DFS sessions

Thought I’d start a dedicated thread to discuss the DFS sessions this winter (couldn’t find last year’s one to resume it).

A couple of useful links:

DFS Explainer:
https://www.neso.energy/industry-information/balancing-services/demand-flexibility-service-dfs

DFS service requirements including forthcoming events:
https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/demand-flexibility/dfs_industry_notification
(interesting to see that there has been quite a few events already this year)

More details of each service requirement including MWh requested, eligible suppliers and guaranteed rate (so far all been zero)
https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/demand-flexibility/dfs_service_requirement

Details of supplier bids for each event and whether they are accepted or rejected:
https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/demand-flexibility/dfs_utilisation_report

(Can see for example that Axle has been accepted for today at £572 per MW, Octopus rejected at £700. Yesterday 11/12, Axle accepted at £498/572 and Octopus accepted at £750)

You can filter the results for DFS Participant Id of “OCTOPUS ENERGY LIMITED” or “AXLE ENERGY LIMITED” (must be in caps) to just see the results for that supplier

I hope HMGov(?) procurement make a better job of this than I all the HMGov stuff I worked on.
The mantra was "value for money is the main criteria, not lowest cost", however pretty much always lowest cost was the deciding factor, leading ultimately to some rubbish purchases.
I wonder how Axle can lower their bid price but Octo upped theirs.
How can Axle deliver at 30% less than Octo?
Am I reading this wrongly

SteveCook I wonder how Axle can lower their bid price but Octo upped theirs.

The suppliers pitch what they think the market will accept based upon forecast demand. Octopus of cause has huge number of customers, they have pitched around 83MW of capacity whereas Axle are offering between 1 and 7MW, so how desperate are NESO for the extra energy?

SteveCook How can Axle deliver at 30% less than Octo?

It’s down to how much their operating costs are for providing the service and how much they want to offer to their customers. A lower rate means there will be less takeup or customers leaving like a number have from Axle already.

Axle gave 40p per kWh yesterday, Octopus 60p, so they’re both making a margin on it

And as for government procurement, yes, I have had similar experiences. Lowest cost wins pretty much

No sign of one today?

Sounds like octopus bid rejected?

Geoffrey Thanks.
But someone doing something for 30% less than someone else typically suggests a number of things:

Someone has misunderstood what has to be delivered and the implications of non delivery
A massive difference in cost base.
A non compliant bid to get the job and then argue about numbers when in a dominant position (HM Gov sale of breakfast TV franchise that the successful(?!) bidder then renegotiated, a prime example)

As neither Octo or Axle produce the energy (they just buy/sell it) , I can't see where those differences can be .

Apologies if I have misunderstood something

SteveCook these DFS sessions are slightly different from a normal ‘procure a service and the supplier delivers it for cost+margin’

These are NESO buying a reduction in grid demand, and paying the suppliers to incentivise their customers (i.e. us) to reduce electricity demand/export more.

In the case of Axle who run GivBack, they know how many inverters they have signed up, they know the discharge rates they can achieve from the inverters they manage, so they bid £498 and £572 per MW of capacity they will add to the grid, giving the customers 40p/kWh so they make £98 or £172 a MW profit.

Octopus slightly different, they bid £750 and presumably would incentivise the customers 60p/kWh. Octopus have to pitch the price to customers higher because (other than those on IOF) we control our grid export or grid import and the rate has to be high enough to incentivise us to do this.

SteveCook As neither Octo or Axle produce the energy (they just buy/sell it)

Octopus do have some generation capacity: https://www.octopusenergygeneration.com/ and is a electricity supplier to the consumer.

Axle, I understand, is just a middle man offering your electricity (either as reduced consumption or export) to NESO, they don't supply consumers.

Aside from the fact that Axle aren't an energy supplier, the big difference between the two is that Octopus understands what it has cost you to import the power and know that if there is not a real premium over the import price it won't be cost effective for people to export.

Those of us on Agile and fixed outgoing have a very keen interest in this especially when the prices have been high for a few days. Emptying my battery today between 1800 and 1900 would leave me paying 69p a unit immediately afterwards. The power that charged the battery overnight cost over 20p a unit, so it wouldn't have been cost effective to export at 60p today.

The reducing consumption part of the equation may be different - but most of us rarely import at the peak times so reducing consumption isn't an option.

geoffreycoan Its worth noting that all the Axle Energy entries in the DFS "register" seem to specifically relate to domestic battery systems like GE's.

Also the companies house micro accounts (if I've got the right Axle Energy) are pretty sparse.

Suggests they're very very minor players in the game. For now.

I think this would all work better if smart meters were all operational/connected and inverter comms reliable

SteveCook it’s an auction. Octopus are a price maker given their large size, and Axle a price taker given their small size. Octopus are able to demand a higher price because they make up a large chunk of the DFS supply.

Think about it this way - Octopus are basically saying to NESO “we want this much per unit for the large amount of power we can shed, take it or leave it”. Whereas Axle has to bid more competitively - they need to be cheaper than Octopus to make sure they are selected, otherwise they’ll be behind the slug of Octopus bids and will likely be rejected as there is often more supply than NESO demand. We saw the same dynamic last winter, albeit for a different DFS design (analysis of the first few bidding rounds: https://jarss.medium.com/getting-paid-to-use-less-electricity-in-the-uk-the-triple-win-fd886fdea3d1)

26Left
Thanks
But i am sure it would work better if all the elements in the chain worked

SteveCook that’s clearly the direction the market is taking - and despite some teething issues, how this works for me.

DFS this winter is for smaller windows at lower prices and with less notice than last year, which favours those suppliers that can programmatically control equipment (eg over API) and so makes the demand side of the grid smarter and more responsive at the margin - rather than the lucrative, crude and chunky tests used last year to educate the public and see what could be delivered in the extreme.

I haven’t looked at the data but I imagine the size of the blocks that Octopus are bidding for this winter is much less in power terms than last year when they could harness the crowd to switch off certain appliances manually given the size of the reward (£x/kW) and the amount of notice (often 24 hours notice).

This year it’s going to be more about those that have batteries / inverters / heat pumps / car chargers etc than can be controlled automatically at short notice (same day). So I’m anticipating more, smaller, cheaper events as a result.

NESO have also forecast that the grid won’t be as stressed this winter vs last - so demand and prices for DFS are going to be lower in aggregate regardless of method / design.

Did anybody get any acknowledgement from Octopus for opting in and saving? We only got an email with an opt in button. No notification in the Octopus App and no announcement on WhatsApp like we did last year.

nophead I had the same experience; I opted in, but received no further communication.

MerseyRider That’s all there is at the moment, its very similar to the Power Up Events.

The Octopus API isn’t populated with the saving session details either (yet)

See this discussion on the Octopus Integration, these things are coming in January apparently https://github.com/BottlecapDave/HomeAssistant-OctopusEnergy/issues/1115

Interesting looking at the DFS data set today https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/demand-flexibility/dfs_utilisation_report there was a DFS procurement today as well, but every supplier got rejected.

Axle bid £752/MW, Octopus £300 and the lowest bid was £232, but all rejected

geoffreycoan I have just had a look and it looked like Axle bids of £572 were accepted by Octopus rejected with £300 bids. Axle had bids of £642 rejected. Other players such as AMP had bids accepted at £400.

If the Octopus bid of had been £300 accepted, compared to 2 nights ago, Octopus would offer 25p per unit exported. I would likely end up about 45p up and then having to buy back at a hight cost to get my battery charge back up.

The whole thing looks very haphazard. Are NESO anti-Octopus or trying to encourage 'lesser players'. This technique isn't going to cut down on electrical use when there is high demand.

Rob

Rbor I have just had a look and it looked like Axle bids of £572 were accepted by Octopus rejected with £300 bids. Axle had bids of £642 rejected. Other players such as AMP had bids accepted at £400.

I think you are looking at different dates Rob. If you add a filter of delivery date = 13/12/24 then you can see that every bid today was rejected (or at least that's what I see!)

Agreed, at 25p DFS premium + 15p export rate = 40p, makes it hard to want to join in, unless you really have lots of spare capacity in your battery.

Octopus said that NESO are offering the DFS this year at same rates that they would pay a power station to be on standby, i.e. normal market rates. As you say, this does little to incentivise customer behaviour. For us with batteries we can chose whether and when to export, but for normal consumers, persuading them to delay the washing for an hour or so, at 25p for a kWh saved most people just won't bother.

geoffreycoan This very negative thinking from NESO, incentivising home power stations will increasingly benefit UK power production metrics. Think of the combined battery storage potential (does anybody know the combined power of domestic battery storage?)

Given the low temperatures and poor solar forecast across the country today and high wholesale/agile rates, I did wonder if there was going. to be a DFS saving session

https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/demand-flexibility/dfs_utilisation_report

But apparently not. There were DFS session pricing requests for 1/5/25, 30/12/24 and 31/12/24 with bids from Axle, Infiniti and others rejected. If you filter on Status != Rejected, there isn’t that many accepted bids this winter

There was one run today - all bids accepted but they didn't get near what they were asking for:

Looks like Octopus are running one tonight...5pm-6pm @ £0.72 for every unit of power

Annaka Agreed I’ve got the email as well. Octopus’s bid was successful at £900/MWh and Axle’s at £740. Bids as high as £1240 were accepted.

The event wasn’t there a couple of hours ago!

I've opted in. I've told Predbat it is a 62p rate increment - to account for the fact normal usage/normal export won't be paid, only the difference.

Hopefully won't completely run out before cheap rate arrives. It's aiming for 19% at the end of the hour.

TX200 DFS session again today!!!

Only, no there isn’t https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/demand-flexibility/dfs_utilisation_report

All of the supplier bids were rejected. Axle bid £642/MWh, Octopus £500, and one was as low as £300, but they were all rejected

TBH I am quite glad I didn’t, the agile rates are so awful today I would rather keep and use the energy myself.

