Octopus Power-Ups

Wotcha

Received an email from Octopus today offering me access to their Power-Ups program, where they’ll notify me of a 1-2hr window where there’s surplus energy in the grid and we can effectively have free electricity from the grid during that period.

Wondering if anyone has any advice on how to make the most of this. My gut instinct is to force export the battery in the run-up to the power-up, and then charge the battery at full whack while it’s free.

Any ideas/suggestions on this? Still relatively new to Octopus so unsure if this has been done before..

Atkinstagram Wow, that sounds great. Like saving sessions but reversed. Any idea what they're paying per kWh?

If you get the email the day before, might be worth changing your invert to export as priority rather than charge the battery, then you don't have to worry about dumping so much later on in the day. Especially as these session are more likely to happen in the middle of the day.

thewhalw21 They will give you a credit for the cost of the electricity you consume in the power up time period, so any electricity you use will be free. You need a working smart meter taking half hourly readings.

I’ve checked and my postcode is on the list of specific postcodes (all of which are in the East of England in the UK Power Networks area, but its not the whole of East Anglia), so I’ve signed up.

I would plan to force discharge the battery and then force charge it when its free. Maybe move the hot water to that time period as well.

It says on the Octopus website that it will start in late August and run for at least a year.

They are hoping to expand to other areas and you can register interest.

" We've got all the info we need – we'll email you if Power-ups opens up in your neck of the woods."

As these are likely to be at sunny and windy times and you can’t simultaneously import and export I’m not convinced they’ll be of much benefit to solar users. To benefit you’ll need to import as much as possible. Even with an empty battery I wouldn’t be able to import much if it’s sunny.

Very different if you’ve got an EV, heat pump, immersion etc

naltsta You can choose to charge from grid only can you not via the app?

Edit
Nope, its solar+grid, bummer. Got a large umbrella at all?

Jellybaby Why would you want to not charge from solar? The electricity is free from the grid or free from your roof. It's not like your getting paid to use the electricity.

Dump the battery before the free period and then fill it during the free period. Whether that comes from solar or grid matters not...

Waterski99 yeah but my point was if it was grid only you could pull more and get paid whilst getting full export on the solar whilst battery is charging to maximize what you get during that period.

I just got an email from Octopus inviting me to opt in to a Power Up tomorrow (Friday 18th) from 2pm-4pm.

They’ll take the usual half hourly meter readings and all electricity we use between 2-4pm will be free.

I’ve reprogrammed my ASHP hot water to come on at 2pm, its normally 10am to heat the water once a day, so I’ve pushed that back a bit. In the early afternoon I’ll export the entire contents of my batteries, then fill them up again in the 2 hour period, and then get paid to export some of them in the Flux Peak period from 4pm.

What’s not to like?

Me too!
Charging battery, dishwasher, hoovering etc.
At least it incentivizes me to do some housework!

geoffreycoan Not sure whether I'm competent enough even on the desktop app to get my battery/inverter to do all those things without disabling itself!

netty Take it all back ... I've just set it!

I'm helping them out by taking 14Kw right now.

Roberto
you lucky.. (insert appropriate item)

positor1 Haha. Yes. I'd have little PV all day until 2pm, then the sun came out and I hit 4Kw. Shame i cant export on one set of wires at 15p and import for free !!

Using Octopus own data I consumed 24.7kWh over the 2 hours but 20 mins into the session the clouds broke and unfortunately I too was hitting 3.5 to 4 on solar for a time...but no complaints overall of course. Will be interesting to see exactly what Octopus apply as credit to my account. Definitely will be great to get more power-up sessions over the colder months as I can also use my infra-red panels to heat up the house...magic!

daveyge you did better than me. I misjudged the discharge beforehand, didn't start the export early enough, so still had quite a bit in the batteries, and then it was quite sunny in the period so didn't import fully either.
Chewed through 8kw of import so £2.40 of credit I assume

geoffreycoan More to aim for next time then 🙂 It was just coincidence that my batteries were at 30% at the time the Octopus email came through so just kept them around that and didn't have to export prior to the session. Hope this trial is a success and more people around the country get a chance to take part. Suspect that will be a while away though

Another Power-Up coming tomorrow; 2-4pm 🙂 Octopus confirmed £7.72 to be credited from the first one 🙂 🙂

daveyge Great result. I just opted in as well.

Only £2.22 credit from the last one. I didn't get the battery discharge beforehand and charge-up right, but I've now got home assistant automation working so I'm thinking of adapting my flux discharge script to ensure that the batteries are as near to fully discharged at the 2pm start so I can fill them up with the free electricity.

Think I need to do something like a force discharge down to 10% in the morning so that I have a bit in the batteries to support the home demand up to 2pm. Would mode=Eco Paused help I wonder, what does this mode do and how does it differ from Eco mode - I definitely don't want the batteries unnecessarily charging up, would rather have the day's solar being exported.

Then from 2-4pm, set Force Charge to 120 (2 hours force charging I assume) and ensure that the Battery Charge Rate is set to the 2600 max value for my inverters

Would this work?

geoffreycoan I'm far from the best to advise, sorry, but my train of thought is to only discharge if I need to 'make room' for the amount I can charge during those 2 hours. My reasoning is that I don't want to export too much of my free solar at 4.1p unnecessarily and end up importing later (tonight/tomorrow). I usually charge our 2 EV's first in preference to exporting but I also want to charge them during the PowerUp. Using GE reporting I can see that in the first session my batteries went from 40 to 68% so I will only discharge if it looks like they will be above say 65% by 2pm. This might be tricky as my local forecast is for clear skies tomorrow morning....I'm still working through my strategy! 🙂

daveyge I agree don't want to discharge only to have to buy it back at a higher price later on.

At the moment I run in Eco mode, the batteries charge up in the morning, excess solar gets exported and by midday the batteries are full.
At 5pm I force discharge the batteries down to 60% which'll be enough to see me through to the next morning when they'll be on about 10% and the cycle starts again.

So I want to aim to be on 100% by 4pm having charged in the power up as much as possible.
2 hours charging at 2.6kW I should be able to fill the 5.2 so it should be empty at the start. I'll only get at most 5.2 into the 9.5 battery so that really should be about 40% full at the start.

