The Lemon Fool

Has anyone else done these?
If so, have they had their reward points yet from their ESO?

Yes, about £4 worth of points from 2 sessions with Octopus.

Is there an investment angle to this rather cryptic question?

And no, I haven't had any rewards from the European Southern Observatory. At least, not since they were part of a consortium for which I did some contract work.

UncleEbenezer wrote:Is there an investment angle to this rather cryptic question?

And no, I haven't had any rewards from the European Southern Observatory. At least, not since they were part of a consortium for which I did some contract work.

Energy pricing arbitrage?

I've done one - and there's another this evening. That's with Octopus.

The organisation is a bit of a mystery - I was informed of this one by my phone app, and I opted in. When I clicked the link for further details it told me "sorry, you need to log in".

Arb.

Is this referring to moving your use of electricity from say between 5 pm and 8 pm to some other time like 8pm to 9pm? Or is it something else like true power saving as opposed to reducing peak demand? I was offered a deal involving cooking my supper after 8 pm I think it was or before 5 pm by my supplier OVO but being a creature of habit declined to take part.

Dod

I had a message this morning from EON that they are crediting my account with £1.09 for reducing consumption between 5pm and 6pm yesterday.
Seems a good way of reducing demand peaks in cold weather

My app says I have earned 1945 points so far, which I think equals £19.45 but haven't had the credit yet.

Fundamentally, I am feeling unhappy about this exercise because it benefits the power company and other users far more than me. It allows it to dodge its responsibility to provide enough power on demand and allows it to improve its margins and delay the CapeEx needed to upgrade the system.

The consequence of the move to green energy is now not just higher prices but faffing around with more apps and remembering to turn the HP off and on.

OhNoNotimAgain wrote:My app says I have earned 1945 points so far, which I think equals £19.45 but haven't had the credit yet.

Fundamentally, I am feeling unhappy about this exercise because it benefits the power company and other users far more than me. It allows it to dodge its responsibility to provide enough power on demand and allows it to improve its margins and delay the CapeEx needed to upgrade the system.

The consequence of the move to green energy is now not just higher prices but faffing around with more apps and remembering to turn the HP off and on.

I think it's more likely to be £1.94 (and a 1/2)

If you're talking about "Octopoints" then the relationship is 800 Octopoints to a £1.00 credit on the bill.

OhNoNotimAgain wrote:My app says I have earned 1945 points so far, which I think equals £19.45 but haven't had the credit yet.

Fundamentally, I am feeling unhappy about this exercise because it benefits the power company and other users far more than me. It allows it to dodge its responsibility to provide enough power on demand and allows it to improve its margins and delay the CapeEx needed to upgrade the system.

The consequence of the move to green energy is now not just higher prices but faffing around with more apps and remembering to turn the HP off and on.

You remember when old grumps would complain about watching "whatever" on TV because they didn't like it?
When sane folk would remind them they didn't have to watch - that it was a choice - that having choices and variety is part of what makes things interesting... but they'd just grump anyway ("something something license fee" generally) and look sad and grumpy ?

If you have a market where you encourage companies to compete they're going to do different things to differentiate
- if you want to grump about it you'd be better off grumping about how they were privatized in the great place

I'm with British Gas. I subscribed to the first one and received a text to say I'd saved 8p but they were going to round it up to 10p. I haven't bothered since.

I thought the best approach would be to take this as a hint to close down the house for an hour and go to the pub....
but then I ended spending much more than I'd saved!

(only joking)

What actually happens I that I just turn off the non-essential things, most vampires, lights radio, PC etc - including stopping the heating firing up intermittently - and seeing what transpires. I didn't turn the TV off, which would probably have saved most of all, nor the fridge-freezer.

Last time the saving was worth having, but I have a feeling that was a "special" day for some reason.

And tonight, the forecast is that my car will charge with 99% renewable energy. Oh joy

Yes, it all makes life just more complicated for not much real gain.


Arb.

OhNoNotimAgain wrote:Fundamentally, I am feeling unhappy about this exercise because it benefits the power company and other users far more than me. It allows it to dodge its responsibility to provide enough power on demand and allows it to improve its margins and delay the CapeEx needed to upgrade the system.

The consequence of the move to green energy is now not just higher prices but faffing around with more apps and remembering to turn the HP off and on.

As sd says, nobody forces you to do it.

I'm with Octopus, I just ignore the notifications. However that's not because I don't believe in it, it is because I'm on Flux which charges a premium between 4-7pm, and as we have batteries they are charged between 2-4pm, so we import little between 4-7pm. On the last bill, 20 OCt to 20 November we imported 3.1 kWh between 4-7pm all month in total, so it would be hard to reduce that meaningfully. (FWIW we imported 190kWh on the 1/2 price 2-5am slot and 95kWh at standard rate so saved around £20 on that bill compared to paying a flat rate, its going to take a while to pay back the battery!)