According to the streamlit app https://savingsessions.streamlit.app/ I made £3.79 from the session on 8/1/25. Surprising there was any export baseline, skewed by 31/12 which must have been a cheap Agile day

geoffreycoan Great link. I earned £ 2.04....

Worth highlighting for those using Predbat, to set a relative export rate adjustment in the peak period to dissuade Predbat from exporting then https://springfall2008.github.io/batpred/energy-rates/#manually-over-riding-energy-rates

  rates_export_override:
    -  start: '16:00:00'
       end: '19:00:00'
       rate_increment: -10
```       

geoffreycoan This is mine. Like @Leeshore , my baseline was negative.

This is an AC3.0 for an hour's export.

geoffreycoan Your advantage over me is having 2 inverters so you can export more than me.
Still £1.95 is not to be sniffed at, especially as my base load would have to come from the battery as well (ASHP turned to standby)

I need to be confident that I still have enough juice in my batteries to get me through until rates fall. If Octopus were to give me 50p/unit, I have to make it through to 20:30 to get below 50p.

By rejecting all of these bids when rates are so high, NESO is never going to save electricity when demand is high.
I am unsure about having any confidence in NESO.

Rob

Just be careful re sharing your API key. It's not stored on that website, just in the URL.

However, the API key if sniffed over the air (dodgy wifi, shared computer, etc) can apparently be used to login to octopus website and get full control of the account.

Sounds a bit strange to me, but even so, be careful with them.

If you want the background to that, it's being discussed on the octopus agile forums.

Octopus are looking to role out a more granular style for such access. E.g. different keys for different things with different permissions.

TX200 Thanks.
I won't be using the site any more.

Rob

TX200 this came up last year when the saving session calculator was first launched

unless things have changed from last year:

• the code is freely available on github, you can view it and confirm it doesn’t squirrel away your octopus API key
• you can take a copy of the code and run it yourself, so avoiding their hosting and handling of the Octopus key
• you can run the streamlit app, look at your savings, then immediately change your API key in our Octopus account so the old key is no longer valid

agree that we have to be careful who we share our keys with and better granularity would be better, all of these value add services such as the Octopus watch app, Octoprice, the GivEnergy smart tariff dashboards, Octopus Integration in HA, etc all use the same key and thus present the same level of risk

And when I shared the URL to the website I did remove my own API key

geoffreycoan yeah, changing the key is the painful bit.

Where did I use it. Possibly on givenegy portal. Deffo in home assistant (givtcp?). In predbat too maybe. Anywhere else, I can't remember 🤣

Interesting article on how two gas power plants got paid large amounts to run on Wednesday last week.

https://apple.news/AnPnPKW__SHe7G9KSq6DIfg

(Direct link)

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/10/britain-energy-costs-labour-power-plants-uk-cold-weather

Suggests similar conditions may happen next Friday. Concludes with it would have been cheaper to pay consumers to reduce demand

Seems a bit cheeky, oh we know it's a bad time, but we're going offline.

I think the other problem is that the cost to keep them on standby, in case they are needed, is very high.

The cost to move from standby to generating isn't that much more I hear (e.g. it's cheaper than DFS if you ignore the fact they've been paid to be ready).

Might need a rethink on pricing, but then if they don't agree to new terms what do we do...

TX200 Well NESO floated another DFS session for today.
They did accept bids of 180 £/MWh and below. Octopus bid 250 and Axle 642
https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/demand-flexibility/dfs_utilisation_report
I think this means that NESO would have paid 18p max for each unit saved or exported and utilities would have taken a bit out of this.
Looking at Agile rates, I would cost me more to import the energy back from the grid.

Is this really a way of encouraging us to save energy?

Rob

It’s a way of working out who will do what at what price point I guess.

Using less bs exporting for example is worthwhile at 18p. There was a car charger that reduced charge rates for a DFS window. I don’t think they paid the customer though as I didn’t see anything about payment, so opted out.

Interesting write up regarding 8-Jan event by NESO published here
https://www.neso.energy/news/what-happened-margins-8-january

geoffreycoan

Suggests similar conditions may happen next Friday. Concludes with it would have been cheaper to pay consumers to reduce demand

No ****

They had the numbers from the previous two years of the sort of thing they could expect at different price points, they wanted to play silly buggers this year and try and get people to pay to help them out.

I said something dodgy had to be going on, either kickbacks or some favors for mates or something because they wanted to pay over double just to not give people any money back.

Just a shame the grid didn't collapse with their short sightedness, you can't rely on wind and solar, its 50/50 if they get tomorrows forecast right for god sake.

We are shutting down turbines, we don't have the infrastructure to send it far or the storage to dump it to to avoid shutting it down which results in us paying more for what we need because the idiots decided to shut down plants.

Edit
Yes my hat is freshly polished 😃

When power plants are already being paid to be on standby it's cheaper to ask them to ramp up than it is to pay others like battery owners

Sucks that it's not green energy but NESO are saying they are aiming to be cost effective. So we get cheap dirty power rather than expensive clean power.

26Left Thanks for sharing. Doesn’t really address whether they paid a fair price for the balancing activity or not and whether some operators (two gas companies) were able to game the system by declaring in advance that they would be unavailable, and that they were then able to extort a high price to be available after all.

NESO’s message seemed to be that they used the available tools and at all times were able to keep an acceptable supply and demand margin. The question not asked (at least here, maybe its in the follow-up investigation they allude to) is whether those tools and the ‘rules’ for the market are fit and proper and whether operators can game the system as the gas generators appeared to be able to do.

I see from the DFS website that there was another DFS event requested for yesterday, Friday 17th, and all bids rejected. I suppose as it says in the report, DFS is one lever they are pulling, there’s payments to standby providers and interconnects such as Denmark mentioned able to pick up shortfalls and NESO are trying to use all of them to get the cheapest price for the supply and demand margin.

So maybe more failed DFS auctions is just the norm?

geoffreycoan

I think more auctions are definitely the norm. As to whether they fail or not, will clearly vary based on

• price and certainty of supply alternatives (DFS, standby generators, interconnects etc)
• size of the forecast vs actual demand gap (given it’s a much shorter lead time now it’s same day)

It’s clearly a dynamic system, but until DFS participation is large, predictable and cost effective (on both sides), it strikes me as it’s always going to be the last rather than first resort - and for fine tuning.

The huge variation in bid prices and quantities by DFS participants suggests to me that it’s still far from mature, and so DFS will always be a minor part of the stack - and so worthy of experimentation for now.

I would question why we have installed so many wind farms when the grid infrastructure to get it to the market hasn’t been built.
We have a load of wind generation in Scotland but just 2 main cables to transport the energy to England. An extra undersea main cable is being installed but I don’t think that will come on stream until 2027.
Or why not build data centres in Scotland near to where renewable energy is plentiful?

Rob

Rbor because nobody like making hard decisions about infrastructure and driving them through to completion.

There’s a plan to increase the transmission network across East Anglia to enable more offshore wind farms but the locals in East Anglia don’t want pylons marching across the countryside and are lobbying for the transmission lines to be buried or laid on the seabed around the coastline. Either of which will add to the cost and of course be more expensive for maintenance over the long term

I saw a thing on the local news about people objecting to an anaerobic digestion plant being built near some village that would power 7000 homes. One a month ago another about plans being objected to for a large battery storage plant. In both cases there were concerns about safety and impact on the landscape

No-one of course wants to pay high electricity bills but equally there’s lots of objections to the infrastructure that could reduce our dependence on fossil fields and lead to reduced bills.

HS2 another example. Whatever your view on the project and management of the project the local objections and 1400 wayleaves and local planning requirements that they’ve had to deal with have definitely led to increased costs.

Rbor Or why not build data centres in Scotland near to where renewable energy is plentiful?

Simply because "critical infrastructure" only gets built in or near the "Home Counties/London". HS2 being a poster child of that sort of thinking.

You shouldn't expect any form of logic from a UK govt (or ScotGov for that matter) - all they ever do is centralise. Been that way for 50 years now - at least.

Slightly OT but as you're in Scotland I wonder whether you noticed that Amazon have basically bought half the output from the Moray Firth windfarm under construction with (AIUI) an option to purchase the rest?

So the UK govt guarantees a kWh price/subsidy to get it built (not by anyone in the UK) then Amazon/Microsoft/Meta/X come in and buy the entirety of the output for bitbarns/offsetting, neither of which provide any benefit to locals, who may be hundreds of miles from the generation. Where's the benefit for anyone in the UK from all of this apart from installation work, which is only diverting construction workers from one project to another.

As for the current UK govt's delusions about the UK and AI - well I think they should concentrate on keeping the lights on first at a price people can afford. The current "squeeze"/price increase is in no small part due to the gas pipeline through Ukraine being shut down as the contract expired earlier this month. There's no plan to increase UK base load other than through gas generated electricity until the EDF nuclear plant comes online next decade (maybe). The SMR nukes are nonsense - they don't run on normal fuel, they run on enriched uranium (nearly weapons grade) so they're uneconomical anyway, never mind the fact nobody sane is going to want one next-door 🙂

We essentially gave away Pelamis by not funding it all those years ago otherwise we'd have been in a far better situation for base load capacity - unless the moon fell out of the sky 😉

Vestas Meanwhile, back to 2010:

In 2010, Nick Clegg made a fateful intervention against nuclear power. On the eve of becoming deputy prime minister, the then-Lib Dem claimed that building new reactors would take too long: they wouldn’t “come on stream” until about 2021 or 2022.