It's how to get to these starting SoC's. Ideally I'd stop the solar charging when it reaches the target in the morning and export anything generated after then. I don't know how to do that in HA. I can force a discharge down to that figure but that's a bit inelegant and wondered if there is a better way to achieve it

No EV so battery and washing is best way to use the free electric

geoffreycoan Just looked a bit more in home assistant. There's an Enable Discharge toggle switch but no equivalent one for charge on my gen 1's, only Enable Charge Schedule which is off.

There's a Temp Pause Charge which can be set to a time period or Running so maybe that'll do what I want to stop charging and preserve battery capacity.

Manual for this?

geoffreycoan Yes I forgot to say I'm on Go so don't have the added complication of Flux exports or have any experience with that tariff. Also, I have the luxury of being retired so have the time to manage the session and not rely on automation. Your plan sounds reasonable....we will obviously learn as we go and hone our plans. I have HA but only basic knowledge so hopefully someone out there can help. Good luck in clocking up more credit than session 1

Here's my automation script for the inverter with the 9.5 battery.

Between 8-14:00, every 5 minutes, check if the SoC is greater than 44.9, and if so, disable charging

At 14:00 and fallback 14:15, re-enable charging, enable force charging and disable discharging

At 15:59:10, disable force charging, re-enable discharging

Normal flux peak rate discharge will then kick in at 17:00

We'll see if it'll work tomorrow, totally not tested!!

`alias: G182 Inv 1 Octopus Power Up
description: ""
trigger:

• platform: time_pattern
  hours: 8
  minutes: /5
• platform: time_pattern
  hours: 9
  minutes: /5
• platform: time_pattern
  hours: 10
  minutes: /5
• platform: time_pattern
  hours: 11
  minutes: /5
• platform: time_pattern
  hours: 12
  minutes: /5
• platform: time_pattern
  hours: 13
  minutes: /5
• platform: time
  at:
  • "14:00"
    • "14:15"
    • "15:59:10"
      condition: []
      action:
• if:
  • condition: time
    after: "13:59:00"
    before: "15:59:00"
    then:
    • service: select.select_option
      data:
      option: Normal
      target:
      entity_id: select.g_sdXXXXX_temp_pause_charge
    • service: select.select_option
      data:
      option: Running
      target:
      entity_id: select.g_sdXXXXXX_force_charge
    • service: homeassistant.turn_off
      data: {}
      target:
      entity_id: switch.g_sdXXXXX_enable_discharge
      else:
    • if:
      • condition: time
        after: "15:58:00"
        before: "16:00:00"
        then:
      • service: select.select_option
        target:
        entity_id: select.g_sdXXXXXX_force_charge
        data:
        option: Normal
      • service: homeassistant.turn_on
        target:
        entity_id: switch.g_sdXXXXXX_enable_discharge
        data: {}
        else:
      • if:
        • condition: numeric_state
          entity_id: sensor.g_sdXXXXXX_soc
          above: 44.9
          then:
        • service: select.select_option
          target:
          entity_id: select.g_sdXXXXXX_temp_pause_charge
          data:
          option: Running
          mode: single
          `

geoffreycoan it didn't work. Temp Pause Charge didnt work as I expected.
Setting it to Running seems to have no effect on my gen 1 hybrid inverters, it just toggled back to Normal.
After the batteries got to 40% full I managed to stop further charging by setting the charge rate to zero.

Further testing I found that if I set Temp Pause Charge to a number say 180, the charge rate changed to zero and Temp Pause Charge then swapped to Running

Also realised that I'd need to set the Charge end time slot 1 to 23:59:00 in the power up period as part of the force charge

Sorry but I'm quite new to my system AIO and Gateway.
How do I set up my system to charge from the grid during an Octopus Power-Up.
I am assuming set the;

Charge Mode to Solar + Grid
Discharge Power to Zero

If someone could confirm or not i would be most grateful.

geoffreycoan I also have an ASHP which is pre programmed by the installer. Having recently joined Octopus Flux I would like more control over the times it operates. How do you achieve this? Your advice welcomed.

General Dogsbody Happy to help. Can you add a bit more about what solar, battery and whether you have Home Assistant?

There’s probably three sets of discussion I could give some input to if any/all of these are relevant to you:

1. Optimising the ASHP, summer and winter
2. Making use of battery discharge to generate more income from Octopus Flux
3. Battery charge and discharge in the Octopus Power-Up events if you are in the right postcode

I’ve had my ASHP for 20 months or so now so have learnt a lot about how it works. Its not currently connected to Home Assistant. I went onto Octopus Flux in June this year, and finally got the export in place from mid August. I setup Home Assistant in August and have now got automation scripts to do (2) and (3) in place (the script above for 3 didn’t work, I’ve been adapting it further)

geoffreycoan thank you Geoffrey. Numpty me used the wrong abbreviation. Not ASHP , I actually meant I have an SAHP, solar assisted heat pump for hot water. It typically runs for 1.5 to 2 hours , 3 times per 24 hours, one of which partially hits the low cost 2am to 5 am period.

I have 5.2 kwh battery which I am boosting with the low cost nighttime leckytricity . Attempts to take advantage of the high paying afternoon peak pay period have failed. I just emptied My battery and started drawing from the grid to run the house. So at the moment just trying to minimise lecky drawn from the grid during the standard & peak rates.
I do not have home assistant , and don't really know what this is - have not yet found an explanation in the forum.

General Dogsbody No worries.

On the SAHP, did your installer show you how you can control what times it comes on to heat the water, or can you have a fiddle with the control box and see if you can adjust the timings.

I have an ASHP but I think the logic of when to run it would translate over to an SAHP.
When you run the heat pump to heat the hot water there is always going to be a bit of wasted energy as the heat pump has to heat the water in the pipes between the heat pump and the cylinder before that water in turn can start heating the cylinder water. So it makes sense to not run the hot water heating too frequently.
My thinking is that I have a large new well insulated hot water tank (replaced as part of the ASHP installation) that is capable of holding sufficient hot water for a day. Obviously if you run lots and lots of baths then this may not hold true for you.

Combining both of these together I only heat my water once a day. At the moment I am heating the water around lunchtime every day as there is lots of excess solar but in the winter I will switch to most likely heating the water in the night time off peak period. As the ASHP consumes quite a bit of electricity throughout the whole day and evening and there will be little solar generation (certainly no excess) I may well switch away from Flux for the winter, but the principle will still be to heat the hot water with the cheapest electricity I can.

