Give Back

Has anyone joined the Give Back thing..? Is it worth doing especially in winter when solar isn’t as productive..?

ONEIL some people here have joined the scheme.

There are a few things to note:

• Axle energy will take control of your inverter for the saving event, charging the battery beforehand and discharging in the event, then resetting back to normal at the end
• You get an email notification of the event happening sometime around the middle of the day of the event. Payment is based on how much you reduce your normal grid import during the saving session, or increase the export
• Payment amount isn’t much. Typically 40-70p per kWh
• If you have a large battery, fast inverter charge/discharge rate, then clearly this gives best opportunity to make money. If you need the battery storage to run your house then this might not be good for you
• Profit will depend on what tariff you are on. If you are on Agile for example and grid import rates are high before the event (as they were for the last event), you might even lose money as the battery charging costs you more than you get from the forced export

I’ve made about £6 over two events so far this winter.

I've been in 3 of the recent givbacks, gen 3 hybrid, so limited to 3.6kWh battery discharge, - home load.
I seem to get around 3.3 kWh exported.
first 2 were 40p kWh, last 50p
£4.27 (minus around £1.30 for the _10kWh of battery charge that was exported), so £3.00 profit.

Every little helps :-)

I've been doing it, made about £15 last year. It's such a small amount of money that it's more of an experiment than a serious earner, but it's nice to support the grid during times of stress.
Note that what you're paid always exceeds the day tariff so even if it empties your battery, you'll still have a net profit. So you can basically switch it on and forget about it.

I have opted out now as i do not believe the returns justify the extra wear /reduced life of my batteries
It was worthwhile last year..

WA144 Note that what you're paid always exceeds the day tariff so even if it empties your battery, you'll still have a net profit. So you can basically switch it on and forget about it.

That is not correct.

What you are paid depends on the DFS event, and whether you make a profit depends on the tariff you are on.

e.g. the last DFS event on 8/1/25, Axle paid I think 50p, but Agile was 99.99p/kWh, Tracker 33.8p and Cosy 40.5p so you would have lost money on Agile and made pennies on the other tariffs.

There was an event requested for 10/1/25 but none of the suppliers were successful in their bid, probably a good thing as Agile rates were again at 99.99p, Tracker was 42.5p and Axle bid 642p which means their payout would have been 40-45p/kWh.

You can see the prices that suppliers bid for each event on the DFS website

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

If you are not on Tracker or Agile then there probably is a profit to be made, but its not great. The scheme was much more profitable last year, I made £85 and others here made £200 or so

There is also an irritating factor to take into consideration. If you are running a simple automation via Andrew miller's Inverter app or similar, Axle etc. can come in, screw up your settings and leave you in a worse state after the event than you would have been before it. DAMHIK!

My Fault, but on the first one, I missed the e-mail and notification, so as the weather was dull and I had my setting to ensure I had the capacity to get to 0200 and the next cheaper recharge slot, point being Giveback just checked if it had enough capacity to meet their need, which I did, so they took their 1600 to 1700 discharge, result My battery ran out during the mid evening, so pulled from the grid, point being after the to and from loses were factored in, I was pennies out of pocket, the cost of putting the capacity back with the 10% looses incurred. So no, this is just a waste of space, three events and like most still under the fiver to take the money out. not impressed.