Towards the end of the Labour governments, 1997-2010, Labour put the case for developing more nuclear plants (despite having done nothing from 1997-2010) but Clegg put a stop to that .....

but as you're in Scotland

Unless Yorkshire has moved north overnight .....

The current Labour government claims that it will build a supercomputer (£800,000) which will make the UK an AI superpower.
Meanwhile in the UK, Microsoft has started building a £1 billion data centre in Acton, West London, with another on the way in North Yorkshire. Google has started construction of its own data centre in Waltham Cross, just north of London, Collectively, the big tech companies are estimated to be spending £40 billion worldwide on data centres and AI.

I hadn't picked up that Amazon is looking at the Moray Firth (at least close to many wind farms) which are sat there inactive because their electricity can't get south along the 2 cables.

How is electricity going to get to data centres being built in the South East? I can see them being built and having to wait for at least a decade to be connected to the grid.

The loss of the gas pipeline through Ukraine must be making a big difference. There are a lot more inter-connectors with the continent now and we are becoming a part of UK/Europe energy supply. Recently, we have been sending a lot our 'our' electricity to the continent but it works both ways.
And then there is Norway, still exploring gas in the North Sea (although this is a dwindling supply).

Perhaps Trump can get it all sorted so that Europe can use Russian gas again and the Ukraine gas pipeline can be reopened. ...... Or is he just happy to send the UK and Europe his LPG (obtained by fracking) across the Atlantic with a bigger carbon footprint than if we had obtained the gas ourselves from the North Sea and north of Shetland.

At least I have a large array of solar panels to help me on the way ...........

Rob

Rbor I hadn't picked up that Amazon is looking at the Moray Firth (at least close to many wind farms) which are sat there inactive because their electricity can't get south along the 2 cables.

The wind farm is under construction but the point is that Amazon now effectively own the output from a taxpayer subsidised renewable energy source, allowing them to claim they're carbon neutral (which is utter bollox - just look at the crappy vans their deliveries come in for a start).

Pretty sure if you said to Joe Public "how do you feel about a new taxpayer-funded windfarm to subsidise Amazon/Meta/Microsoft/Musk AI bitbarns while your own energy costs skyrocket?" you'd get a pretty blunt answer.

"AI" bitbarns benefit NOBODY other than the operators. After construction there are ZERO local jobs and when you take into account the incredibly high water and power usage then they are serious threats to the environment (what's left of it). Generative AI is dross and produces bugger all economic benefit - nothing new comes from it because by definition it can't. Its a massive bubble and it'll go pop pretty soon, but probably not soon enough to stop UKGov spaffing another billion or two up the wall.

Interesting comments about AI "bitbarns". What about data mining for cryptocurrencies?

wrefordj What about data mining for cryptocurrencies?

Not even close in energy usage, not these days. Take a look at Eire if you want to see what happens with bitbarns - more than a third of their entire grid capacity is eaten up by them, and they're responsible for almost as much water usage as the entire agricultural sector. Still at least Eire gets/got shedloads of revenue from Apple/MS etc as that's where they pay their EU taxes. We get bugger all from MS/Apple/Meta/X/Amazon....

Edit - for anyone interested in why generative AI is dross (and dangerous) then the following may be of interest -

https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.11082
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.07238

The PDFs are free to download.

The first is basically how to make an AI "evil" by jailbreaking the alignment. This is actively being exploited with all current AI LLMs.

The second is entitled "Lessons From Red Teaming 100 Generative AI Products", written by the Microsoft Red Team members. Sadly about the only thing I find surprising is that Microsoft has 100 AI products, but the findings are probably news to most of you. Does rather make you wonder why MS are stuffing AI down their users throats when the AI systems are impossible to secure (their words).

Well OT, sorry.

Another non DFS session for Octopus today:
https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/demand-flexibility/dfs_utilisation_report

Octopus offered 450. Highest bid accepted was 399.

Rob

Rbor Thanks Rob. It suits me, high agile rates, I’m happy to keep the power for myself.

I see that Axle didn’t bid for today’s DFS or the last one on the 17th Jan.

Suspect there will be further DFS’s tomorrow and Wednesday looking at the Agile price forecast….

geoffreycoan On the plus side, the temperature has risen to a tropical 3C today here from yesterday's –1C at the same time. My Heat pump is using much less energy and predbat's predicted cost by midnight is about a £1 less than yesterday. And it's been raining rather than snowing. Big winds expected from Friday.

I am losing any faith that I did have in NESO.

Rob

Prices for tomorrow are in and less than predicted, which is a bonus.

Henry3rd Yes better news for tomorrow (I'd hardly call it good, but its not as bad as predicted); and the agile forecast has dropped for Wednesday as well. It was predicting 80p for most of the day and 99p peak, its now giving 65p peak and 40's for most of the day.

Rbor

It’s not NESO job to offer good DFS prices. Their remit is to keep the grid stable and operational for the lowest cost.

DFS turn down of car chargers or heavy loads makes sense and paying a small incentive for reduced load is good enough for people to opt in.

Trying to pay a high rate so people dump batteries and fill later isn’t competitive vs hydro storage or even gas when they’re already paying a standby charge. If it costing 20p extra for predictable energy from a large gas station, why would they pay more for batteries?

kram Their remit is to keep the grid stable and operational for the lowest cost.

They didn't though, did they? They paid £5000/MWh - or £5/kWh if you prefer - to gas power station owners who gamed the system.

I don't remember ANY DFS session paying £5 per unit of electricity so they clearly failed in their remit.

Vestas this "amusing" report from NESO about sums up their credibility for me. It's got expensive "consultant" written all over it and about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Others opinions may vary of course but if they've got the time/money to generate that, then something ain't right. https://www.neso.energy/document/349491/download

sponev it does look like consultant input but it also looks like standard government department progress reports. They all have to have measurable outcomes, progress against goals, blah blah blah to show they are doing something. Its unfortunately what feeds the food chain of bureaucracy

My logic is quite simple.

1. Energy costs are volatile. The USA, Russia and the Middle East can crash the market at the stroke of a pen.
2. The UK is utterly reliable upon imports and a hostage to these nations.
3. We have a significant amount of clean energy production. Wind, sun, nuclear.
4. We can't store enough of it to balance our supply.
5. Home storage, solar batteries as well as EV batteries could store and release it.

My conclusion - treat domestic battery systems as a virtual power station and every ones a winner!

I say this through gritted teeth & a bit of "trust me bro" as I don't have the receipts to back it up (never took a snapshot at the time) but Rye House got what it got because there was a significant shortfall in the London GSP at the time - they desperately needed the power in that specific area & they are ideally placed
Can the cost be justified on it's own without context, no. Can it be justified if the alternative is to trip London - probably.

With the best will in the world you will struggle to feed that 275kV ring (that broadly follows the M25 circle) sufficiently at that kind of demand when your short 1GW of ElecLink to France and 500MW down from IFA from the South East side, and therefore relying on all other directions to backfill supplies (that all have their own limits)

I know NESO bang on about "having the margin/headroom" but it's not much help if that Headroom is 500 miles away through a bunch of constraints.

hoggy The Guardian article I linked above is worth reading for another perspective on this, their analysis was that Rye House informed NESO that they would turn off the turbines at lunchtime unless they got paid these high rates. Looks like they gamed the system because NESO had no option to keep powering London as you said

“Market data has revealed that £17.8m, or almost 90% of Wednesday’s costs to balance supply and demand, were handed to just two gas power plants after they said they would not run unless they were paid rates up to 100 times higher than normal market prices.

The Connah’s Quay gas plant in north Wales raked in revenues of £10.3m from the grid operator’s balancing payments on Wednesday, while the Rye House gas-fired power station, just north of London, received almost £7.5m.

When electricity supply is short, Neso – which is responsible for the gas and electricity systems across England, Scotland and Wales – encourages energy companies to bid prices at which they would be prepared to power up their plants.

The system operator warned on Tuesday that it would need extra plants to fire up in the early evening on Wednesday to generate enough electricity to power homes and businesses within the safety limits set to prevent blackouts.

But both the Connah’s Quay and the Rye House plants notified the grid operator that they would switch off their turbines at lunchtime, and be unavailable to run during the forecast power supply crunch, unless they were paid steadily rising hourly prices through the afternoon.

The Rye House power plant demanded payments of £5,000 per megawatt-hour to keep generating power. This is over 40 times the government’s official estimate for the levelised cost of running a gas power plant. The Connah’s Quay power plant commanded payments of £2,300/MWh.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/10/britain-energy-costs-labour-power-plants-uk-cold-weather

geoffreycoan Difficult to know how "nuanced" that report is however I've seen a few similar which suggest exactly the same thing. If a couple of gas peaker plants can have NESO's trousers down like that, then again something ain't right. It would be interesting to see who has a financial interest in them. All feels very flaky.

sponev Another documents developed to show 'Look at what we are doing'.
It's impenetrable.

Rob

hoggy Thanks for the link to the Open infrastructure map. I have whiled away half an hour searching across the country for power lines, wind farms and links to continent. Fascinating.
.........and with just those two links connecting Scotland to England.

There are a lot of links that haven't been completed yet. I didn't see a way of identifying these apart from knowing about some of them myself.

Netherlands interconnect looks as if it is still down which can't be helping.

Rob

hoggy Vitol have pulled this stunt on various other occasions though, which makes me think they gamed the system. Nice to have a strategically important station when you want to force up the price eh?