I’m assuming you don’t have solar panels? If you don’t, then yes, makes sense to fill your battery with cheap rate electricity overnight and use that during the day. You want to avoid using the expensive peak rate electricity from the grid so depending on your day-time and evening electricity use you may want to pause discharging (using) the battery during the day and preserve the stored electricity for the night-time 4-7pm peak.

Again, depends on whether you have solar panels or not and what your home usage is, but with a 5.2 battery you may well not have enough spare capacity to export during the flux peak period. I have a 5.2 and a 9.5, so 14kW in total usable (remembering that the 5.2 is only 80% usable), and I discharge my batteries down to 60% (retaining 8kW) to see me at least through to the overnight cheap rate.

Final thing, Home Assistant is a home monitoring and automation system that you can run on a PC or Raspberry Pi to monitor and control systems in your home. Things like turning on the lights and the heating when you're coming home. I use it to automatically schedule charging and discharging my batteries to take advantage of cheap rates for import and high rates for export.

geoffreycoan thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience. I do have solar panels, with which I am delighted. I use about 10kwh per day of which only 2+kwh comes from the grid.
I have no means of controlling the SAHP and have been quoted £300 to fit controls including a second clock. I rejected this offer.
When heating my hot water with oil, once per day was quite sufficient. However THE SAHP has much smaller capacity, taking 4 to5 hours to heat a tank from cold. My water is much hotter now at 55 degrees, so no complaints.
It transpires the intallers have zero back office technical knowledge, using various sub contractors to do the installations. I was educated in the slide rule era, and rasberry pi is above my pay grade. However I seem to understand some aspects of the installations better than the suppliers.
When I get my thoughts into line I will approach the SAHP manufacturers for advice

Thank you again, you have been a great help.

General Dogsbody Oh that’s bad if you don’t have any controls for the hot water schedule at all and it’s a “black box” to you. It would be worth looking at the SAHP manuals if you can find them online and whether you can turn the temperature down a degree or two. My ASHP gets less efficient the more you have to raise water temperature, so turning the heating from the installer-set 55 degrees to 48 degrees had a noticeable effect on reducing electricity use.

Great that you have solar panels. Do you have your flux export setup yet and are getting paid for exported electricity? If so, I’d suggest you maybe reconsider charging up your battery from cheap rate Flux electricity, or at least only charge the batteries up enough to last you until the sun comes up in the morning and starts charging them. The reason for saying this is that the flux night time import rate is only a tiny bit cheaper than the day-time export rate, and by the time you figure in power-losses for the conversion of AC import to DC in the battery and back to AC when you discharge, its likely to not be saving you much if anything at all.
At the moment with all the solar I’m getting (20-45kW a day) I’m just letting the batteries charge from solar each day and the excess be exported. If I pre-filled the batteries overnight then I would just start exporting sooner, but as above, the export rate is almost the same as the flux nighttime import rate.

Cheers, Geoffrey

Gutted that i can't get in on this - despite being on Octopus and in the south east and on UKPN - my postcode isn't in the catchment area. For those looking for more info the key page is here
https://octopus.energy/power-ups/

26Left have to say I don’t understand the logic of these power-up events, but I’m not complaining. Today’s the 5th 2 hour period where we’ve got free electricity and I’ve got home assistant scripts that discharge/leave enough room in the batteries for a full 2 hour charge, then automatically force a charge in the free period, then stop the charge at the end. The washing machine, hot water and dishwasher are all on full blast and we’re pulling in 9.7kW from the grid.
But outside its now a grey day and was raining 10 minutes ago. Looking at today’s agile pricing there’s no obvious over-capacity price dip this afternoon, in fact its 20p/kW for most of the time from 2-4pm.

Oh well

geoffreycoan Here’s my current working Home Assistant script to manage the inverter and battery around the Octopus Power-up event.

It relies on a date helper octopus_power_up_date that controls the date of the event. So far all the power-up events have been from 2-4pm, so these times are currently hard coded in the script. If future events change time I will need to edit the script or add more parameterisation, but for now it works.

I have a gen 1 5kW hybrid inverter with an attached 9.5kW battery. Max charge/discharge is 2600W so in the 2 hour event I can only charge 5.2kW at most. In the morning of the power-up event the battery is allowed to charge up naturally from solar PV, but every 10 minutes between 8am and 2pm the script will check the SoC. If SoC is less than 40%, battery charging will be enabled, but once SoC reaches 45% the charging will be stopped so that there’s enough space left in the battery for the power-up period.
At 2pm in the power-up period the inverter will start a 2 hour forced charge of the battery, and then at 4pm the force charge will be stopped. In my case the battery is at 90+% by then.

`alias: G182 Inv 1 Octopus Power Up
description: >-
Only let the battery charge to 40-45% in the morning; hold charge at that
level, then force charge 2-4pm in the Octopus Power-Up period
trigger:

• platform: time_pattern
  hours: 8
  minutes: /10
  id: 10-min-soc-check
• platform: time_pattern
  hours: 9
  minutes: /10
  id: 10-min-soc-check
• platform: time_pattern
  hours: 10
  minutes: /10
  id: 10-min-soc-check
• platform: time_pattern
  hours: 11
  minutes: /10
  id: 10-min-soc-check
• platform: time_pattern
  hours: 12
  minutes: /10
  id: 10-min-soc-check
• platform: time_pattern
  hours: 13
  minutes: /10
  id: 10-min-soc-check
• platform: time
  at:
  • "14:00"
    • "14:10"
      id: power-up-start
• platform: time
  at:
  • "15:59:10"
    id: power-up-end
    condition:
• condition: template
  value_template: >-
  {{ (now().date()) | string ==
  states('input_datetime.octopus_power_up_date') }}
  action:
• choose:
  • conditions:
    • condition: trigger
      id:
      • 10-min-soc-check
        sequence:
      • if:
        • condition: numeric_state
          entity_id: sensor.g_XXXXXX_soc
          above: 44.9
          then:
        • service: number.set_value
          data:
          value: "0"
          target:
          entity_id: number.g_XXXXXX_battery_charge_rate
          else:
        • if:
          • condition: numeric_state
            entity_id: sensor.g_XXXXXX_soc
            below: 40
            then:
          • service: number.set_value
            data:
            value: "2600"
            target:
            entity_id: number.g_XXXXXX_battery_charge_rate
    • conditions:
      • condition: trigger
        id:
        • power-up-start
          sequence:
      • service: select.select_option
        data:
        option: Normal
        target:
        entity_id: select.g_XXXXXX_temp_pause_charge
      • service: select.select_option
        data:
        option: Eco
        target:
        entity_id: select.g_XXXXXX_mode
      • delay:
        hours: 0
        minutes: 0
        seconds: 30
        milliseconds: 0
      • service: number.set_value
        data:
        value: "2600"
        target:
        entity_id: number.g_XXXXXX_battery_charge_rate
      • service: select.select_option
        data:
        option: "120"
        target:
        entity_id: select.g_XXXXXX_force_charge
      • service: homeassistant.turn_off
        data: {}
        target:
        entity_id: switch.g_XXXXXX_enable_discharge
    • conditions:
      • condition: trigger
        id:
        • power-up-end
          sequence:
      • service: select.select_option
        data:
        option: Normal
        target:
        entity_id: select.g_XXXXXX_force_charge
      • delay:
        hours: 0
        minutes: 0
        seconds: 30
        milliseconds: 0
      • service: select.select_option
        data:
        option: Eco
        target:
        entity_id: select.g_XXXXXX_mode
      • service: select.select_option
        data:
        option: "00:00:00"
        target:
        entity_id:
        • select.g_XXXXXX_charge_end_time_slot_1
        • select.g_XXXXXX_charge_start_time_slot_1
        • select.g_XXXXXX_discharge_start_time_slot_1
        • select.g_XXXXXX_discharge_end_time_slot_1
      • service: number.set_value
        data:
        value: "1900"
        target:
        entity_id: number.g_XXXXXX_battery_charge_rate
      • service: homeassistant.turn_on
        data: {}
        target:
        entity_id: switch.g_XXXXXX_enable_discharge
        mode: single
        `

