Cheap overnight electricity?

I have seen many posts on here, YouTube videos etc. over the years describing how people make the most from cheap overnight electricity rates. Octopus already don’t let you have GO if you don’t have an EV and people are upset that they then can’t change their house batteries and use cheap nighttime rates because of this

Personally I think it’s not unlikely these rates will become much worse or end entirely, simply because it makes poor business sense for an energy provider to loose £££ on them. For example this morning during the small hours the rate offered by Octopus to buy electricity was never lower than 27p so they must be paying more than this. If they are only charging 7.5p this is loss making and unsustainable. Free charging in car parks / work places may well end too, especially as EV’s get more common

I know people won’t want to hear this and argue this has not happened before but neither have global pandemics or energy crisis like we have now experiencing. This is a really sad situation as many have stood the higher cost of EV’s because of lower running costs.

I would suggest that people considering a system maximise the size of the solar panel arrays therefore as they can’t stop the sun shining!

Maybe or maybe not, there is a lot that needs correcting on the energy markets which could impact price. The thing is that renewables create energy when industry and residential demand is normally low at night or even at the weekends. The same with power stations that are required to cover base load and fill gaps between renewables, they can’t just be shut off, so the power has to go somewhere and lower prices encourage its use.

People may be upset that they can’t use an EV tariff without an EV, but that was never the spirit of it even if it wasn’t previously enforced by the T&Cs. There are still tariffs with lower off peak prices than peak, even under that current situation. But long term investment decisions really should be made on the basis of the availability of a particular energy companies tariff, pretty sure it said that on the Octopus site at one point.

I agree maximise your solar array, but unless you have a really big area available it could still be a push to cover all your needs in the winter, especially if you have electrified heating and cooking.

dcsh Agree with both posters. I expect that the electricity price will become much more dynamic, balanced by supply and demand with peaks and troughs at different times of day and night and changing over the seasons and years. The people who will benefit will be those with the infrastructure to load shift and store energy to follow the lowest-cost.

Tim Just need more energy companies to adopt the agile idea, or at the very least plunge pricing, so we can grab it up cheap

CARLMW
I think the energy companies cannot have it both ways. Charging a fortune for energy and blaming high wholesale price of electricity whilst literally robbing the microgenerators by paying SEG rates which are between 1000% and 4000% below the wholesale price - https://www.cliffordtalbot.co.uk/energy-prices/. All of this is legal under the pathetic legislation dreamed up by an incompetent Government. We need an independent and educated regulator that is not in the pocket of these companies and introduction of an alternative route to market for exported electricity. Personally, I'd rather gift my export to a low income household across the road than line up the pockets of the energy companies' bosses.

If you know how to improve the energy market arrangements, please tell the government. A consultation is open https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/review-of-electricity-market-arrangements

Sparta I would not disagree with you, however as im typing this i’m getting 39p per kWh via Octopus outgoing agile so I can’t complain. I wish there was a way however that people with EV’s and solar could get credit for their solar export and spend it somewhere else in the UK to charge up. I mean it’s all one network ultimately run on metering so theoretically possible! The problem is that governments gave up on the Uk being self sufficient and got rid of refining capacity, gas storage, coal power stations etc to “go Green”. The nations we compete with globally like China don’t care about this and don’t have an energy crisis so now Europe is in a right mess. We can’t produce cheap energy ourselves so have to burn imported gas to make electricity. Its a bit like me not being able to cook for myself and having expensive take aways all the time.

Just had a conversation yesterday with someone who has a sister in Portugal. They bought a house on an estate where all the roofs have solar panels because it’s the law. Why on earth would the British government not do the same! Would have made a great topic of conversation for an office party….