Rbor Be aware the descriptions on the entities on the map aren't always accurate. There's one near us which says "under construction" and it isn't. Construction finished nearly 3 years ago and full generation commenced over 2 years ago.

geoffreycoan Sorry if it comes across as I agree with it, that isn't my stance but I get fully why they ended up paying it (given the alternative would cost magnitudes more.)
You can see the rug pull over on Elexon

1: You'll see the PN (Purple) which is essentially their planned operation, this suddenly changes to be to de-load & run down just after lunch.
2: The bids go in at various values (they weren't all at £5.5K/MW) in blocks and gets accepted by Neso (BOAL Values - Light Blue)
3: Plant doesn't actually run at full capacity - they run it at the lowest it can run at (SEL - red line) around 400MW.
4: Plant does come off before the evening 6pm peak. Can't really square that one beyond people leaving work at 5pm and heating demand dropped in the city. Just guessing on that front.

Couple of things I'm yet to shake out - is the £7.5m accurate or did the press just multiply £5.5k/MW by the plants total capacity - if so that's not really what it cost as both the bids weren't all 5.5k the entire 3 hours and they only ran at half power.

I know some other consultants are hell bent on the margin thing to the point NESO put out a push back, I'm a bit half and half on that (the consultant has a very poorly disguised bias towards fossil fuels and has nothing to lose by pointing out how tight things were) but equally NESO have the data available (on a per plant basis) to squash it flat but stopped short of producing it. I suspect as ever, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

I did start unpicking the 8th Jan from a "reserve" angle showing we still had a considerable (nearly 1GW) of standby gen if something were to trip: https://terravolt.co.uk/grid-stability-8th-jan-2025/ and there's a few other services i'm yet to add to that but it's slow going when it's not my day job.

Vestas yes they've done similar few times in the past. There's been several techniques, one being to report you've broken down around lunch but because you employ the A-Team that much needed part arrives around 4pm and amazingly your ready to rock at the 5pm "gouging hour".

NESO do have a (as far as I know rarely used in anger) Max Gen instruction - this goes out to all generators and is the equivalent of "your F'ing running flat out until we tell you to stop" - it will even overrule any and all previous self imposed limits and your damn well running at nameplate capacity (<plant starts to beg for mercy>).
It's an interesting lever to pull BUT it actually resulted in making the problem worse - as you'll expect older plants being pushed hard up against the rev limiter tended to break down, so you end up losing plants left and right uncontrollably.
https://www.neso.energy/document/220746/download
(Pointless Fact but I've been on one plant when this was tried and we boiled the Generator Transformer oil in the process)

hoggy As soon as I saw "Vitol" internal alarm bells started ringing 😉

I first had dealings with them in the mid-00s when Ian Taylor was still the CEO so I'm aware of the company's ethos.

Those who aren't might do well to look at the company's history.

hoggy boiled the Generator Transformer oil in the process

Didn't catch fire then? Seen that happen once, makes a hell of a mess.

Also I had a look at your grid stability link, which reminded me of Cruachan, which in turn reminded me of this article from El Reg..... https://www.theregister.com/2013/07/23/reg_man_delves_deep_to_find_the_power/

hoggy I get that NESO had no practical choice and in the grand scheme of things the cost paid was not particularly untoward, but it seems the current system has flaws in it that enables suppliers to take advantage in situations like this.

As you say ‘plant broken down’ or ‘taking it offline for maintenance’ are easy things to say and can have significant commercial advantages if you time the announcements correctly which is what appears to have been done.

Whether NESO needs new rules to plan maintenance across the network and force suppliers to have minimum availability percentages or similar? I also wonder about all these nuclear plants being offline in the winter for refuelling and maintenance, why wouldn’t this be planned for the summer when demand is lower?

Its clearly a complicated business balancing supply and demand against market forces and engineering realities and at the end of the day there’s commercial companies all looking to make the most they can out of it.

As an end consumer though it seems notably worse than at any prior time I’ve seen in the past 15 months I have been on Agile - last winter the most I saw was 60p/kWh on one day, this winter we’ve had several 99p spikes already and doubtless more to come. The Geopolitical situation doesn’t seem massively worse than last year, yes Ukraine have turned off a gas pipeline but last year there was real doubt we would get enough gas to last the winter and LPG facilities were having to be built at speed particularly for Germany. Just seems notably worse and not clear why.

Don't make the same mistake I made.

Auto opted into the saving session

Edited the yaml to add the price override.

Double counted it!

Obviously if auto opted in, it already knows about the saving session and already accounts for the extra export payments.

geoffreycoan Just seems notably worse and not clear why.

Lack of wind across the European area combined with cloud and lower than average temperatures is the short answer.

Hence gas storage levels in Europe are a lot lower than this time last year. Add in the last gas pipeline from Russia to Europe (apart from the Turkish one) closing at the start of January and its close to being the perfect storm for European gas prices. I doubt the USA election result helped much either.

Vestas Lack of wind across the European area combined with cloud and lower than average temperatures is the short answer.

Agreed, We seem to be exporting quite a lot to Europe, especially at night. There goes our cheaper Agile rates!

Rob

TX200 It's great that savings sessions are now automated in Predbat. Last time I got home with 5 mins to spare in order to manually set it up.

Henry3rd they were fully automated in Predbat last year, but its taken until now for Octopus to get the saving session API working again. Quite why something that worked last year had to take a step backwards with forms to click rather than it all being via the octopus account/octopus API, who knows.

But yes, all automated now, great news. Just need some decent savings amounts to make it worthwhile …

Oddly, I don't seem to have received any notification of today's Saving Session.

But Predbat signed me up and optimised my plan automatically (on IOG; charged up a bit, now holding charge until SS starts, then dumping).

I wonder if Octopus take you off the email queue if you have already signed up. Can anyone confirm, or otherwise?

PianSom was going to say presume they do but as I was typing I got the email 🙂

Leeshore
Yup, my email arrived at 3.51pm 🙂

Oddly, in the mean time Predbat has decided it's not worth exporting after all. <shrug>

I got my email at 15:42, and there was a twitter alert at about 15:30.

Suspect they are staggering the emails and notifications as they did last year to reduce the load on their servers. My Octopus account shows that the predbat API signup worked OK but at the moment Predbat is still not planning on doing anything for me, just keeping the SoC to run the house instead.

The last two sessions I exported 3.2 and 4.7kWh respectively so I suppose I’d earn about £1-£1.50 in this session if I export a similar amount, which given the Agile rates feels unlikely

No email for me but if you go to Octopus dashboard you can now for the first time sign up for the session on the web page...

geoffreycoan I think the API broke when saving sessions became regional.

Either that or they don't like us automating it. 🤣

Ummm, not DFS but Octopus Agile Outgoing is 92.02p tomorrow......

Got my email at 16:14.
Predbat now has me exporting to earn my –17p followed by –19p.
Will be more than this as my HP will be turned off.
And what will I have to pay to import same energy later at approx 20p/unit?

Rob

Surprising number of people taking part (not that it necessarily translates to results)

Vestas and here's me having recently moved off agile onto the 15p outgoings rate.

Thought that might be better for daytime solar and lounges.

Then again I only have a small battery, so it depends on how much I could export Vs keep for myself.

TX200 I reckon Octopus have some issues in growth and we're sort of paying (part) of the cost in terms of them paying over the odds for gas-generated electricity.

92p on export means probably about £2 on import if it wasn't limited to 99.99p

Interesting times to say the least.

TX200 damn predictive text. Lounges should read plunges! 🤣

TX200 Sounded better before 😃

I was interested to note that there was about 550MW of OCGT power being generated for the start of the evening peak today. It's still up at 440MW. Dinorwig was going flat out as well

mrand31 yeah it's normally worse as they shove anything not OCGT (like gas recip & Diesel Gen) under "other" - despite it being similar short duration / peak load kit.
I lump it under OCGT to be fair and as of 19:00 it's 1.2GW

Predbat just signed me up for today’s Saving Session - 56p 16:30-17:30

Thanks for the update no email but it is showing on my dashboard so I have signed up...

Totally missed the other days one. Got the email too late. Will sign up for today though.

Although I’ve got problems changing my timed. export settings right now, so might give it a miss till that’s sorted. Don’t want to run out later.

Pete UK depends what you are paying for import later in the evening, it could still be worth exporting as you get the DFS 56p on top of your normal export rate.

I've just changed to Agile Outgoing today as I'm only exporting in the winter on these DFS sessions. 94 and 57.8p today rather than my normal 15p export rate. That'll add a few more £ to the kitty.

PredBat going for export down to 30% SoC for me.

It must think it's worth it.

Estimated empty time around 8-8.30pm

geoffreycoan

Oh nice one. I’m on IOG, so don’t think I can be on agile for export. Can I?

I joined in for the session today anyway. I won’t run out later, as the issue I had earlier of not being able to change my “timed export” times has fixed itself just in time to take part.

Looks like I exported about 6.5 kWh.

Now I can edit the export times again. All is well, as I’ll just shove the start time back an hour later than usual. 👍🏻

Pete UK
You can be on go&iogo and agile export.

TX200 Do you know if there are any exit or other conditions around that please? If not it makes sense to consider it over the winter months. It probably only amounts to tens of pounds but given NESO are now taking the pi$$, it makes sense to claw back where we can.

sponev as far as I'm aware all the export tariffs are variable (including the 15p one which was guaranteed for a year - that's now variable too). So no exit clauses.

There might be a don't swap more often than every 30 days, although I think that's more about swapping between incoming tariffs and swapping between smart and non smart tariffs.

TX200 Thanks for that. Worth considering although there is the risk of optimising for the sake of a few quid and time might be better used elsewhere. Interesting as an option though.

sponev My logic was whilst the heat pump is on I am consuming all the solar energy I generate so the only time I export is during a DFS session or extremely high agile rates when I turn the heating off. These will coincide with high outgoing rates so it will be worthwhile.