Has anyone actually been credited by Octopus for these PowerUp periods yet ? The web page is rather vague on when they will be paid …

“We’ll work out how much you used during each Power-up and pay you back the difference as account credit every few weeks”

Lofthouse yes I’ve got my credits paid into my account and appear on the transaction history. All bar last week’s 3 power ups I think.
The credits were made on the 30th August and 11th September. Circa £2.40 a time

Thanks Geoffrey - nothing for me yet - but I only started opting in on 14th Sept (after your last credit date), so maybe they will come soon - I would be very grateful if you could update this thread when you get your next Power-up credit - if you remember :-)

Mine is on-going right now!

(Sadly, with a full battery from a calibration early this morning)

Edit - Ah, credit. My last one was 11 Sep also

I have taken part in every session offered and I have been paid for the first four, last payment on 11th September (for 7th Sept). Not including today's session, my credits add up to just over £64 so very glad of the opportunity to take part in this trial 🙂

Looks like my Power-ups have now been credited - about 9 quid … not sure why I was getting in a tizz. Think it must be the principle - “You said it would be free, so it had better be free” !

Ah well, more practice needed on keeping things in perspective 🙄

Lofthouse Just received 5 more power up credits on 26th September, a further £22 making £35 across all the events so far. Another power up event today. They seem to correspond to strong wind days

Thanks Geoffrey - I'm clearly just not trying hard enough (though I'm charging my battery AND an EV during Power-up) - I think you and @daveyge must be running cannabis farms !

geoffreycoan will always correspond to unexpected high wind periods. octopus buy energy production 3 months in advance. If the wind speed suddenly spikes such as a named storm event this wasn’t predicted 3 months ago. It gets a lot more complicated than that in reality, they have a surplus of power. They need to dump so some goes to customers some gets traded to buyers who might be short. It’s a big game that makes lots of money. Wind is an intermittent generation source and at the moment the grid always takes 100% of offshore wind because they pay the owners a guaranteed strike price. Grid balancing is done by turning down gas and nuclear, it will eventually come to wind and solar but right now it’s always used up.

Lofthouse No, no officer my roof isn’t full of sun lamps and palm trees …

I just got an email telling me of my Octopus power up payments, and saying that I used 743% more electricity than normal ! I think this might be too low an increase as we aren’t drawing anything from the grid during the day, just the odd few hundred watts as the inverters catchup with changing house load and then a bit in the very early hours of the morning if we exhaust the batteries.

What I am doing on a power up day is running the washing machine, dishwasher and tumble dryer, the ASHP is on to heat the hot water, but the big draw is force charging the batteries. I turn off charging to the batteries in the morning of a power up day so there’s sufficient retained capacity to force charge 5.2kW into each battery (two gen 1 inverters).

Jase1703 Interesting. I have noticed as well that the Octopus agile rates are not particularly low on these power up periods. Would have thought that if there was over capacity they’d drop the agile rate for the whole country as well

The power-up events are specific to regional generation areas so I assume Octopus have a deal/partnership with solar/wind generators in those areas.

For example there's no power-ups for the East Mids area, nor will there be in the foreseeable future from what I was told. Its basically the generation mix - very little wind, some solar and the rest is gas/coal/incineration generators.

geoffreycoan You forgot the oven if its one of the self-cleaning ones. Ours actively nags us by beeping and flashing a "cat clean" instruction every time it thinks it needs a clean......

When you look at the areas that get them and then overlay the infrastructure on top it's predominantly solar farm congestion that it maps to, given the voltages that the DNO sit on. Most of the big wind hooks in elsewhere.
Obviously high wind impacts the grid zones as a whole anyway, so you don't necessarily need just sunshine to trigger them but it does help.
The outliers are those that live near the IFA, but seeing as far as i know the sessions cover everyone in the scheme and not just specific zones at a time its hard to know which "glut" of power (IFA congestion or local generation) is actually triggering it, or if they are just seeing what local DSR can do in general.

Lofthouse :-0 Funnily enough we had a meter reader round a few days after the first powerup session...we have had a smart meter for several years and not seen anyone here to check the meter before so maybe someone had the same thought!

Lofthouse Good time to mine bitcoin 😃

hoggy Its interesting. On the signup list of available postcodes it said what area each postcode was in and we were tagged with Great Barford where there’s a power station (just south of St Neots in Bedfordshire).
It was interesting that signup was down to specific full postcodes, not SG19 2xx for example.
Not complaining, I imported 18kW of free electricity yesterday, 10.4 of that into the batteries which meant I exported 10.4kW extra in the morning.

geoffreycoan I haven’t seen any Power-Up payments since 25th Oct - previously they were credited every 14 days - is this the same for you ?

Haven’t seen any power ups full stop!

Had my first 4 hour Power-up yesterday.

