New batteries being installed - is it worth going to eco 7 to charge them overnight?

Hello @Llamedospete

Welcome to the forum and Congratulations having batteries installed in your home. This is a very good question and I believe @Transparent Would probably be the best person to answer this question

Ok @transparent thanks very much for your answer, makes sense. I will fill in my profile asap.
Regards to all Pete.

Hi @Llamedospete and @Transparent - some really interesting discussion here that I am keen to delve in to a little!

When you say 'proper time of use' tariff @Llamedospete , what sort of thing are you referring to?

If, as @Transparent says, it's a similar type of thing to what Octopus provide, I'm really curious as to how you would see this working for you? How would you use it to your benefit?

Really look forward to hearing more on this.. anyone else reading this with an interest in time-of-use tariffs, we would love to hear from you too!

Hi .@Hari_OVO ok as I understand it the idea behind time of use tariffs is:- you have to have a smets 2 smart meter that can do the ToU tariffs and be signed up to 1/2 hourly updated this allows your provider to charge similar to the following, 00.01 to 08.00 @£0.07 per kWh, from 08.00 till 16.00 @£0.16 per kWh, from 16.00 to 20.00 @£0.32 kWh then 20.00 to 00.00 back to £0.16 kWh.
So as you can see you are charged depending on what time you use your electricity, no good for normal users but if you have batteries or an e.v. you can charge up at the low overnight rate for use during the day. If your batts run out during the day so long as it's not during the peak period you won't be charged at much more than standard rate. The idea behind it all is to use people's batteries to smooth out the peaks and throughs in the supply meaning they won't need so many generating stations and means that I get all/most of my electricity during the day at low overnight prices so I will benefit and the grid benefits as well.
Hope this all makes sense to you.
Regards to all Pete.

That's a massive question @Hari_OVO !

I guess most electricity consumers don't yet realise the parameters which might be taken into account when TOU Tariffs are being set.

Most, like @Llamedospete, probably imagine it will be some kind of extension to the present Economy-7 system. As such they envisage still going through an annual comparison-site and selecting an Energy Supplier who provides preset rates at a number of time-zones during the day.

I don't see it like this. Since we're on the open Forum, let me put forward two scenarios which show alternative reasons why the cost per kWh might vary:


A. I live in a rural region that has a surplus of renewable energy. There is insufficient capacity in the Transmission Grid (above 32kV) to send this surplus back up the line to cities that are in energy deficit.

So on sunny or windy days, the cheaper rates are more likely to be available to me in the middle of the day rather than at night.

If I have a Storage-Battery or an EV connected to my charger, I might configure these to

• take in electricity when the cost per unit falls below 10p, or
• take in electricity when it is at least 5p /unit lower than the evening peak

I don't need to micro-manage this, and I don't care which half-hour (HH) slots of the day are actually used. I've simply used the touch-screen on my IHD to facilitate savings which fit within my preferred energy-usage profile.


B. Electricity DNOs are financially incentivised to minimise losses in the Distribution Grid (32kV and below). Currently this RIIO-ED1 strategy is having little effect.

Technical Losses (ie excluding theft!) have increased from around 5% to 10% over the last 20 years, not helped by numerous customers adding solar-panels to their single-phase domestic supplies!

The graph here shows the current being drawn by the three-phases (L1, L2 & L3) on a Feed named "Ash" at a sub-station about 2Km from where I'm based.

When there is a current imbalance between phases, the efficiency of the substation transformer falls. This energy-loss causes a corresponding rise in the core temperature.

It is quite possible that a DNO might wish to meet their RIIO-ED1 targets by reducing the phase-imbalance. In short, I could instruct my Storage Battery to "Track Δ-Phase of my sub-station" and be rewarded with a financial bonus for reducing the losses.


Now I'm not suggesting that customers should in any way need to get involved with the technicalities of how the price-per-HH timeslot is actually calculated.

The reason I have access to this substation data is so we can test what sort of incentives are likely to result in consumers changing their energy usage. The actual user-interface may be extremely simple.


(Aside: The above graph is in reverse time notation. As it's a snapshot of a "live" data-feed, new readings are being added to the left side of the x-axis.

These are average figures per HH per phase. The 93A average on L2 around 7pm on Saturday evening was actually a peak of 139A coinciding with the start of Michael McIntyre's Big Show on BBC1 and Top Gear Highlights on BBC2.

I can provide further explanations if requested!)

Hi again - hope you both had good weekends!

Thanks for this - my main question back to you @Llamedospete is - how would you see a tariff like the one you have explained doing more for you than one that exists already, like Economy 7? Completely open question, I'm just curious!

@Transparent that's a very interesting way of looking at it - so in effect you would want to be able to set some parameters, and then make sure your devices only use energy within those parameters? What would this look like, for example, if someone didn't have battery storage?

Thanks,

Hari

Hi @Hari_OVO - you work funny hours. Just as everyone else leaves OVO at the end of the day, you post another provocative message on the Forum!

I mentioned only Battery Storage because that's the Topic title which @Llamedospete started. I think the whole subject of stored energy is actually far wider.