It might only be for a few weeks until the milder weather.

Today I exported 2.5kWh in the first half hour at 94p and 2.3kWh in the second at 57.8p, so I calculate the export income to be £3.68 vs 72p I would have got on fixed outgoing.

Only drawback I can see is that I will have to change back as I start exporting and there isn’t as much opportunity to gain from exporting during Agile plunge pricing events - but these are few and far between at the moment anyway

geoffreycoan we're in a similar situation (heat pump) so it does give an opportunity to make a few extra pounds. To date I've avoided automation as I don't really need it on IOG, so that might be a pre-requisite to jump tariff again. One to ponder.

I wasn't expecting a DFS notification today given the wind is starting to pick up.

TX200 I have looked on NESO website and they have accepted bids up to 150.
https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/demand-flexibility/dfs_utilisation_report
Octopus bid 300 and was rejected.
🙄

Rob

Rbor I’m surprised as well given that wholesale and Agile prices are much more back to normal today.

Some of the bids look like people didn’t even look at the market rates or weather forecast for today, Axle bid 642 and Oaktree power had bids of 1199 and 1799. WTF?

geoffreycoan I’ve got my (unofficial) results from the DFS sessions on 21st and 22nd January

Using the calculation from the streamlit app which have been pretty accurate to the actual Octopus results:

21st January exported 4.78kWh and saved 5.02kWh for £1.21 reward
22nd January exported 4.78kWh and saved 5.03kWh for £2.81 reward

But when I look at the export credits in my Octopus account:

21st exported 5.04kWh for 76p credit (on 15p fixed export)
22nd exported 7.72kWh (there was some solar export earlier in the day as well as the DFS forced export) for £4.45 (on Agile outgoing)

Quite a difference.

Today windy and sunny, the solar panels are generating enough to run the heat pump, charge the batteries up from earlier, and export 1.2kW at the moment, but I’m only getting 12.7p export rate.

geoffreycoan Sunny now up here in Yorkshire but very very windy.
I am glad that I have hedges and no fence panels.
Battery charging up with solar up from 46 to 55 so far and also serving HP and my base load.

On export from battery, I am stymied from the single AC3.0 which exports 2.7 kWh as best after house requirements.
Excess energy from my 5kW PV inverter is better, if available.

Rob

Gary Does Solar has just released a video on this topic - worth a watch

CW

I have just watched it, he is very good. I have been thinking about looking at the dashboard and he has it in his video and I did not know you can click sections as well. I have saved it as favourites now in my browser.

https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live

This part is interesting as we are getting a lot from the EU

Daveb01 With the interconnectors, the UK and Europe are becoming more like a combined energy market. I think this is one reason why our Agile rates are less attractive than they once were.

Interesting video from Gary does Solar.
I think that future tariffs will become much more like Octopus's current Intelligent version of Flux and Go. We then contribute to a virtual battery which is used for all when demand warrants.
But we do need an incentive.
I am unimpressed with NESO – they seem much more concerned with writing long uncommunicative reports than looking after the UK's energy distribution.
For me, the number one priority is in constructing more connectors between Scotland and England. It is pointless constructing more wind turbines if there is no way of betting the electricity to the market.
We need more than just one link which won't come upstream before 2029 (at the earliest): See https://www.easterngreenlink2.co.uk

Rob summon over ....

Rbor Interesting thanks Rob. We hear the phrase ‘great grid upgrade’ but details of what the 17 infrastructure project actually are seems hard to find (at least on the National Grid website)

The link you provided was to EGL2, due in 2029
EGL1 is also due in 2029 https://www.easterngreenlink1.co.uk/about-the-project and at least they are burying the offshore cables in case the Ruskies come dragging their anchors around our coastline …

EGL3 and 4 are two more offshore North/South connectors, due in 2033
https://www.nationalgrid.com/the-great-grid-upgrade/eastern-green-link-3-and-4

geoffreycoan And thanks for this info. It is great that there are more major cables planned from Scotland to England but the timescale is worrying. It certainly is not easy finding the information from National Grid etc.
And of course, there are the battles with environmental groups to get the energy down to the South East even after the cables reach our east coast.

Rob

Rbor

The solution to the environmental and NIMBY groups in such a case is to no-longer supply them with electricity...

mrand31

They are saying it’s going to be limited to one ruling and no further appeal.

mrand31 I have been looking at plans on NationalGrid website: https://www.nationalgrid.com
That is if I can find the plans amongst all the guff.

I was looking for the Norwich–Tilbury link. There has been a lot of fuss about this one. Initial proposals were started in 2022 with consultations schedules for 4 years taking everything to 2026.
The link is then scheduled to start and to be completed for 2031.
Many of the objectors wanted the link to go under the sea and they claimed this would be cheaper than overhead.
A problem was that the build would take a further 4 years, until 2035.
....... meanwhile we generate a lot of energy from North Sea wind turbines, can't get it to the market (mainly London) possibly leading to blackouts.

I read somewhere that China would get an equivalent link completed in 6 months.

Rob

Rbor

Trump would have it done by Monday 09:00 👍😜

I somehow don't think so! However would probably have 6 new coal pits or oil rigs in operation by Monday! 🤣

I'm starting to wonder if it's our supply/substation or the continuing effects of the storm and HV breakers re-closing, but over the last couple of days, the lights have been dimming/flickering several times a day here in Rugby.

Rbor I read somewhere that China would get an equivalent link completed in 6 months.

China installed more renewables last year than the rest of the world combined. By 2030 they'll have more installed renewables than the rest of the world combined (especially now Trump's back). They're not messing around....

Vestas And meanwhile we spend as long on consultation (4 years?) as with building.
For that Norwich Tilbury link, 9 years or 13 if undersea from concept to completion (not including inevitable delays).

If the Victorians had taken this long to build anything, we would have no infrastructure.
And more recently, I wonder how on earth we managed to get our motorway system built last century.

Rob

Vestas They're not messing around

They don't have access to cheap fossil fuels to run vehicles.

There cities suffer horrendous pollution.

They don't like being held hostage to the fossil fuel producers.

There government can over ride any public opposition to infrastructure projects.

It's a win for China and a win for the world.

Pity a certain percentage of Americans don't get it and are not onboard with the need to move away from the hold of fossil fuels.

M_J Also appears they have an AI LLM considerably more efficient than western ones.....

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/26/deepseek_r1_ai_cot/

"User: Can you tell me about the Tiananmen Square massacre?

R1: Sorry, that's beyond my current scope. Let's talk about something else."

Its censored in much the same way western LLMs are - just swap around Tianamen Square massacre for Gaza Genocide and you get bugger all out of any of the western (USA) ones.

Certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons today in terms of share prices of USA firms 😃

Also makes the recent UKGov posturing on AI look even more ridiculous, almost like they hadn't thought ANY of it through... oh wait 😉

Panorama Monday 3rd February, 8pm-8:30

Rewiring Britain : The Race to Go Green

Talking to people on both sides of the projects to upgrade the national grid

In case anyone missed it (like me), NESO ran a DFS session yesterday (Wed 29th).
The highest bid accepted was 130 (Hilderbrand and Infinis), which would likely be offered as 10 or 11p /kWh saved or exported!
Am I really going to export getting 10p/kWh (not including losses) only to put the energy back into my batteries for significantly higher cost?

Everyone else was rejected. Octopus bid 300, same as their only successful recent bid where we were offered 80%: 24p

Rob

Rbor it'd be okay if it came from solar earlier in the day. But January hasn't been great for solar. 🤣

Oh and obviously leave some spare, don't give it all to them!

Rbor Am I really going to export getting 10p/kWh (not including losses) only to put the energy back into my batteries for significantly higher cost?

I suppose if you are on one of the EV tariffs where you've paid 7 or 8p overnight and you've got spare charge in the battery, you might as well collect the 10p premium on your normal 15p export rate.
But it'd still need a decent size inverter output to make anything worthwhile. An AIO or two exporting at full rate and you'd make a pound. For those of us on Agile or any other tariff without a super cheap overnight rate, it's not worthwhile.

And bear in mind that the main target audience for DFS are consumers, encouraging them to switch their grid load to quieter times and getting rewarded for it. Is battery owners are the minority.
And for pence I can't see most people bothering

geoffreycoan

At this time of year, I’d be able to export perhaps 6 or 7kWh earlier in the afternoon/ evening in an hour.
I’m sure I’m in the minority here with a fairly high export power but for an extra 60 or 70p I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it and probably wouldn’t bother. For £2 a kWh extra yes I’d be all over it. Only if they get their alerts back in order though !

I have just checked up on life in DFS-land. It is still there!
There was a session today with the max bid accepted 175.
Notable was the absence of Octopus Energy amongst the bidders. They must have got really fed up .....

Rob

Rbor I did see the emails from NESO, but didn't bother clicking on them.

I assumed I'd find out if it was accepted, either via here or via home assistant!

Hardly worth it but Predbat thinks I can earn a bit. I’ll turn the heat pump off for the hour

Similar on flux, PredBat is charging to 100% at 24.1p/kWh to export at 37.42p/kWh.

@TX200 "#p76052 Similar on flux, PredBat is charging to 100% at 24.1p/kWh to export at 37.42p/kWh

Same here. Looking forward to spending the profits when I go out tonight.......🙂

At that rate they can jog on. Not Octopus's fault but NESO need a poke with a spiky stick. It's a bit of a pi$$ take at best.

sponev
To be fair, why should they pay more than required to get enough suckers to generate or load shed?

Depends what they're actually paying overall to meet the requirement. If they're regularly paying more to peaker plants than they would be to domestic generators, something doesn't stack up? I guess their argument will be "reliability" or somesuch but it feels like there's something else at play? If they paid a sensible price they'd likely get a much more reliable return -:but they aren't and they won't. Has there been any comment from them regarding their "strategy"? All I've seen is an impenetrable presentation which was designed to impress whilst not really achieving anything. Maybe they need auditing.