Not been paid since 25 Oct either

EDIT - just been notified for 2/11, 10/11, 27/10, 28/10

Yep, just got mine credited - Octopus must have sensed my angst !

PianSom we had the 4 hour power up as well. Couldn't manage to get enough space in the batteries to fully utilise the free electricity though, was still exporting at 10:20 to try to get some space!

I'll have to adjust my automation scripts to turn off predbat earlier if these sessions are as long again. Most of them have been 2-4pm, we had one that was 1-4pm I think, and then this 9-1pm one.

I have only jus received payment for my most recent sessions, but I was only offered 2/11 and 10/11. Wasn't offered any power ups on 27 and 28/10 :-(

Rumours that Power-up sessions have been broadened to East Midlands and South Wales ...

No sign of an update on https://octopus.energy/power-ups/ which still says "We’ll offer it in UKPN areas in South East & East England for at least the next year (ie to August 2024)."

Yes just got offered one tomorrow but I can’t think of anything to plug in as the car won’t be here

I did sign up for when it comes to my post code in the East Midlands but nothing official yet. I had better look into PredBat settings for this, although between EV’s now until late September .

I just got an email for tomorrow as well, I'm in Yorkshire. Wonder if they're doing a trial to show the all networks how it can be implemented.

I'm on Agile so I wonder what the price for 1-2pm tomorrow is like anyway

I’ve been Powering-up for a year now. And I just got the email too.

Wonder if that marks the end of East of England Power-ups?

EDIT - no! From the FAQs

Similar to Power-ups, Free Electricity Sessions allows you to make use of spare green electricity. Whilst Power-ups is a collaboration with the network companies and is only available to particular areas, Free Electricity Sessions are open to all Octoplus customers.

No email about power-up’s but just got an email about Octopus Free Electricity events https://octopus.energy/free-electricity/#faqs

Similar logic to the DFS sessions, any electricity used ABOVE your usual AVERAGE (i.e. nothing at all for those of us with Solar) will be free. Does say its different from the power up events as its whole-network wide, so suggests power up events are still ongoing. My last power up was the 8th August 1-3:30pm.

I’ll just set it up the same in predbat as a zero price import_rate_override

I've had one and I'm in the West Midlands.

I did sign up when I joined Octopus to be notified.

Yes free rather than paid. We’re in Norfolk so can’t be much further east

I've done the sign up thing for this but there doesn't seem to be any confirmation that it's accepted or worked, on my account page it still just shows the signup link. Anyone get confirmation when they did it?

Phil_H If its anything like the power-up's, you should get an email confirmation some time later once you've filled the form in. Nothing shows in your account about this though

I've signed up for it but unlikely I will be making much benefit of it as the solar forecast for that period for me is 3.4kWh and my inverters can only charge at 2.6kWh so I'll be exporting regardless. Anyway, will see what happens

geoffreycoan Ok, will see if anything turns up later. Predbat not looking like it will do what I expected, no charging in that slot despite my solar being shocking tomorrow. Might change later I guess

Phil_H

you'll need to set a manual rate change in the predbat config file, these power ups are not exposed via the API

PianSom Rumours that Power-up sessions have been broadened to East Midlands and South Wales ...

Ooh! Yes, got an email for free power tomorrow 1pm - 2pm.

(Never been entirely sure where "east midlands" is, but I'm near High Wycombe.)

I got the email and I’m in the south west.

neomancer Yea, I've got that set, best guess is the low forecast agile rates are muddying the waters

DD (Never been entirely sure where "east midlands" is, but I'm near High Wycombe.)

Leicestershire/Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire/Northamptonshire/Rutland/Lincolnshire.

Not High Wycombe, that's the South-East 🙂

These "free" sessions only work for me if I'm home to use plenty and can charge my EV. Otherwise if the "free" electrons are due to PV, i.e. it is sunny, I'm better off exporting at 15p. Otherwise the first 4 to 5kW of "free" electricity was mine anyway, and I was getting 15p a unit for it.

Simultaneous!

Are you all on tariffs other than Agile? Best agile is offering me tomorrow is 3.17p at 1.30pm (which is pretty good except I expect my solar inverter will be higher than my house load plus battery charge at that time so will be exporting).

Windy Miller Are you all on tariffs other than Agile?

Yes, I'm on IOG.

The FAQ does address agile:

Can I take part as an Agile customer?
Whether it's worth taking part largely depends on what the energy prices are doing at that time. For example, if it's a negative price period, your power is already better than free. However, if your price is above zero, you're welcome to take part and benefit from our super-green sessions.

For savings sessions, increasing export was considered equivalent to reducing import. But the faq doesn't address that explicitly:

How do you work out my normal use?
Any power you use above normal will be free – so how do we decide what’s normal? We'll look at your historical smart meter readings to work out your typical energy use at that time of day.
If the Session is on a weekday, we'll look at your half-hourly usage over the last 10 weekdays. If the Session is at the weekend, we'll look at your half-hourly usage over the last 4 weekend days. We'll not include days where a Session took place in these calculations. Once we know this ‘normal’ figure, we can use it as a baseline - any power you use above that baseline will be free.
For example, if you normally use 100watts between 1-2pm, anything over 100watts will be free.

(I'm typically exporting quite a lot around this time, though the forecast for tomorrow is for clouds, so battery might be able to eat most of it.)

DD yes its not explicit about export, “half-hourly usage” could be import consumption or it could be net import-export, which for most of us with solar will be very much on the export side. I suspect that as they want us to consume the free electricity it’ll be import only.

@PianSom I got the email about the power up from 1:00-3:30 tomorrow as well. Put that in to Predbat and its still deciding to hold the SoC at 100% throughout as plenty of solar forecasted. Could have done with it today as it was a grey day today

geoffreycoan I suspect that as they want us to consume the free electricity it’ll be import only.

Possibly.. though if the problem is that there's too much power on the grid, reducing export is also contributing to the solution. In exactly the same way that, during the winter savings-sessions, increasing export is making more power available to the grid during a potential shortfall.

My next door but one neighbour got an email from Octopus for free electricity tomorrow but we haven't had one. They don't have solar so will be on a normal tariff whereas we are on flux.

If we had free electricity then we would dump to the grid for an hour before and then charge for an hour.

nophead we haven't had one

https://octopus.energy/free-electricity/

Hhhmmmm I got the email and signed up, then saw this, so will be sticking with my current routine exporting at 15p

Octopus will have looked in the past at some point to work out your usage, who knows when this would have been.

