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Not sure if this is the place to post such things but I've just had my electricity bill from Octopus for the last two months (billing isn't one of their strengths) and the average price per unit is just 5.02p per kWH which basically means pretty much any juice I needed from the grid was supplied via my Octopus Go cheap period of 00:30 to 04:30. The actual total was trivial too.

Given we have two BEVs, two washing machines and two dishwashers it's probably the lowest I've ever paid in per month in the 20 years I've owned this house.

I'm new to this ToU business. However this was yesterday:




The largest non-cheaprate 30-min slot was 0.103kWh.

The 2030-0030 slot is really working for me for several reasons: I put the dishwasher on at that time anyway, I can charge my PHEV at that time, it is a good time to charge the batteries because they are drained somewhat before the sun comes up.

The downside is that the early morning slot would be better for the boiling water tap (which is scheduled to come on at 6am) and would be better for charging the storage heater in the garden office (storage heater to be bought and installed before winter).

Welcome Nick

So pleased to see your arrival with us refuges from the other place.

I in particular are hoping you will give us an insight into what you have manged to do with your ME3000.

There are a number of us here with the same equipment that are not I am sure getting the best out of our kit .

If you could please advise what we need to purchase or fabricate to take advantage our relationship with the Octopus

Thanks Patrick

greentangerine wrote: ↑Thu Aug 26, 2021 12:17 am Not sure if this is the place to post such things but I've just had my electricity bill from Octopus for the last two months (billing isn't one of their strengths) and the average price per unit is just 5.02p per kWH which basically means pretty much any juice I needed from the grid was supplied via my Octopus Go cheap period of 00:30 to 04:30. The actual total was trivial too.

Given we have two BEVs, two washing machines and two dishwashers it's probably the lowest I've ever paid in per month in the 20 years I've owned this house.

I don't have any solar electric but I am with Octopus (sort-of, as I'm ex-Coop, now Ripple too.) I have to give meter readings every month which isn't a hassle as I run a spreadsheet for my own info, but that is mainly because monthly reporting was a condition of our earlier Ecotricity supply. Within a day or so of submitting the measurements to Octopus I get a notional bill, although without my spreadsheet I don't know if I could work out where I stood.
A

AE-NMidlands wrote: ↑Thu Aug 26, 2021 9:10 pm I don't have any solar electric but I am with Octopus (sort-of, as I'm ex-Coop, now Ripple too.)

Ahhaaaa, finally fessed up and added to my (not so secret) list of Ripple members.

bxman wrote: ↑Thu Aug 26, 2021 8:08 pm Welcome Nick

So pleased to see your arrival with us refuges from the other place.

I in particular are hoping you will give us an insight into what you have manged to do with your ME3000.

There are a number of us here with the same equipment that are not I am sure getting the best out of our kit .

If you could please advise what we need to purchase or fabricate to take advantage our relationship with the Octopus

Thanks Patrick

Glad to be here!

I essentially only control the ME3000 charge during the Octopus Go free period i.e. decide to what %age the battery store should charge to in the four hours. The rest of the time it is operating in auto mode.

As to the level of charge, that's decided based on the Solcast weather forecast for the next day plus the current level of charge i.e. trying to avoid the battery storage depleting completely during the 'expensive' period. All my monitoring kit is now based on the stuff available from OpenEnergyMonitor / Emoncms and that uses MQTT has the means of sending readings etc. around the local network and is easy to hook into using Python etc.

The code I used was posted to github and is public. There's also an active group on FB who have lots of cool integrations with Node Red etc. - "Sofar Solar Inverter - Remote Control & Smart Home Integration"

As for washing machines / dishwashers, they are either put on timer for the cheap period or just deferred to the next day if it's going to be sunny and PV will cover the usage.

It does help having lots of PV and battery storage.