I see four main reservoirs of energy in homes:

• Storage Battery
• EV with V2G charger
• Thermal-store or Hot-water cylinder (using immersion heater)
• Electric Storage Radiator

The first two have bi-directional capabilities whilst the latter two are input-only.

Some homes will also be micro-generators. Most commonly these will have PV-panels (single-phase 4Kw max). However, a few may have a wind- or water-turbine etc.

I also discriminate between two different categories of imbalance which is wasting energy in the UK:

• Phase imbalance causing losses in the Distribution Network (32kV & below)
• Surfeit of renewable generation in a geographical region

All of these need a better level of management using Smart Meters, LV-CAP (in sub-stations) and a national computer management system with knowledge of the distributed resources (Vcharge).


If there is need to balance the distribution grid in an area, VCharge could dump excess generation into the energy reservoirs of that region based on the parameters set up by the customers.

Some customers may have only storage radiators (connected via ALCS to their SMETS2 meter). Typically these might be elderly people or historic houses. In either case it doesn't matter how/when the radiator is supplied with power, so long as the building meets a preset temperature profile.

Vcharge may in fact elect to dump energy into a local network of OVO's customers on the PSR who have storage radiators by taking it from neighbouring houses with PV arrays and hence avoid having to pay for any transportation across the Transmission Grid!


Equally, if there is a regional/local energy deficit (eg the evening peak), then Vcharge can call on the available Storage Batteries and EV's according to their preset parameters.

An EV owner with V2G may, for example, set up preferences on their IHD to set up the following rules:

* You may access 70% of my vehicle's stored energy between 6-10pm. This leaves me 30% if I need to pop out during the evening.

* You must credit me at least 1.6p /unit more than I paid to charge my EV

* You must recharge my EV between 10pm-6am to a minimum 50% so that I have enough energy to drive to work.


Interestingly, many of the constituent parts of this 21st century smart-grid are in the hands of the OVO Group! However, we have as yet seen little sign of these being promoted into the innovative roles that I've outlined above.

I think OVO needs to migrate from seeing itself as a Domestic Energy Supplier and mutate into being a Domestic Energy Facilitator. This requires a bolder, more adventurous path to widen the income-stream beyond a defined set of customers with an account!

This will include offering VCharge's distributed network management system to Community-run Microgrids, particularly on new-build estates where every house will have SMETS2 meters and EV Chargers.

The Community Group pays for access to VCharge, whether or not individual customers are signed up to OVO. However, OVO may elect to receive that payment in kind, as renewable-energy exported from the Microgrid which it needs to satisfy its growing demand from customers signed up to a Green Energy Tariff.

... and once again, @Hari_OVO , you've opened a massive subject area which I can hardly do justice too with a text-only posting on the Forum!

@Hari_OVO can I give one further illustration of a "parameter set-up" which a consumer might wish to configure if they do not have a Storage Battery or EV?

Let's imagine they have a SMETS2 meter, and have connected their washing machine (or dishwasher) using one of the available ALCS channels. These are both examples of domestic appliances which can be loaded and then left "ready to run" when energy is cheaper.

So if they are on a HH variable tariff, a typical set-up might be

* Run when the price /kWh falls to 3p lower than the average over the last 24hours

* If the next HH period is at a higher rate, then continue anyway (we don't want a wash-cycle stopped part-way!)

* If the first parameter hasn't been reached by 6am then run anyway (so I can unload before going to work in the morning).

On a sunny/windy day here in the Westcountry, I'd expect most washing machines to run immediately. In a major city, they may run overnight, in similar fashion to the current E7 tariff.

Now again, let me emphasise, I'm not suggesting that the customer has to enter these instruction sets freehand. The user-interface on the IHD (or Smartphone App) may be extremely simple. All I'm doing here is to show a set of parameters which might be reasonable and will save energy.

One of the things we're testing here with our Smart sub-station is an App which allows us to survey how consumers respond to financial incentives when using energy. Which is most likely to change their habits?... an on-screen message which says

• you can save 2p per kWh by delaying your washing machine

or

• you can save 7p on the next load of washing

or

• you can save £13.24 a year if you change to delayed wash-cycles

This will help in the design of future user-interfaces and the way in which the underlying parameter-sets are constructed.

Hey @Transparent , sorry for the delayed response!

You've got some really great ideas and I think one thing we are certainly agreed on is that the end consumer should be able to optimise their device behaviour with minimal complexity, through intuitive user interfaces!

As a start point, I don't think our VCharge platform is a million miles off getting to some of the things you have outlined. For example, if you have a V2G Charger, with the accompanying app you will be able to tell us the minimum charge level you want in your Nissan LEAF at any time, then based on network signals we will:

• Charge your car when demand on the grid is low
• Export power to the grid when it needs it most

And best of all, we'll pay you your import unit rate + 6p for every kWh exported. And, if you need your car in a hurry you can override any signals via one simple click of a button in-app.

I appreciate this is probably only the tip of the iceberg (and I really like the idea of being able to make money from pausing my washing machine and dishwasher!) - but we're regularly looking to understand how we can bring flexibility to more people, as I said above, with minimal complexity and in an intuitive manner. With our V2G Charger, and our Smart Charger - we're just at the beginning!

Exciting times...

Hari