Free Electricity... what's the catch?
During these super-green sessions, all the electricity you'd normally use will cost the same. Any extra power you use won't cost a thing. That means you can go to town on all those electricity-hungry household tasks, knowing you won't clock up a big bill afterwards

Daveb01 Octopus will have looked in the past at some point to work out your usage, who knows when this would have been.

It says in the faq - last 10 weekdays. Same as the winter savings-sessions.

See "How do you work out my normal use?" a few posts above.

DD

So my Octopus bill up to today for August is -£0.22, I have not seen this before.
This is why I did not participate as I do not know if I would get anything as I am in minus.

It will be good to see the feedback on how much people get.

Daveb01 I'm also -ve for the month. But that makes it very very easy to increase my usage!

Even if they are only considering import, everything I use is an increase from my zero normal use at that time.

Daveb01 My understanding of 'the catch' is that if the power isn't used then the wind farm is paid not to generate. So extra cost to Octopus for not supplying power - hence cheaper to give it away. I believe wind farms 'earned' £2,000m last year for not supplying power. I wish we got paid for not supplying solar power on cloudy days!

Amazing luck it was today because it was our worst solar day since the winter. It rained all day and our battery would have run out in the evening for the first time since the winter. Instead we charged it for free. We normally export at that time of day and never use from the grid, so it should all be free.

nophead Amazing luck it was today because it was our worst solar day since the winter. It rained all day and our battery would have run out in the evening for the first time since the winter. Instead we charged it for free. We normally export at that time of day and never use from the grid, so it should all be free.

That’s good. We had a fairly sunny day, but windy later on. 53.8kWh generated, 48.4kWh exported, and absolutely zero imported in the free period. I had the batteries trickle charging through the morning to reduce solar clipping and one of them was on about 91% when the free period started so I boosted it to max charging rate but I guess the solar I was generating just resulted in no import.
Hey ho. Another Octopus Power up event for me tomorrow in the East of England but the forecast is sunny so doubt I’ll get much back from that either

It looks like there will be plenty of green energy in the system tomorrow, so we're back on for another Free Electricity session.

Fill your boots on Sunday 18 August: 1-2pm.

During the hour, you'll only pay for the electricity you'd normally use at this time. Any extra you

I will be exporting again as it’s sunny, so won’t be taking part.

Import so far - £0.0556
Export so far - £52.18

If it’s sunny as expected I will getting free electric via solar, plus export. You can not get free electric twice 👍

It definitely helps those without solar.

Daveb01

You can charge the car, and your solar batteries and put the washing machine on?

I got about 10kW free yesterday !

I guess it’s only 70p saved compared to importing off peak but every little helps. Plus you can export at max for the hour before.

For me that would be 8kW export from the batteries in the hour before (well it would be if my system was working properly - but it isn’t still 😞)

Pete UK

Everything is charged by 10:30 ish on a sunny day. Then pushing 6 kWh back to grid from solar. Having the washing machine on, and cooking does not reduce the Solar enough to stop export. I will stick exporting at 15p all day 👍😀

Thanks for the suggestion though.

Dumping the batteries to grid for 1.5 hours before free session, then charging car and batteries. Work well for session 1 a couple of days ago. Same today.

Daveb01 Do you have n immersion heater on your hot water tank? That will gobble up electricity and give you free hot water!

Karen

I have not paid for electricity since June, so these new power ups do not work for me. I am getting free electric every day via solar. These sessions are Good for some people I guess.

I prefer to get 15p for the excess back to the grid hopefully until end of September.

I am also very disappointed with the winter ones. I got a good payout the first couple then it slowly reduced as I was exporting the same every time. There calculation needed people to increase there export to get the same payment, or something like that. In my case it was impossible as I can only export 13.5 kWh (AIO battery)

Likewise, I am exporting when its sunny so am not going to get much benefits from these free electricity sessions. I had notification of the first one hour free session on 15th August, and had the power up event at the same time and the powerup on the 16th, but haven't had any since then, nothing for Sunday. Odd.

Daveb01 I am also very disappointed with the winter ones. I got a good payout the first couple then it slowly reduced as I was exporting the same every time. There calculation needed people to increase there export to get the same payment, or something like that. In my case it was impossible as I can only export 13.5 kWh (AIO battery)

I got reasonable payouts from all the DFS sessions. I avoided exporting during the 4-6pm period which is when the DFS sessions tended to be, and that worked quite well for me. I guess if you're on Flux then that would be precisely when you'd want to export any excess solar, but in my case I'm on the fixed 15p export tarrif

I was lucky on the first one as it wasn't sunny where I was.

I’ve had one on Thursday and one today, had about 22kwh for free. The joy of parallel AIO is being able to import and export at 12kw.

JasonF had one on Thursday and one today, had about 22kwh for free. The joy of parallel AIO is being able to import and export at 12kw.

Excellent result. I have twin Gen 1 hybrid inverters which means I get double the normal 2.6kWh rate, but my solar panels were generating more than that so I’m better off exporting than trying to import free electricity.

I’ve checked and I didn’t get an email about the Sunday event although my son did and we only live 5 miles apart. Strange. I have re-applied to join in case they’ve lost me somehow.

I didn’t get an email either but chanced it anyway as it really isn’t much. About 50p charging the car

Does any of you clever geeks know where I can see my usage for the free slots before Octopus send out their emails?
Similar to the streamlit link we had for the DFS sessions?

I wonder if the payments will be made if you export less during the free period? I'm likening this to the first and second year of saving sessions in the winter. First year you didn't get paid for export - second year you did. Just wonder that if you normally are exporting at those times but you export less, does that count as extra use for which you get paid?
Personally, I had throtted back the charge rate in the morning to be at around 70% at 1pm so I could force charge at full power for an hour. I switched on the dishwasher, washing machine, toaster (4 slices) and cooked some butternut squash in the airfryer for the risotto last night! Finished up using 0.9 kw from the grid over the hour as the sun was shining and still exported some power, when I would usually have exported around 3.5kw as the battery would have been full.
Be interesting to see what if anything I get paid!

From discussions on twitter X, export not taken into consideration at all

But as you say, things might change.

TX200 I can't see why Octopus would allow export to be taken into account when they're trying to dump excess power, it'd be the definition of insanity.

This isn't anything like the "power saving" sessions.

Yeah agree with all of the above. The car wasn’t at home for the last session, so couldn’t import as much because I was generating a lot of solar similar to others. Maybe managed about 3 kW this last time.