My Predbat on agile has declined NESO's less than generous offer.

[unknown] depends what you set input_number.predbat_load_saving_session to. I have mine set to 0.1 saying I will use just 10% of the normal predicted load. We will defer the cooking and turn the heat pump off so the consumption will drop considerably

Ive set my input_number.predbat_load_saving_session to 0.8 as I have a large base load because of the koi pond.
Also, because of the most appalling display of ineptitude by the sun, my battery is only at 50%

So I'm going to run out of energy from the battery this evening as there's been less than a kw of solar today and A2A heating has been drawing around 700w an hour from my 9.5Kw battery since 7am.

So on IOG, I import at 27p Kw plus VAT, and I export at 15p Kw and they give me 12p extra.
According to my very basic maths, including conversion losses, I'm out of pocket and have to sit under a blanket to help the nation!!!

I don't think so ! 🥶

I need to go out into a cold garage in order to turn off the pond pump. And to be honest, Octopus need to compensate me at a more appropriate rate for me to leave the comfort of my roaring fire.

TimHutchings
Check out Cosy, 3 charge ups a day, Tim. A2A is a heat pump!
Import @ 12.92p sell for 13 plus 15 Agile fixed export makes it just about worth it and I feel good.😊

Watcher Excellent work Watcher. I'm on agile which has a steady 'cheap rate' of 23/24p at the moment. The delta is not enough sadly 🙁

Henry3rd
…exactly why I jumped from Agile to Cosy this week! Back again when we get some sun or wind.

I changed to Agile Export on the day of the second DFS sessions we had in January, got 65p I think for export. I figured I wouldn’t be exporting much this time of year other than the DFS sessions. Loosing a couple of pence/kWH in day-time export, but that’s only been 3kWh in total since I changed so I’m still up on the deal.
Its 23p export rate tonight + 12p DFS makes 35p which is reasonable enough and at least its above the 27p evening import rate.

Definitely loving the Cosy tariff, charging 3 times a day at 13p.

And Henry, I’d let the fish go cold for an hour, every little helps !!

15p+12p is very pointless, so at this point DFS is to cut use (hard from a daytime average of almost zero) rather than push out power

Watcher I was Flux last summer till mid October, then swapped to Cosy up till the beginning of December when I got my Volvo EX30.. I moved over to IOF which, to be honest, works pretty well apart from these dreadfull dark cold days. With 6 hours a night guaranteed of cheap 7p per Kwh, and maybe 40 Kwh going into the car maybe twice a week, the savings have been considerable. If I get 4-5 Kwh a day solar all is well, with that, and a full battery, it normally sees me through till 11.30pm. There's also no expensive period between 4-7pm on IOG.
Unfortunately, there's no spare today for the stupidly priced DFS scheme. In fact in protest I've turned the A2A up 1 degree to 21c which will balance out my loss if I had joined their scheme. 🤣

Interesting looking at the DFS bids https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/demand-flexibility/dfs_utilisation_report

Highest winning bid was £160MWh. Octopus bid £150, Axle were rejected with £642. It wasn’t that cold today and Agile prices weren’t high so I’m not surprised that the accept price was so low.

I exported 4.4kWh and 7p/kWh profit from the 35p export rate vs 27p import rate I incurred afterwards, so maybe 30p up. Oh well, something is better than nothing

geoffreycoan maybe 30p up. Oh well, something is better than nothing

As @Daveb01 will confirm that's two pints of beer if you could somehow teleport to the 1970's

geoffreycoan - Well done Geoff!
At least you won a Kwh of free lecky power or half a kitkat ! After turning up my heating 1deg C, I was able to strip off and put on a pair of budgie smugglers, sup a cooling bud, and practice my back flip tricks on a surf board in the middle of the lounge floor. Feel so much better for it and all for an extra 2p cost I would have lost for the DFS hour !!!
Those were (never) the days. 😄

geoffreycoan do you mean input_number.predbat_load_scaling_saving ?
I don't have a input_number.predbat_load_saving_session

geoffreycoan depends what you set input_number.predbat_load_saving_session to. I have mine set to 0.1 saying I will use just 10% of the normal predicted load. We will defer the cooking and turn the heat pump off so the consumption will drop considerably

I have taken your advice and dropped my value to 0.5.

godfreym geoffreycoan do you mean input_number.predbat_load_scaling_saving ?

Correct, sorry I checked the entity name and then typed it wrongly 🙄

Just found this in Octopus app, cash in points (you don’t need to cash them in)

Look up the points you got for that session underneath, then change the amount and you get the price you made 👍

Daveb01 or just divide by 8 ?

Sorry guys - I’m not a regular on this Forum so haven’t followed the thread but is Givback with Axle still a thing? I ask because the last Givback session I had was 12 Dec, up to that date there was relatively frequent activity but I’ve had no notifications since & I know the grid must have been screaming for energy on a number of occasions since then with the weather we’ve had. Has anyone had any Givback sessions since 12 Dec 24?

Rock719g

It still exists, but there are fewer events with Axle / GivBack. I am with Axle and last had one three weeks ago (50p / kWh 4-5pm), and another before that on 8th Jan (45p / kWh 4-5pm). December events for me were on the 3rd, 11th and 12th (I think all 40p / kWh for 4-5pm).

1) the grid operator NESO changed the DFS setup this year which has made it less attractive.

Last year the energy saving sessions were mostly national, and quite lucrative, test events, announced the day before, and often lasted 1-2 hours. Now they’re announced same day, may only be for 30mins, and the bids that get accepted at auction have been much lower. In some cases, such as balancing frequency discrepancies (not DFS), Axle might take over battery control in a local area of stress, rather than nationwide.

Axle (and Octopus) have often been out of the money with their bids, in most cases because the £/kWh and quantity of power reduction (predicted MW net reduction) and certainty that they offered (actual MW net reduction delivered) have been rejected by NESO vs alternative options at their disposal. Axle etc haven’t been prepared to lower their bids enough to win as the compensation on offer doesn’t warrant the effort / pre-event charging cost / post-event utilisation cost.

2) the grid isn’t as stressed this winter as it was last year - that was NESO’s prediction coming in and I think has held true in my experience given the prices that have been offered.

[unknown]

Thanks for that comprehensive reply, I haven’t had any notifications in January nor Feb but as you said NESO now only offer it on a regional basis & Im in the Southern Region. A pity as I thought it offered a good solution to a stressed grid.

26Left

Thanks for that comprehensive reply, I haven’t had any notifications in January nor Feb but as you said NESO now only offer it on a regional basis & Im in the Southern Region. A pity as I thought it offered a good solution to a stressed grid.

[unknown] Another DFS session this afternoon 17/2 5:30-6:30pm

13p DFS uplift (was 12p last time on 12/2), my export rate for the two slots is 23.71p (23p last time) so my total income will be 35.71p/kWh

Predbat has signed me up and is planning to export but I’m going to override it and set to force Demand (Eco mode). Its just not worth it, my import rate after the peak rate is 26.98p so with about a 4kWh export I’ll be making about 40p.

We tend to import a tiny bit in peak rate with the cooker and ASHP on so if we shift the cooking to a bit later and maybe turn the ASHP down for the hour we’ll get a small uplift on saving from the base load. But beyond that, nah

geoffreycoan
It will eat in to my payback period for my second AIO battery by a few extra days - I’m in!

Yep, same here. I randomly checked my inverter and it had been importing at peak for 15min in preparation for later.

Stuck it in read only mode. Worth about 40p to me in real terms, and I can't be bothered turning off my heatpump for an hour and pushing dinner back.

I'm in.

Yep.
It will only be 3.0-3.2kWh, but 40p is 40p and they all add up.

wrighar but 40p is 40p and they all add up

Not for 40p I won’t.

If it was 50p then I’m all-in

Those with dual AIO setups will doubtless be melting the wires going to the grid with the amount they’ll be pumping out …

[unknown] Seems most aren't bothering at those rates. Me included.

I'm letting PredBat decide. I'm hoping it knows better than me.

My usage post 7pm is quite light anyway, no wash loads to catch up on.

It'll hopefully be full via solar before 5pm and it looks like it'll empty to 26% during the DFS hour and cost me about 2-3p, after that, before the 2am off peak is reached.

We quite like sitting in the dark, it makes us feel nostalgic for the 1970s

I see that the Octopus email announcing the saving session only quoted the Octopoints rather than including the equivalent price. Guess they are embarrassed as well

Rock719g Looks like Axle were rejected again for today’s saving session. They bid 64.2p/kWh.

Highest accepted bid was Octopus at 16p.

geoffreycoan Those with dual AIO setups will doubtless be melting the wires going to the grid with the amount they’ll be pumping out …

I’m planning on turning off the central heating and getting the family to sit around the Gateway 🙂

[unknown] I’ve saved a bunch of money by having my own early saving session by turning the heating off and part draining down the system to fix a leak in the the loft and I’m not even getting paid 13p for the saving !!

We are exporting half of our battery capacity at 4pm most days, so we just time shift to 5.30 and get 13p per unit more. Pitiful but better than noting. We only have a 5.3kWh battery but we live in Tenerife this time of year so the house doesn't use much.

another 13p day today, 5pm-6pm

another 13p day today, 5pm-6pm

wrighar I saw, will do the same today as yesterday, i.e. have enrolled but won’t actively export anything, just make a bit from avoiding the baseline load I normally consume.

According to the streamlit app I made 5p by avoiding peak rate import yesterday so I ‘lost out’ on 35p of extra DFS income.

Today the potential profit is even less for me as the export rate is lower at 20.5 and 21.2p/kWh.

Axle bid 642p and were rejected again. Highest winning bid today 160p from Octopus

geoffreycoan I am 'doing my usual':
Export for the DFS session 17:00-18:00.
Turn off ASHP just before 17:00 and switch back on just after 18:00.
I usually export 2.79 kWh in 1 hour, most coming from saved energy from switching off my ASHP.

Predbat picked up the slots, as it usually does, but strangely (to me), chose to export only for 17:00-17:30. I then input forced exports for the 2 slots: 17:00-17:30 and 17:30-18:00.

Minimal profit, probably about 45p, so better than nothing.

Rob

geoffreycoan

Rates slowly going down during my export period on Outgoing Agile.
Will you move back to Outgoing fixed when it gets close to 15p (if fixed is still available at that price)?

Daveb01 Rates slowly going down during my export period on Outgoing Agile.
Will you move back to Outgoing fixed when it gets close to 15p (if fixed is still available at that price)?

I was today thinking about going back onto Outgoing fixed. Sunny day today and we generated 25kWh so was juggling filling the batteries, running the heat pump and exporting ahead of the 2 hour power up event we had as well.

