money over Intelligent, but it does mean they have to check the prices every day and schedule their loads manually. This means plugging the car in or starting the charge at the appropriate time. It often seems to be sunny and windy evenings.

If you’re being paid to charge the van, I’m not sure you’d save enough for it to be worth the hassle – at least, for me.

Have you got a smart meter? You need one for any “smart” tariff.

Yes I’ve got a smart meter.

Molgrips, I suspect you are right, that the hassle would outweigh the benefits.  It sounds like Agile would be the only one I could potentially benefit from.

Sometimes this goes negative or is super cheap, but the maximum theoretical is 60p I think.

Negative yep, max 100p kWh.

Pricing going to be around 2p kWh for a few hours today in the afternoon before the usual rising peak between 4 and 7pm.

To play the agile tariff you need to avoid any significant use of power at peak times. So if you always cook your tea and do the washing and tumble drying between 4 and 7 pm and it cannot be easily shifted to another time it could end up being expensive.

I can easily avoid the peaks and I’m benefiting from the off peak dips.

It strikes me that there’s going to be an opportunity for more devices which work on this system – washing machines for example.

To play the agile tariff you need to avoid any significant use of power at peak times.

Yep, basically if you have school age kids then don’t bother!

And the cheap prices don’t come up very often so def don’t rely upon them.  That said, overall I’ve reduced by bill by a chunk by moving to Agile.

It strikes me that there’s going to be an opportunity for more devices which work on this system – washing machines for example.

I’m very doubtful that will happen but TBH it’s pretty easy to time things for cheap periods either through the the devices own delay function or through the use of wifi sockets and some nerdy shit to switch tings one when it’s cheap!

1-2p/Kwh later….. I might do a drum clean on the washing machine.

So if you always cook your tea and do the washing and tumble drying between 4 and 7 pm and it cannot be easily shifted to another time it could end up being expensive.

Or if you have an Aga or gas oven, or you cook mostly on a gas hob etc. I rarely would use my oven when I was single but we’ve ended up using it a lot as a family – and it’s electric.

I’m very doubtful that will happen

It should – this is a win/win situation – they want you to use the power when it’s cheap, that’s why it’s cheap.  There are already devices that can be controlled via WiFi – our washing machine for example – so it’s simply software and a device to run it on that would allow it.  It’s exactly what the car chargers do, so why not your washing machine/dishwasher/immersion heater? It’s a pretty easy integration to do yourself, but we need Octopus or British Gas etc to roll it out.

I would be tempted to fit a small battery just to cover peak times – but our electricity bill is low enough that the payback would be a decade or so.  Ideally, as well as having solar on roofs, it should be mandatory to fit a small battery to all new builds. And then a retrofit programme with grants and stuff, like with insulation.

I use Octopus Tracker. Like Agile it reflects the current wholesale price, but its daily rather than half-hourly. I tried Agile, but couldn’t avoid general use at peak times enough to make it cost effective. Nor do Intelligent or Intelligent Go work for me either; neither my car or my charger support Intelligent, and I can’t load shift enough to make the higher day rate of Go balance out the charging in off-peak as I don’t have a regular charging pattern.

So Octopus Tracker works best for me. It’s been consistently below the standard variable tariff so I’m saving money anyway, and sometimes it’s been a lot below it. I get day ahead rates automatically through a couple of services, and you start to learn based on the weather forecast if it’s likely to go down (lots of wind, low price mainly). I can then decide roughly what day I’m going to charge on. For example, today it’s 17.26p and I could do with charging, but the https://carbonintensity.org.uk is suggesting to more will be a lower carbon day, ie more renewables in production, so tomorrow’s rate is likely to be lower. Tomorrow’s rate will be published early afternoon, so I’ll either charge today or tomorrow depending. The weekend’s carbon looks higher, so not worth waiting longer, although weekends are generally a bit cheaper than weekdays due to lower demand.

If you’re interested in switching to Octopus, feel free to PM me for a referral code that will get you and me £50 credit each.

so it’s simply software and a device to run it on that would allow it.

Exactly (and I agree it should happen) – but can you imagine any [washing machine manufacturer] developing and supporting software that would work in one country with one electricity supplier?

I doubt it.

One option would be to have appliances that worked with IFTTT but the Octopus integration , for example, is not reliable for some reason, so I created my own RasPi based system.

If you can access it and load shift then intelligent go is effective, for us with solar and a battery it’s really effective. Car charging, battery charging and white goods are all set to run in the cheap rate window; the battery and solar, apart from in deepest winter, covers most of the house consumption except for the odd occasion where we might a couple of cooking items on.

Agile seemed like a ball ache, it wasn’t predictable so you couldn’t programme things to work with it, as it’s half hourly setting white goods to run with longer cycles isn’t always ideal and for solar when buying is cheap selling is pointless.

For example, today it’s 17.26p and I could do with charging, but the https://carbonintensity.org.uk is suggesting to more will be a lower carbon day, ie more renewables in production, so tomorrow’s rate is likely to be lower. Tomorrow’s rate will be published early afternoon, so I’ll either charge today or tomorrow depending.

Turns out I was right. Tomorrow is 13.8p so will set the charger for the early hours.

I dont drive enough to make go worthwhile, as the non cheap hours are still quite pricey.  Over the last year agile has proved best , time the car charges to cheap hours, and the general lower pricing outside of peak hours make it much cheaper overall.

That’s going to be my situation. Not enough miles to justify a cheap car rate. I’ll juggle the 3 pin granny charger and be happy with the power added when the dips occur. If I need more car charger I’ll pay extra but avoid the peak. If car miles/KW averages out at 1.5p then all will be good.

I think an electric car will be more economical than the petrol scooter I use for commuting. Probably nicer at 4am in winter as well.

Agile is near 0p most of the day on Friday and goes negative before 4pm!

the non cheap hours are still quite pricey

23p from next month – how much is normal lecccy?

EDIT 23.5p for normal apparently, so Intelligent Octopus Go is essentially the same price during the day.

Molgrips, I suspect you are right, that the hassle would outweigh the benefits.  It sounds like Agile would be the only one I could potentially benefit from.

how does your company “credit” for charging at home work? Do they just pay the rate you paid or is it a set amount?  Even if it’s the rate you paid Intelligent Go might be worth looking as – I’ve not confirmed this but a colleague says when the vehicle is charging you pay 7.5p/kWh for ALL your electricity, if that is true and you can schedule your own big uses when the cheap tarrif is it might be attractive.

although not on agile I have a thing in the app where they notify you when in peak demand (only happens in winter around 5pm) and says “use less than normal and we will give you points” and of course points make prizes…

The missing part of the equation is electric cars as batteries, I reckon. Home batteries too, obviously, but in principle any electric car could run your house in peak times then charge in offpeak.

(this seems to be a trick we’re missing at the moment, battery storage is a problem for grid level stuff but we’ve created what could have been a vast distributed battery network)

this seems to be a trick we’re missing at the moment

It’s been talked about for years, and it is being worked on.  There are a lot of technical hurdles though by the sound of things.  Octopus just released the UK’s first version of it but it only works with CHAdeMO cars, that connector having been designed for it. However, some other cars support it through CCS2 somehow, but no-one is supporting that yet.  I’m sure they are working on it though as previously said it’s in everyone’s interests – theirs and ours.

The only possibly catch is that most people’s cars aren’t at home plugged in during the day when peak hours are.