Vestas exporting less would cause less of a problem - e.g. the more everyone exports the more people they'll need to hoover up all that extra electric.

TX200 Yes but paying domestic users not to export really is insanity 🙂

Bad enough paying large scale generators (wind farms) not to generate but domestic users?

Not politically acceptable. Not environmentally acceptable. Oh and lastly not financially acceptable.

The first one will trump the rest - rich people with PV panels having their cake & eating it? Quite right too IMHO.

Even the tories recognised how bad that looked and that's one of the reasons standing charges are at the level a 2.5kW* PV system could generate in a year assuming 15-20p export rates and 100% export.

*that's the size always recommended in EPCs for an average house.

Edit - I wonder if Octopus T&Cs for their "managed services" where they take control of your system have clauses where they say they can shut down your export under certain conditions (and pay you some risible amount in lieu)?

We have free tomorrow between 13:00 and 14:00. I have 19kWh (2 x 9.5kW) battery and 5 kWh inverter

In one hour I noticed I can charge the battery 18%, but 1 hour discharge is quicker and does 22%.

So I think in 49 min it will discharge 18%

So here is my plan

Discharge battery between 12:11 and 13:00 on timed export.
Charge battery on timed charge, mow lawn , do the washing and plug car (7kWh) in 13:00 to 14:00
Not worry about the sun.

What I want to avoid is the car charging partly off the battery

Does that sound about right?

Thanks

Pete Thomas The logic sounds right, the inverters seem to be able to discharge faster than they can charge so you want to discharge for less time than you charge.

But, what's your solar forecast for tomorrow? If you don't already, you can create a free account on solcast.com to get a fairly good solar forecast.

Tomorrow (on agile) the rates are negative for most of the day due to the forecast strong winds, but looking at the solar generation per half hour (last column), its all above my inverter max throughput (2.6kW per half hour) so there's no benefit in trying to import unless I can consume more than my generation, and even then the benefits will be tiny

geoffreycoan Tomorrow (on agile) the rates are negative for most of the day due to the forecast strong winds, but looking at the solar generation per half hour (last column), its all above my inverter max throughput (2.6kW per half hour) so there's no benefit in trying to import unless I can consume more than my generation, and even then the benefits will be tiny

Forecast for 13:00 is 3.3kWh. So are you saying that will be wasted?

Just assume I am using approx 11kW in that hour, 7 for the car and 4 for the battery

Doesn't that mean the sun will provide 3.3 of that and the grid will supply 7.7 ? Oh wait, normally I'd charge the battery and car at night time 7p so my only gain I get is 49p

Pete Thomas Forecast for 13:00 is 3.3kWh. So are you saying that will be wasted?

Just assume I am using approx 11kW in that hour, 7 for the car and 4 for the battery

Doesn't that mean the sun will provide 3.3 of that and the grid will supply 7.7 ? Oh wait, normally I'd charge the battery and car at night time 7p so my only gain I get is 49p

As I said, it’s only if I can consume more than my generation is it going to be worth it. Agreed, an EV is a good way of soaking up free power, but I don’t have one. I could shift the heat pump hot cycle that runs at 3am where it’s going to cost me 1.36p/kWh tomorrow morning, but that only consumes a couple of kW at most. Maybe put the washing and dishwasher on, but all of these are only going to take a few kW.
Instead I’ll just let the solar get exported at 15p/kWh.

I’m lucky enough to live in the East of England Power Up region so we’ve actually got free electricity from 1-3:30pm tomorrow, but when the agile rates are negative I’m not sure I would want to sign up anyway.

First world problems!

For those without so much solar or who have an EV then yes it’s a benefit. For me, not so much.

Surely if the free sessions continue and you import more during the free period your average consumption goes up so you will then reduce the amount of free energy they will give you.

Ortwin That is exactly what happened with the Saving Sessions in the winter as well for a lot of people.

Ortwin when calculating your normal usage, they exclude free-electricity sessions.

Ortwin Check out the T&Cs about how the "average" is calculated. Last 10 working days or 4 weekend EXCLUDING consumption during any of the free sessions. So participating in multiple sessions per week doesn't affect your average usge.

geoffreycoan As I said, it’s only if I can consume more than my generation is it going to be worth it.

I think I have to import at least twice my (excess) generation for it to be worth it - normally that excess is sold for 15p, whereas things like car charging / heating water cost 7p overnight. So if I do those during the free session, I need to to consume 3*generation to break even. (Here, excess is the generation over the 3.6kW that can go into the battery, since that's just deferring the export.)

If only car could charge faster than 3.6kW...

One weather app predicts clouds at 1pm, but another has it, so will have to wait and see...

Pete Thomas .. plus whatever you dump prior to the session made up of whatever PV you have prior to session + battery export capped at max export. I dump for much longer as the PV prior effectively limits the dump.

DD why only 3.6?

SimonClarke why only 3.6?

One 3.6 limit is the gen-3 inverter charging limit; the other is that my EV is an older Leaf.

But I think I got the sum wrong - if I generate 1kWh, and import 1kWh, it cost me the 15p lost export, but I've still ended up with 14p worth of electricity, so that must be (close to) the break even point.

PianSom interesting that your free window was 1-3.30pm - I guess that’s the difference between local specific power-ups vs a national effort to take electricity off the grid at peak solar (plus a decent wind blowing?).

Mine so far (SE England on UKPN) have all been 1-2pm only on the 15/8, 18/8, 21/8. Today’s for me is moot as I’m on Agile and it’s negative pricing at the moment.

One confusing thing was advice from Octopus about charging during the 1300 - 1400. They suggested I set my Ohme app schedule temporarily to those times. However you can't do that with Ohme, you can only set a target time and it will charge when it knows the rate is low tariff, e.g. normally 1130 to 0530.

However he told me that the smart charger will not know about the free electricity. So the easiest thing is going to be to just charge without the scheduler and set my alarm clock.

26Left a national effort to take electricity off the grid at peak solar

There's some speculation that the national thing is more of a strategic/political move by Octopus to try to encourage smartmeters / normalise time-of-use incentives / demonstrate to the grid that behaviour can be influenced by pricing.

26Left
Also, Power-ups are not dependent on historic usage - all imports are free during the windows.

As well as the Free Electricity session today 1-2, there is a Power-up 1-3.30. They are notified by email separately.