I was lucky enough to install solar and batteries last July (just as prices started to ramp up).
When I researched it, Agile was the best thing since sliced bread and I was going to go on it.
At the time of install, agile was in a toxic zone of the export not being high but import was hovering around the 35p cap.
Over winter I was on Go faster which was great but cost me money (very poor export but cheap import means standing charge was never even covered).
In March (after the war started) I jumped on to agile as seen the prices were only heading in one direction. Since then I really took some time to work out what i actually wanted from my setup and fair, I was a bit of a prick sometimes..
Importing for 35p during the peak times and exporting for 60p. I never considered the impact this actually does to the network.

During the summer, having no EV, my export has smashed it out f the park.

Moving into winter, my rational has changed. I have decided to stick with Agile (lucky I'm on 35p) and treat the network in the way Agile was intended. Charge up offpeak and discharge during highest demand (and highest export payments). I wont charge during traditional peak rates.

Give energy have around 10,000 customers now, if we all did this it would be the equivalent as one wind turbine which might not sound a lot but locally, I will be powering the baseload of of around 10 of my neighbours.

I am hoping to keep my yearly bill under £200 which should be possible with energy arbitrage (buying cheap and selling expensive).

hamilton “buy low sell high” trading places!

hamilton how do you configure that with GE portal? do you manually set charge & discharge settings, or can you automate it (with ECO as default)?

ivell Sadly to peak discharge its using the quickset buttons and charging is planned using eco mode.
I'm looking at the graph for the lowest costs times and setting the battery to charge.
Arbitrage only occurs at 39p and above (10% losses)

Thank you Rubikcube.
Will do!

These super high prices we are seeing are artificial in nature made by the big energy suppliers. Same old tune, a handful of people making super profits while those at the bottom struggle or worse. Pretty sure these cheap EV tarifs do not harm any companies profits.

Rubikcube A consultation is open https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/review-of-electricity-market-arrangements

Has anyone produced a summary of the relevant points that are no doubt hidden in the 130 page document. Many people will not be prepared to read such a lengthy document. Also looking at the response form, this seems quite involved and, again, lots of people will not want to spend the time to respond.

Why do governments have to use a million words to say things, when a few hundred will do the job?

Rubikcube @Martyn The consultation is targeted at the industry, NGOs, consumer groups, academics and policy think-tanks. The consultation is also only about the wholesale (non-retail) market and so doesn't apply to Joe Public as individuals. It looks to be focusing on decarbonisation, security and capacity rather than retail pricing and looks to 2035 for a date when this will all be in place.

In fairness, this is a huge and complex issue and those bodies that care about supporting UK government policy on decarbonisation while maintaining security of supply (to all of us) will invest the time to respond. I guess the best way we can influence the outcome is to lobby our MPs and ensure they're holding government to account for a fair deal for the government policy, the industry and the individual consumer.

Hi Tim, Rubikcube and Martyn,
you are correct that the Consultation is primarily targeted at industry, but microgeneration is part of that industry and plays an important role in achieving net zero.
I believe that alternative route to market for electricity export can and will influence the wholesale price. SEG will need to be transformed into something that cannot be abused by the large energy companies, because currently they can legally operate a cartel. If we are given an alternative route to market and are able to agree supply agreement with a next-door neighbour, the energy companies will have to take notice and this is only then the "market" can work. I understand that some energy companies are switching off wind farms because there is too much solar power in the system. Whilst this may be to protect the grid from too much power, it also helps them to engineer high prices.
And yes, I have lobbied my MP and wrote to BEIS' Greg Hands ( Minister of State (Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change). So far I had no meaningful response so the next step will be to engage newspapers. My view is that we will only have the market that we deserve and therefore need to make some noise about the unfairness of SEG not being linked to the wholesale price.

THALL I know what you mean but you are talking about two sorts of suppliers as if they were one. It’s the energy producers that are holding us to ransom but hiding behind the suppliers we deal with directly. All we can do is moan at Octopus etc. whereas if they would kindly forward the complaints department of the companies they buy off, I would have much to say. Even worse is when it’s the same company acting as both supplier and producer under different names!