Giv Energy reports

Hi everyone

I wondered what they self consumption means in the weekly \ monthly etc etc reports.

Numbers are often negative numbers.

What does that mean?

Is that good or bad?

Kind regards
JJ

Jairam_padia Self consumption would normally refer to the energy you generate from your solar panels and then use/consume rather than export to the grid.
This could be electricity used at the moment of generation, or energy you stored in batteries for use later on (perhaps overnight where there is no solar). In general the higher the self consumption the better, with more savings for you, but it is worth noting that on some tariffs it can be more financially cost effective to export at some times of day than to use or store that energy.
To maximise self consumption you can do things like schedule the dishwasher to run when it is forecast to be sunniest, make sure you don't charge any batteries you have with too much energy overnight and thus not leave enough capacity to store the solar you generate during the day. It is worth noting it can sometimes be more cost effective to charge overnight and get paid to export the energy - especially on Agile when it is windy (which can even result in negative unit prices). If you work from home or on non work days then running laundry and cooking in the middle of the day whilst your panels are generating are great ways to self consume. Heat pumps could also be a good way of increasing self consumption and running your hot water cycle in the middle of the day will theoretically be more efficient than overnight as well, as there is more heat energy outside to extract for heating the water. In every case it's worth checking what you are actually generating from your panels as using two plus kilowatts on an activity may only make sense if you are at least generating the majority of that energy from your panels. On cold sunny days a heat pump may use a steady few hundred watts, which might be easier to fit within your generation than laundry or cooking - especially away from the midday peak.
With reference to negative numbers, I don't have any on my reports. Are you sure you are not confusing the formatting with a hyphen between the labels and the numbers for negative figures? For me the hyphen is the same colour as the label and not the value. It is possibly not the clearest layout from GivEnergy.

Overall we generate about 80% of our current household electricity needs but only self consume about 65% - in part because we would need larger batteries to significantly increase that, and in (probably larger) part because I often actively choose to run the dishwasher and charge batteries overnight when the import price is at or below £0.12/kWh - this can be more cost effective as I can export excess solar for £0.15/kWh. Our energy tariff gives us half hourly pricing based on grid wholesale prices and they drop when there is plentiful excess energy on the grid, which means that import prices can be below export prices. The same can also be true for Time Of Use (TOU) tariffs, especially those designed for electric cars. During the day there is theoretically more demand for energy so I am happy to export energy providing I am earning more for it than I paid for it.
In the winter this also means I am less exposed to generating less than forecast if it turns out to be wetter or cloudier than expected.