Pete Thomas you can manually select max charge on your Ohme app at 13:00 and then select pause at 14:00. Octopus customer services aren't very good about Ohme stuff

sunnyjoe you can manually select max charge on your Ohme app at 13:00 and then select pause at 14:00. Octopus customer services aren't very good about Ohme stuff

Yes that sounds about right.

On issue, after resting the time battery discharge from 12:10 to 13:00, I missed the fact that this seemed to change it from enable to disable which I didn't notice until 12:20. hence it won't be discharged enough to charge for the full hour hence the car may start using a bit of battery instead of all grid. Ah well, I'm learning and what I've realised is this is a lot of brain pain just to make 90p.

PianSom Also, Power-ups are not dependent on historic usage - all imports are free during the windows.

As well as the Free Electricity session today 1-2, there is a Power-up 1-3.30. They are notified by email separately.

I received both emails yesterday. Noticed that the text in the power up email now addressed the co-existence of the free electricity and power up events, explaining the difference and that if you were offered a power up that coincided with the same time slot, you'd get the benefits of the power up event.

Since the agile rates are negative for almost all of the power up time and I'm still exporting loads I haven't even bothered signing up this time

Pete Thomas don't bother with adjusting the charge/discharge battery timers. Use the play buttons in the app. My 8.2kWh battery has been discharging through my AC3 inverter since 12:15 today, and I have an alarm set to remind me to recharge it from 13:00 and again to return to "play" at 14:00. It's a bit of a faff, but more reliable than using the timed functions which I reserve for my regular discharge 3kW 22:30-00:50 and recharge 1.9kW 01:00-05:30

sunnyjoe It's a bit of a faff, but more reliable than using the timed functions

Configuring a timer means the inverter can do it itself, whereas doing it interactively requires that the network is all working when you need it.

DD good point

So it worked out OK. Exported from 12:15 to 13:00 then charged car at 7kWh, ran the tumble dryer and the battery almost recharged (it tends to be slow as it nears 100% so it only got to 98% but sun came out later and topped it up.

However what with faffing with the battery charge/export and the car charger to only save about £1 ? Not be sniffed at I suppose but not something I could do remotely due to having to start and stop the Ohme manually. I can set the tumble dryer on timed though.

Pete Thomas is there not a timer on the Ohme?

You can have three different schedules aka routinesthat you can enable/disable. As far as I can see you can only schedule a target battery percentage and time to be ready by. This means I presume it would start charging as soon as you plug the car in.

Pete Thomas I love it how we all, including me, jump through numerous hoops just to make a quid! We get all excited about it then try and explain to our partners and they say “what, you did all that to save a £!” Then it doesn’t sound so clever….

Pete Thomas much as I criticise the Hypervolt 2 at least it’s got a timer. Rubbish build materials though…

One thing I could look into is to use the car's timer (Hyundai Kona 2020) however I think the Ohme is designed to override the car schedule.

OK, well the energy graph finally updated and looks like only about 7kWh out of 9kWh from the grid. Thanks to the pesky sun shining a bit.

I wonder, is there a way to force the solar generation to export so that 100% of house load (and battery charge) is from the free grid?

If the sun had been on full, it would have been way less free grid obviously

Pete Thomas I wonder, is there a way to force the solar generation to export so that 100% of house load (and battery charge) is from the free grid?

No. You can't simultaneously import and export along a single grid connection - the two elements sum (and cancel).

Don't forget that Octopus aren't paying you to use electricity, they're simply giving it away free. So the cost to you is the same whether it's your own solar you're using, or you're importing. So curtailing PV generation in any way would be a bit futile.

As you have observed, the battery is rather slow to charge up above 90%. So might have been better to discharge down much further earlier, so that the battery could then absorb more power (from either solar or grid). But obviously it depends how much battery you need for the evening.

I normally discharge down to 40% during the morning. Today I went down to 30%, then it got back up to 60% by 2pm (mixture of solar and import). I operate under the assumption that battery is happiest charging and discharging around 50%-ish, but that's mostly based on research from NMC batteries, which may not apply so much to LFP.

DD No. You can't simultaneously import and export along a single grid connection - the two elements sum (and cancel).

That's what I thought

DD I normally discharge down to 40% during the morning. Today I went down to 30%, then it got back up to 60% by 2pm (mixture of solar and import). I operate under the assumption that battery is happiest charging and discharging around 50%-ish,

OK that's interesting but maybe going to be too complex for me. I just let the battery stay charge and the discharge fully in the evening ready for the 11:30 cheap tariff. So any excess solar just exports.

I'm kind of relying on the Givenerguy guarantee not saying anything about not keep it at 100% but maybe that is for a different thread

Via a conversation on the Octopus Energy integration https://github.com/BottlecapDave/HomeAssistant-OctopusEnergy/issues/973#issue-2465560436 (and mention of it on a predbat issue), found that an REST interface to pull Octopus Power Up session information has been created https://github.com/8none1/octopus_powerups

It produces a JSON object that you can pull via REST into Home Assistant or your own scripts. The JSON object contains the date/time of the next 3 future Power Up events.

The author lives in Bedfordshire (in fact the next village to me), so if you are in different power up areas you might get slightly different results, but he's also posted the code that pulls the power up session info,

Today the automation has been extended for the Octopus free sessions, same technique, creates a JSON file that you can pull into your own automations.

Woo woo woo, first Power up event I’ve had since 26th March

Not massive amount of solar predicted tomorrow so looks like I will be able to make use of it. Been so long since I’ve had a useful power up event I’d almost forgotten how to set it up in predbat. Details here: https://community.givenergy.cloud/d/3968-automating-octopus-power-up-events-into-predbat/85

geoffreycoan Did you realise your postcode snuck into that screenshot?
Of course I had a nosy on Google Maps – and out of the two houses in the area with solar panels, I’m guessing yours is the one absolutely plastered in them!

miffy I hadn’t realised that, and thanks for letting me know. Am not massively bothered about it, and yes, we have 44 solar panels in total. We’re lucky to have an East/West aligned roof without gables and apart from a few roof lights no obstructions, so when the GivEnergy inverters were installed I decided take best advantage of the scaffolding being up and get as many panels on as I could.

Actually if the 16 FIT panels on the rear were moved a bit we could have got another panel in, and on the garage roof we coud have got 2 more as well. But I’m not questing for more!

I've had a couple of free electricity hours in the last month, but as I'm on IOF I don't have to do anything and I just get credited £1.16 for possibly having a battery charged (but it's not been charged yet).