24 November: 7-9am Octopus Free Electricity

Just received notification for Free Elec tomorrow morning ..

I'll be cooking my full English breakfast and topping up my batteries between those times

Annaka Negative rates on Agile from midnight to 10 am here (with the usual 2230 blip back tonight 😃 ) and a probable rinse-repeat on Sunday night - Monday morning.

I suspect a lot of people's predbat settings will be cycling through charge from grid/export to grid for much of the next 48 hours 😃

I'm waiting to find out the export rates, they've not appeared for me yet on Octopus website or PredBat.

(I'm on agile outgoing, so there may not be as much profit for me, compared to those on fixed 15p).

TX200 Login to the Octopus account and they'll show.

Its always like this when they're panicking about where to dump their windfarm energy - doesn't appear on the public portal for quite a while 😉

Vestas I am logged in, they're not there yet.

TX200 Maybe they're going to charge you for exporting.... 😉

Edit - actually maybe the algorithm for export rates broke the graph/website (again) if it went negative. I've seen the public portal freeze on a few occasions and I think it might be due to a "sanity check" regarding charging customers for export. Normally resolves by about 8pm.

Annaka I'm not quite sure what my typical use for a Sunday is at the moment - sometimes have bonus charging sessions, so typical use might be quite high. Car doesn't need much charge, and if I was to plug it in tonight, might have charged by then.

DD I was presuming it would be calculated on the last four weekend days? Similar to saving sessions.

TX200 I was presuming it would be calculated on the last four weekend days? Similar to saving sessions.

Correct, that’s what it says in the FAQ’s https://octopus.energy/free-electricity/#faqs

Looking back I have had a bit of import in those morning slots, especially like today with it being cold and the heat pump being on. Oh well, Predbat is making good use of the negative agile rates beforehand

I've just remembered to turn my smart automation's off on the smart tariff (beta) card.

No Cosy charging battery tonight between 22:00 and 00:00, or 04:00 and 07:00.

Dishwasher, washing machine and battery set set for 07:00 kick off (well 06:00 for the battery, it will need 3 hrs.)

Free leccy here we come.

39.44kWh import on Sunday. Total cost = minus £0.24....

Must try harder 😃

Vestas 57.3kWh imported on Sunday, 26.9kWh exported. Total cost minus £3.64

I did try harder (or rather Predbat did) 😉

And now back to more normal Agile prices …

geoffreycoan
Was your Predbat doing any exporting in the 7am-noon period, Geoffrey?

Mine was very reluctant to do so (but did dump pre-7am)

I managed to use about 20kWh in the 2 hour period which consisted of running the tumble dryer, washing machine and dishwasher, all starting at 7am. I also ensured my AIO was almost fully discharged. As the finale, I went to my wife's studio which doubles as a home cinema room and I cranked up the heat pump to maximum and fired up the cinema projector to watch the grand prix.

The icing on the cake (as it will be for many of us) is that at 7am-9am the house is usually running on the battery so my normal usage is nigh on zero

PianSom Was your Predbat doing any exporting in the 7am-noon period, Geoffrey?

Yes, it did a few cycles of charging and discharging during the 7-noon period, 17.8kWh imported at the 0p rate.

Green is battery charging, red is battery discharging, white above the line is importing, white below is exporting.

I turned the electric oil radiator on in my wife’s horse shed (which got to 28 degrees C!) and my workshop, but other than that it was just Predbat managing the battery as both my wife and I were away from the house so couldn’t put the tumble dryer on, etc.

geoffreycoan Yes but you have a heatpump 😃

Managed to use about 33.2kWh of extra free electricity on Sunday.

Missed a little bit more opportunity for the free juice, as I forgot that the battery charge rate drops off a cliff above 90% these days, so I should have only charged them to 65% overnight instead of 75%. And boosted to only 90% with free electricity for the maximum free import benefit!
The other option would have been to get up earlier and do a forced export for 40 mins. But getting up at 7am on a Sunday after a night out and running about turning everything on was bad enough 😱

I got the grid import up to 22.5kW at one point for a sustained while. Maybe half an hour+ or so.

It was at this point I was thinking “I wonder how many people will be blowing their main fuse today just to get a few quid of free power”….

Vestas
And of course he (we) had a Power-up 9-12 which helped considerably

Pete UK It was at this point I was thinking “I wonder how many people will be blowing their main fuse today just to get a few quid of free power”….

I was thinking along similar lines - I wonder how happy the DNOs are about having to supply these surges of power.
(I didn't make much effort this time - I have had some bonus IOG morning charging slots recently, so would have had to pay for the first few units used.)