My plans not as negative as yours, I’m on £1.70 so far today as the heat pump is using a lot still, but most of it today has been off the solar generated with 2.5kWh exported (no DFS export).

When its sunny like this I am loosing out, only a few pence per kWh, but still loosing out on the 15p fixed rate. And as the last 3 DFS sessions have been rubbish DFS payments and export rate poor there’s been little incentive to export at all. As I said on the DFS thread I just bring forward the time I have to start grid importing if I export in the DFS session, so am making _7p/kWh on the DFS+export price vs Cosy day-rate import. Hardly worth it.

So yes, am considering moving back and probably quite soon. Solar generation for February is down slightly on last year (188kWh 1-18/2/25 vs 217kWh 1-19/2/24) but even so is only going to increase as the days lengthen. Generation for the next 18 days (19/2-7/3/24) was 330kWh.
I’m only really hanging on to Agile Outgoing in case there are any more DFS sessions that make it worthwhile, but it would need a really cold snap and the outlook is for milder weather.

Quite surprised about the saving period to day. This is the first day since we had the heat pump that our battery lasted through the whole high tariff period. My power save however will probably be low as the battery usually lasts through to 1730-1800 anyway.

This is the second one I missed because I get loads of emails so didn't see it in time. Much better last year when the app did notifications and WhatsApp because I only get a few of those each day.

Abut 3.3 or 3.4 kWh today, so should have cracked a whole £ now this week :-)

nophead Much better last year when the app did notifications and WhatsApp because I only get a few of those each day.

I guess we could have our informal WhatsApp group to disseminate. Could also (ab)use the ntfy app mechanism, since that would preserve anonymity. (It's mqtt-like - you subscribe to topics, and notify by sending message to a topic. Everyone subscribed should receive it, without anyone knowing who is subscribed.)

Octopus really on the ball - now awaiting their calculations for 3 sessions. A really encouragement to save - not.

[unknown] Its not really Octopus's fault, its NESO for the way they are operating DFS this year and paying what they say is the same rate as they'd pay to gas operators for being on standby

Whether this is 100% true is debateable

Octopus seem to have got the eye now in on what is an acceptable bid price, Axle either haven't or just don't want to bid at those levels.

Octopus did complain to NESO at the beginning of this year's round of DFS, and I would imagine that the results indicate much lower consumer takeup as a consequence. Maybe NESO will learn and adapt for next year

I think Axle have some sort of agreement where they won't pay you less than <insert value> (was it 25p?)
Anyway, none of these latest ones have been anywhere near that so they won't run them.
Axle will probably only ever fire under extreme grid stress that pushes these prices above their limit OR for frequency response if a big unit trips as part of the SFFr scheme it also sits in.

Just looked on NESO.
Octopus bid 165 today which was rejected.
The highest successful bid is 130.

As Octopus seem to keep 20%, that would have left us with 10/11p
Looking at the DFS MW saved. Octopus wasn't far off saving all the others put together.

I can't see what NESO are trying to achieve here.

Rob

As with any new system it is good to probe the limits to understand the art of the possible. Last year's DFS was very generous and I made quite a bit (a lot of those were test sessions). That's one limit probed by NESO. This year is the complete opposite and I haven't even registered (no test sessions I believe). That's the other limit probed by NESO. Now going forward for future years they can interpolate between the 2 limits they have already probed to make it as useful to them as possible. We just pick up what we can.

Windy Miller
I have stumbled across this site
https://wind-curtailment-app-ahq7fucdyq-lz.a.run.app

The stats are an eye opener.

Here's an excerpt. Monthly and annual figures the site.

The message is clear – our grid needs upgrading fast, including the links from Scotland's wind farms to England and especially to the South East.

In contrast, I wonder what energy and costs will be saved today by DFS.
We could save more energy if more ££ were provided for us to save energy (as last year).
Last year we had ESO, now superseded by NESO which has a different way of doing things for DFS.

Rob

The energy market dynamics are crazy. DFS session (but not for us) tonight, and I've got a 2 hour Octopus Power Up event from 2-4pm, use as much free electricity as I can.

My house has 2 9kW heat pumps but I've been trying to run with just one on as this avoids such large spikes in consumption that overload my batteries and result in grid import. But I've turned the second one on now, turned weather compensation off and cranked them both up to 65 degrees flow temperature. Currently pulling in 15kW!

geoffreycoan cranked them both up to 65 degrees flow temperature

As we have UFH under tiles a water temperature in excess of 45-50°C risks damage. Before we had the ASHP installed the UFW valves were set at 45°C. We have had a problem with one bathroom with HW (not UFH) under the floor at 50-57°C with some tiles lifting.

When we first moved in to this home it was only 6 months old and the unsuitable tiles with too high temperatures had cracked the tiles that were laid. We are having the bathroom retiled soon together with an expansion mat. I believe the expansion membrane is relatively new on the market.

We have not tried the UFH LWT recommended by our tiler 35°C seems a little too daring.

Well, over 3 savings sessions I saved, respectively, 0.0, 0.69 & 0.31kW for a grand total of 104 points or 13p. As we use the low cost Cosy tariff to top up our battery and the battery covers use through the savings period we have no savings.

Roy124
I beat you, I just cashed in my savings points and got 14p credited to my account

£10.69 so far from the DFS sessions, minus what I would have had to import afterwards when the batteries ran out earlier than they normally would

With the heat pump on and cooking etc in the peak we normally have a small amount of peak rate import, so small its not worth worrying too much about, but this at least gave me a baseline saving for the last two sessions where I just turned the heat pump off for the hour and didn’t export as it would have been pence profit after the re-import

Last year there were about twice as many sessions and I earnt about £80 I think

geoffreycoan

Not sure I will bother again. I will just let it do the normal thing rather than doing things to get extra £.

Daveb01 I agree, turning off the heat pump as geoffrey does would probably cost me more getting back up to heat. As my maximum consumption averages 2kW per hour I would save 38px2 plus whatever the pay extra for 2kW. There are sacrifices I am prepared to make but heat is not one.

The oddity was my demand anyway was low as we had good solar and battery.

Daveb01 looks like I beat you 😜

Rob

Roy124 turning off the heat pump as geoffrey does would probably cost me more getting back up to heat. As my maximum consumption averages 2kW per hour I would save 38px2 plus whatever the pay extra for 2kW. There are sacrifices I am prepared to make but heat is not one.

My house doesn’t loose heat that quickly so turning off the heat pump for an hour is no major hardship for me (unless it is major cold). In fact some of the saving sessions I haven’t bothered turning the heat pump back on afterwards.

But agree, this year the sessions have been pretty awful; definitely in the ‘why bother’ category. £10 makes it just about worthwhile, pays for a day’s electricity after all

geoffreycoan definitely in the ‘why bother’ category.

Agreed.

Despite me beating @Daveb01, I have a paltry £6.42 from 7 Saving sessions!
Somewhat below the minimum wage.

For each SS, I turned my heat pump off for an hour and the ASHP clearly expends extra energy when I restart it after the saving session. That is a lot of bother for minimal return.
If I hadn't switched the ASHP off, I doubt that I would have saved anything in the SS hour.

Has NESO explained the purpose of this latest round of DFS or is it "Let's find the lowest DFS rate that we can get away with"?

Rob

Back in January during the last session I participated in I got 1960 points for exporting about 3.5 kw. That would equate to 350 points if I was to participate today. All the while generators get about £5/kw - whatever they get is significantly more.
I think I read somewhere that the drop off in relation to participation is about 50% compared to last year. This figure needs to be higher if we are to get the message across and for the rates paid to us are to increase. It is simply not worth the effort IMHO.

Saving session today 1730-1830. May as well Opt In as its free

Roy124 Predbat has opted me in already, and thinks that I’ve got about a spare 1kWh so had planned an export.

However, get it wrong, house load a bit higher, and 13p DFS + 15p export rate is only just above my 27p Cosy evening import rate and I’ll be making the princely sum of 1p. Minus battery and inverter losses it’d be a loss.

So happy to have enrolled and if I save anything on the base load it’ll be something, but not going to bother actively doing anything today for the session and have set Predbat to ‘Charge only’ mode to stop it exporting

BTW on the Octopoints, I’m not converting mine (yet). Octopus had a half price sale on their merch store last year but you could only spend points in the store, so might wait to see if that or any better deals come along

I've had a look at NESO stats for today's DFS:
https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/demand-flexibility/dfs_utilisation_report
As far as I can see:

• There were 85 bids
• 52 bids were accepted.
• The highest accepted bid was for 16.0p (Octopus) We get 80% so 13p
• The total bid for DFS volume MW was 601
• The total bid accepted was 542

Octopus's total DFS volume MW bid was 279, more than half of bids accepted.

Rob!

Rbor

I am going to get less this time as Mr Bat is exporting between 4-7 every day so, they will be looking for a difference err a smidgen if the sun is still out (oh the sun has gone to bed)

PredBat has decided to export 50% off my 99% full AIO, have had good sun all day, probably best this year, and the ASHP have topped up the underfloors during the day, slow cooked on until 6pm so should be a good export strategy.

I could have this all wrong, but I have a 100% battery from PV input. My PV is feeding .250w to the home and 250w to grid. I do now expect to draw anything from the grid between 1730 and 1830 but that is pretty well well normal for the last few days.

geoffreycoan I think I called it right with the saving session. I did turn the heat pump down but we cooked tea and did everything else as normal in the hour and didn't export anything.

And at 22:00 the start of the Cosy cheap rate period my 9.5 battery was exhausted and the 5.2 had 710Wh left in it, less than the 1kWh Predbat thought I had free. If I'd have had perfect foresight I would have earnt 19.6p from the extra export (actually just realised its less than this as there's the 4% reserve to take off the export potential).

Have any of you guys made inputs to any of the DESNZ consultations?
There’s been buckets of them, requests for inputs on OFGEM’s work plan for example.
You are very articulate and can make the case for better, intelligent motivational rates for DFS.
