Octopus saving sessions coming 1st Nov

[Caesium]

"If you manage to save a kilowatt hour of electricity in this Session, you'll earn 1800 OctoPoints - that's £2.25."

Problem is during 5pm-6pm on average I use about 0.01kWh so I could potentially earn a couple of pence!

Just hoping they have a session at 10pm and I'll delay my battery charging for an hour

[Joeboy]

"If you manage to save a kilowatt hour of electricity in this Session, you'll earn 1800 OctoPoints - that's £2.25."

Problem is during 5pm-6pm on average I use about 0.01kWh so I could potentially earn a couple of pence!

Just hoping they have a session at 10pm and I'll delay my battery charging for an hour

Hey Caesium, thanks for the link. Good to see the wee banner live and cartoon turbines turning! So it's throw the home breaker and sit in the dark for an hour tomorrow evening?

That should earn me that same 1p. Woohoo! It's a nice simple wee carrot n stick though for those who haven't been thinking this way.

I am pulling around 19kWh through the window, you?

[Caesium]

I am pulling around 19kWh through the window, you?

It varies a lot to be honest. On milder days, like we've had pretty much so far this autumn, the SH barely have to fire up, maybe an hour a night. On those nights I'll pull about 20kWh. That is basically just recharging the batteries and the car.

We did have some colder snaps a couple of weeks ago, night time temperature dropped down to about 6c (don't laugh! I might be on the south coast but I am from Yorkshire so not a southern pansy ) and I ran them for the full 5 hours that night to see how warm the house stayed - result = perfect, house was a good 22c in all SH rooms. That was a 50kWh night however.

The true test will come when we hit the coldest winter nights, if we can make do with just that 50kWh of heating and barely have to use any GCH then I'll be happy enough. But I rather suspect the capacity of SH I have won't be enough so the GCH will end up coming on anyway

(have about 18kWh fan-assisted in the lounge, 10kWh fan-assisted in the kitchen, and 10kWh passive in my office)

[Joeboy]

I am pulling around 19kWh through the window, you?

It varies a lot to be honest. On milder days, like we've had pretty much so far this autumn, the SH barely have to fire up, maybe an hour a night. On those nights I'll pull about 20kWh. That is basically just recharging the batteries and the car.

We did have some colder snaps a couple of weeks ago, night time temperature dropped down to about 6c (don't laugh! I might be on the south coast but I am from Yorkshire so not a southern pansy ) and I ran them for the full 5 hours that night to see how warm the house stayed - result = perfect, house was a good 22c in all SH rooms. That was a 50kWh night however.

The true test will come when we hit the coldest winter nights, if we can make do with just that 50kWh of heating and barely have to use any GCH then I'll be happy enough. But I rather suspect the capacity of SH I have won't be enough so the GCH will end up coming on anyway

(have about 18kWh fan-assisted in the lounge, 10kWh fan-assisted in the kitchen, and 10kWh passive in my office)

Ah, my typo. We are peaking at around 19kW in the charging window and are pulling 60 to 80 kWh per session.

[Caesium]

Ah, my typo. We are peaking at around 19kW in the charging window and are pulling 60 to 80 kWh per session.

Ah if you meant kW then I'm probably a bit weak Highest I've recorded is a steady 12kW (very brief spike to 13.9kW, maybe an A2A came on briefly, or a dehumidifier or something).

So I'm kinda guessing as I don't record everything thats on exactly but that was probably:

batteries = 3.7kW
car = 1.8kW
lounge SH = 3.6kW
kitchen SH = 1.5kW
office SH = 1.5kW

Car is intentionally set on a fairly low rate as it's only a plug-in hybrid with 8kWh or so, so even at that lower rate the cables/plugs have an easier life and it still just about fills up in 5h.

[Oldgreybeard]

12kW is already fairly close to the supply limit, not sure I'd want to go much higher. I try to spread our loads out through the night, to mitigate this, so, for example, our hot water doesn't turn on to charge until 3:30am, which gives time for it to charge up before the first shower of the day but also allows 4 hours for the battery to have topped up first (battery starts charging at 11:35pm). Being able to phase high loads like this is a useful advantage of a 7 hour off-peak slot.

Single phase domestic supplies are either rated at 13.8kVA or 15kVA maximum, depending on region and DNO. The risk isn't that significant for the consumer, as there's a bit of a safety margin built in to an individual house supply, but overloading the local distribution network by exceeding the DNO limit could cause overheating problems in the cabling or local transformer. The biggest pole mount transformer made is around 100kVA, and very often a 100kVA transformer will be supplying dozens of homes. Only takes a few of them to choose to pull even the 15kVA maximum to risk damage, as the system was designed with an assumption that it was unlikely to have every house pull its rated power at the same time.

[Caesium]

Are you on 3 phase to get that 19kW safely then Joe? Or flinging caution to the wind?

19kW = nearly 80A

[Joeboy]

Are you on 3 phase to get that 19kW safely then Joe? Or flinging caution to the wind?

19kW = nearly 80A

Caution to the wind.

[nowty]

A random trawl through the UK DNO websites suggest the max single phase limits are up to, between 17kW to 20kW.

Electricity North West 20 kW
https://www.enwl.co.uk/get-connected/ch ... ur-supply/

Northern Ireland Electricity Networks 17 kW
https://www.nienetworks.co.uk/help-advi ... 20required

Northern Powergrid 18 kVA
https://www.northernpowergrid.com/connection-service

[Oldgreybeard]

A random trawl through the UK DNO websites suggest the max single phase limits are up to, between 17kW to 20kW.

Electricity North West 20 kW
https://www.enwl.co.uk/get-connected/ch ... ur-supply/

Northern Ireland Electricity Networks 17 kW
https://www.nienetworks.co.uk/help-advi ... 20required

Northern Powergrid 18 kVA
https://www.northernpowergrid.com/connection-service

SSE offer either 13.8kVA or a maximum of 15kVA for this region. I was given the choice when requesting a new supply here and the form only had those two options, as tick boxes. I rang and asked if I could get more than this (thinking about car charging) and was told that 15kVA was the maximum they offered to any single phase domestic consumer.

I read that WPD were uprating their networks in the South West to provide more than 15kVA, ready for chargers and heat pumps. Maybe one or two others have already done this?