The individual savings are tiny, but there is a point to it, it is a testbed to see how people react, if people engage, if it is an option to manage the supply in the future, and it gets people familiar with managing their demand. As technology improves and more people get smart meters, spot pricing will become more common, and may eventually become the norm. For us the variable tariff already works for them and us, I use my local storage to time shift my consumption. In a couple of years I can see people using their electric cars for the same purposse, even exporting to the grid.

The biggest issue with going renewable is getting a reliable supply, to smooth those peaks and troughs we will need grid level storage. That is simply not going to happen in a timely or economic manner. But with 40 million vehicles on the UK roads, that's going to become a heck of a lot of local storage.

Paul

chas49 wrote:

OhNoNotimAgain wrote:My app says I have earned 1945 points so far, which I think equals £19.45 but haven't had the credit yet.

Fundamentally, I am feeling unhappy about this exercise because it benefits the power company and other users far more than me. It allows it to dodge its responsibility to provide enough power on demand and allows it to improve its margins and delay the CapeEx needed to upgrade the system.

The consequence of the move to green energy is now not just higher prices but faffing around with more apps and remembering to turn the HP off and on.

I think it's more likely to be £1.94 (and a 1/2)

If that is the real rate no one will bother. I reduced my consumption by about 10 Kwhr over several events. In the context of >20,000 Kwhr annual consumption it is bugger all to me but if they want it to work they have to make it worth while.

Arborbridge wrote:I thought the best approach would be to take this as a hint to close down the house for an hour and go to the pub....
but then I ended spending much more than I'd saved!

(only joking)

What actually happens I that I just turn off the non-essential things, most vampires, lights radio, PC etc - including stopping the heating firing up intermittently - and seeing what transpires. I didn't turn the TV off, which would probably have saved most of all, nor the fridge-freezer.

Last time the saving was worth having, but I have a feeling that was a "special" day for some reason.

And tonight, the forecast is that my car will charge with 99% renewable energy. Oh joy

Yes, it all makes life just more complicated for not much real gain.


Arb.

That's cobblers, the grid never gets 99% of its electricity from renewables.

Besides, the doubling of my standing charge shows us the that the real cost of renewables is much higher than claimed.

OhNoNotimAgain wrote:

Arborbridge wrote:I thought the best approach would be to take this as a hint to close down the house for an hour and go to the pub....
but then I ended spending much more than I'd saved!

(only joking)

What actually happens I that I just turn off the non-essential things, most vampires, lights radio, PC etc - including stopping the heating firing up intermittently - and seeing what transpires. I didn't turn the TV off, which would probably have saved most of all, nor the fridge-freezer.

Last time the saving was worth having, but I have a feeling that was a "special" day for some reason.

And tonight, the forecast is that my car will charge with 99% renewable energy. Oh joy

Yes, it all makes life just more complicated for not much real gain.


Arb.

That's cobblers, the grid never gets 99% of its electricity from renewables.

Besides, the doubling of my standing charge shows us the that the real cost of renewables is much higher than claimed.

Whose grid? Where? And when?

I've worked in, and on, places that are abso-fu-kin-lutely running at 100% renewables for most of the time (for big values of most!). Places scaled at the MW usage; running plant more demanding than an average commercial substation. It's partly because this stuff is so bloody successful that the technology is being scaled to national grid level. It's going to take a bit of communication skills to effectively explain what's going on to the lay folk who don't understand how it works. (I can't do that bit.. just the engineering part )

OhNoNotimAgain wrote:

Arborbridge wrote:I thought the best approach would be to take this as a hint to close down the house for an hour and go to the pub....
but then I ended spending much more than I'd saved!

(only joking)

What actually happens I that I just turn off the non-essential things, most vampires, lights radio, PC etc - including stopping the heating firing up intermittently - and seeing what transpires. I didn't turn the TV off, which would probably have saved most of all, nor the fridge-freezer.

Last time the saving was worth having, but I have a feeling that was a "special" day for some reason.

And tonight, the forecast is that my car will charge with 99% renewable energy. Oh joy

Yes, it all makes life just more complicated for not much real gain.


Arb.

That's cobblers, the grid never gets 99% of its electricity from renewables.

Besides, the doubling of my standing charge shows us the that the real cost of renewables is much higher than claimed.

Well, it didn't say the grid would be 99% renewable. It said their supply to me over night was likely to be.
If you want to argue with those that know, take it up with Octopus. If it is a false claim, I hardly think they would be risking the slings and arrows to their reputation.

Arb.

OhNoNotimAgain wrote:If that is the real rate no one will bother. I reduced my consumption by about 10 Kwhr over several events. In the context of >20,000 Kwhr annual consumption it is bugger all to me but if they want it to work they have to make it worth while.

20,000kWh pa?

Is that total gas and electric?

DrFfybes wrote:

OhNoNotimAgain wrote:If that is the real rate no one will bother. I reduced my consumption by about 10 Kwhr over several events. In the context of >20,000 Kwhr annual consumption it is bugger all to me but if they want it to work they have to make it worth while.

20,000kWh pa?

Is that total gas and electric?

It's a very big cannabis farm.