I’ve input to some consultations (but not all, too busy) and usually so few people do say 50-100 that the well argued case from a few could have a big impact.
Here’s the open ones https://www.gov.uk/search/policy-papers-and-consultations?keywords=desnz&content_store_document_type%5B%5D=open_consultations&order=relevance

Just spotted a DFS session for today (Fri 28th).
https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/demand-flexibility/dfs_utilisation_report

NESO have discovered that a 120 requirement is too low.
One bid of 130 was accepted but others at 130 were rejected.
Octopus bid 150 which was rejected.

Rob

Another session today, 6-7.

I wonder over what period they assess your reduced usage? With full Sun today and last 2 days out 5kW battery runs through the high tariff period.

At this rate we will have a zero base load. Just wonder why they anticipate a power shortage.

Anyway, today it is 13p/kW.

Same as always, last ten weekdays which weren't saving sessions*

(Not sure if that gets complicated if some regions have sessions on different days!)

Or last four weekend days if a weekend.

Roy124 if you try the streamlit app https://savingsessions.streamlit.app/ and enter your octopus account API key, it’ll tell you your base load before the event

will also tell you the calculated savings quicker than Octopus

Predbat has signed me up but wisely decided its not worth it

geoffreycoan Thank you, as I surmised it is the SRFA. This year the base is about 0.60kW so not much fat there, average saving 0.1kW.

Another session today from 6pm to 7pm tonight £0.13 with Octopus

Bit of an odd one tonight, saving session 6pm - 7pm then power up 8pm - 10pm

AdamM Link please Adam.

Roy124 Powerups are usually localized but the Scotland link is here - https://octopus.energy/power-ups-scotland/

AdamM thank you, not seen one down here in East Midlands. Be interesting to see one here sometime. We were in Scctland in the 70s. We had a massive storage heater in the centre of the house. Heat poured out of it until early evening 🙂. I remember the Economy 7 tariff was 1.6p/kW.

When we moved in the main fuse for the heating had blown. We had a new born and the spare fuse was 30 miles away and would be available the next day. I got them to agree to let me pick it up from the depot. Once installed the engineer left the meter unsealed so that we could get the Economy 7 immediately. The storage heater could only use Econ 7 AFAIK with no boost function.

[unknown] don't get powerups here, but plugged car in and IOG scheduled charging from 2000 to 2330 which I think is first time I've seen it do that. Hope it doesn't change it's mind after I've dumped battery to grid...

AdamM Bit of an odd one tonight, saving session 6pm - 7pm then power up 8pm - 10pm

I’ve had similar with our power ups in Eastern England, power up and then immediately afterwards a saving session.

Can’t remember if I have ever had one in the evening though, one or two early in the morning but mostly they are in the middle of the day, sometimes extending to 4:30 or 5:00 in the peak period which I always find strange

6-7 today, once more.

Woo! I might be able to buy a fredo by the end of the week with all that Dosh. 🤣

Missed yesterday's saving session but possibly today as everything seems the same, Masses or solar, no need for home heating, no wind. They must have some crystal ball predicting massive consumption. It is lack of wind perhaps?

Predbat keeps signing me up to these sessions but now I’m back on Fixed Outgoing and my battery won’t last the evening until the 10pm Cosy period, there is no financial benefit to exporting and then having to import later on.

But at least I get a few pence from any reduced baseline import - which again I am not doing anything to manufacture, this is just luck based on when the heating comes on

I wonder if we'll get many more sessions, guess it will tail off now we are in March. Maybe the odd session here and there throughout the year if the weather is bad.

Was wondering about force exporting via PredBat 1600-1630, to try to move my export baseline out the way of saving session times.

Might be a bit of effort for not much reward. 😂

TX200 Was wondering about force exporting via PredBat 1600-1630, to try to move my export baseline out the way of saving session times.

generally the saving sessions have been later (as shown above), so if you’re on a tariff like Flux where you want to do peak rate export, then exporting earlier makes sense to shift your baseline.

In my case the battery lasts the peak period but not much more so I don’t force export, and the odd bits of importing that do occur in the peak are when the heat pump and cooker are both pulling power at the same time.
Unless the savings rate improves, which seems unlikely as we come out of winter, I doubt I will be gaining much from these sessions.

Can only hope NESO do something more generous next year

I've done the last 3, at about 3.2-3.3kWh a session, netted about £1.30.

Battery gets down to about 25% by 22:00 Cosy cheap rate but we only usually use around 8kWh of our 9,5 battery daily:

I have just checked on neso site.
The highest accepted bid was 120! Octopus rejected with 160 bid, way too much for neso!
With our 80% cut, we would get 10p/kWh.
Perhaps neso will learn from this one that 120 max is too low.

Rob

[unknown] Domestic demand may tail off and street lighting too. Manufacturing might remain steady and if we get a heat wave and no wind there could be a surge for AirCon.

Another 13p DFS session from Octopus today, 6-7pm.

Predbat has joined me in and wisely decided its not worth bothering with. I’m inclined to agree; yesterday our batteries had 2.2kWh left in them at 22:00 (start of the Cosy cheap charging period), so assuming the same I could export a kWh or so and make a whole 28p or so. Woo

Predbat is using a longer term average and suggests the battery will run out at about 9:30pm so if I did export and then run out I’d be importing earlier at 27p.

Not worth it for me. If you have lots of spare kWh and a fast discharge rate then the sums will be a bit more positive for you

Booked, it will be another 3.3kWh.

Mine has gone mad with three exports 😎

The DFS sessions are a complete waste of time tbh from a financial point of view. Hopefully they are useful for grid balancing. If predbat didn’t automate them I wouldn’t bother signing up for them as I’ve made £5.99 this year….

Just the one for me:

Question, how does one get the prettier view of Prebat plan like DAVEB01's above?

Is it just because it's a different platform to HAOS on a RPi?

wrighar

https://github.com/pacemaker82/PredBat-Table-Card

PianSom

You beat me to it 👍😛

Looks like I've saved about 31kWh over the sessions now..... and got the table card loaded:

Looks like I've saved about 31kWh over the sessions now..... and got the table card loaded:
About £5.20.....

wrighar

I did not get on with the State symbol, so changed it to the words and colour.

Daveb01

I thought I had too, but it didn't take:

Ahh, added :

old_skool_columns:

• state-column

  as well, and now works.

Missed the last session. Saw the email too late.
I can chuck out about 6-7kWh per session but for 70p total or so I don’t think I’ll bother again.

For £2 a kWh I’m back in.

Pete UK I ended up doing a small export in the last 15 minutes, earning me 15p.

Better than the 3p I have got in the last few sessions for doing nothing which is basically normal variation of my baseload. I think I have made just over £5 this year. Last year was £80

The last 3 sessions would have made me not much more than a quid, so I declined and will continue to do so at those rates. We needed to collectively have stonewalled NESO but unfortunately it seems they are managing to drag enough in to allow them to maintain pittance payments. I'll play again should they ever start offering sensible money.

I commented out the auto join in predbat for now. Definitely not worth it for me, especially with cooler evenings and a heat pump.

The last couple of DFS sessions there’s actually been enough spare juice in the battery for predbat to plan a small export. Earning a fantastic 44p and 15p respectively.

In other news, Octopus are running their own saving session tomorrow (Saturday) for Earth Day. Not sure I entirely see the point of it, but its for charity so I’ll sign up

I'd normally be running from battery so can't really save anything - and if they did pay out for exports (which I'm not sure this one does) it wouldn't be worth it at that time - especially if donating the points.

TX200 these saving offers affect different users differently. It is obvious from this forum that we all have hugely different setup and usage. Batteries or no batteries us probably the most significant. A heat pump user might save more, and freeze, than a different user.

Last energy saving session we saved 2p!.

Exporting a bit at 4pm thanks to some automations has brought my baseline down.

Sadly I was cooking during the last saving session so didn't export as much as usual.

From the bottom upwards: 15p, 16p, 17p, 18p, 20p 🥳🤣

TX200 I’ve got a stream of 2 and 3p saving amounts !

It’s just not worth it…

Looks like an 8pm saving session today.
11p/kWh for octopus customers.

Not really sure it's worth it, but auto opted in by home assistant.

[unknown] opted in, will take the dog for a walk.

Wonder why they need to save energy today

TX200 opted in, will take the dog for a walk.

Wonder why they need to save energy today

I’m keeping an eye on the NESO DFS saving session website, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are saving sessions this week with all the low cloud and poor solar generation

geoffreycoan I was right, there was a DFS saving session request today but Octopus were not successful with their bid. No bid from Axel or from any other electricity providers (Eon, Scottish Power, British Gas, etc).
Looking back to through all the events to beginning of August, same story, Octopus is the only consumer electricity provider that is bidding. The other bids are from companies I don't recognise (Equiwatt, Gallagher Aggregates, Gridbeyond, Gridimp, Infinis, Oaktree Power) - -presumably battery storage providers?

Be useful if there was an automation for HA to look if Octopus has been successful in a bid to pre-charge the battery earlier than the octopus notification. Technically possible as there is an API to the data set but ease of doing so?

Saving Session today (Tuesday) at 6pm, offering 192 points (24p ?)

Yeah, erm 24p kWh? Forget it when they charge me more than that as the Flux standard rate, even if it is on top of the usual Flux peak time export rate. I'd only have to buy it back later, meaning I'd only make a profit of 75p or less.

miffy yes if you don’t have sufficient battery capacity then these DFS sessions are of limited value.

I was able to charge up the batteries in the Cosy afternoon period at 14p and export at 24+15p, which does turn a reasonable profit, even after conversion losses. Without the Cosy topup period I wouldn’t have taken part

geoffreycoan What was your generation today Geoffrey? It's been such thick cloud here, we only generated 3.5kWh.
For October 2024 we averaged 12kWh a day, and October 2023 was 14.3kWh. This October it's only 9.8kWh so far.

miffy solar generation has been pants this month, which as I said was what pushed me over the edge to swapping to Cosy.

October 2023 572kWh total, 18.5kWh/day average
October 2024 553kWh total, 17.9kWh average
October 2025 (so far) 247kWh, 16.5kWh average

But for the last few days, 13/10 9kWh, 14/10 7.4kWh, 15/10 11kWh

We have 44 panels in total, 14.4kWp generation potential, so a large array. Daily consumption is typically 16-20kWh, plus the heat pump when its on.