Camelot Members Annual Green Electric Generation

[Oldgreybeard]

Don't disagree that the actual demand shift will be tiny, but we have already seen the erosion of the price differential between the E7 night rate and the day rate. And many members on here "pull" a lot more than 3kW for 4 hours (I appreciate that was to illustrate the small effect!), as they are not only charging batteries, but their EV and their storage heaters as well, something that was not happening just 2 years ago.

My point was that in my opinion PV is a safer bet on the return front than just relying on batteries for time shifting. I suspect there will be a significant proportion who have installed them to cover the possibly rolling power cuts that "may" happen this winter - and do the "man maths" to justify the cost. I know of at least two households getting batteries and inverter without PV for exactly that reason.

I'm not convinced that the linkage between demand and price is that tight, TBH. The price is very heavily distorted by several factors, not least being the way that the bidding process works and the arbitrage that enables storage facilities to earn a decent revenue. There's also a lot of evidence that some suppliers are massively loading the price of off-peak electricity as a dodge around the price cap - they are choosing to rip off off-peak customers to reduce their published headline tariffs, IMHO.

As an example, our suppliers E7 tariff this time last year was 7.56p/kWh off-peak, 27.773p/kWh peak. When the "54%" price cap came in on April 2022 prices, the tariff changed to 17.831p/kWh off-peak, 33.26p/kWh peak. They chose to more than double their off-peak rate in order to generate revenue to subsidise their peak rate. Other suppliers have done much the same, the only supplier that seems to be an exception is, I think, Octopus.

The demand ratio between peak and off-peak hasn't changed, so there has to be another explanation for our supplier choosing to change from a ratio where the off-peak price was about 27% of the peak rate to one where the off-peak price is now nearly 54% of the peak rate.

[marshman]

I'm not convinced that the linkage between demand and price is that tight, TBH. The price is very heavily distorted by several factors, not least being the way that the bidding process works and the arbitrage that enables storage facilities to earn a decent revenue. There's also a lot of evidence that some suppliers are massively loading the price of off-peak electricity as a dodge around the price cap - they are choosing to rip off off-peak customers to reduce their published headline tariffs, IMHO.

Again, don't disagree. Which makes the "man maths" to justify batteries even more risky - hence my "crystal ball" comment. At the end of the day the companies involved in the energy market as it stands are all businesses that need to make a profit - if they see demand changing and they get "regulated" on peak pricing then they will take the chance to make their money elsewhere, and "off peak" prices could be an easy target. Suddenly the "economics" of batteries bought purely to take advantage of time of use tariffs don't work out the same.

[Fintray]

The demand ratio between peak and off-peak hasn't changed, so there has to be another explanation for our supplier choosing to change from a ratio where the off-peak price was about 27% of the peak rate to one where the off-peak price is now nearly 54% of the peak rate.

I suppose the suppliers have the E7 customers by the short and curlies as most people with storage heaters would have them on a dedicated circuit supplied only by the E7 meter which means they have to use that to heat their homes, as this is likely to be their biggest usage of electricity it means bigger profits for the suppliers.

[Oldgreybeard]

I suppose the suppliers have the E7 customers by the short and curlies as most people with storage heaters would have them on a dedicated circuit supplied only by the E7 meter which means they have to use that to heat their homes, as this is likely to be their biggest usage of electricity it means bigger profits for the suppliers.

Exactly my view. All our heating and hot water is at the E7 off-peak tariff, so this winter we are paying 2.34 times more for that than we were last winter. Makes a complete mockery of the 54% price cap, especially as our supplier has confirmed to me on the phone that our standard variable E7 tariff is subject to that price cap. Trying to explain to them that more than doubling our bill was not in keeping with the principle of the price rise being capped to no more than 54% fell on deaf ears - they couldn't even give an explanation as to how they worked out that this big a rise was still within the Ofgem cap.

[nowty]

The demand ratio between peak and off-peak hasn't changed, so there has to be another explanation for our supplier choosing to change from a ratio where the off-peak price was about 27% of the peak rate to one where the off-peak price is now nearly 54% of the peak rate.

I suppose the suppliers have the E7 customers by the short and curlies as most people with storage heaters would have them on a dedicated circuit supplied only by the E7 meter which means they have to use that to heat their homes, as this is likely to be their biggest usage of electricity it means bigger profits for the suppliers.

While I agree the demand ratio between peak and off-peak hasn't changed in the whole market, I suspect the relatively few people actually on a TOU tariff (including E7) may be significantly changing their behaviours, exacerbated by EVs and home batteries thus necessitating the increase of the cheap rate.

[Moxi]

Its all starting to feel like the suppliers are using (misusing?) the SMET's to maximise profits by catching individual households' peak usage points and adjusting their tariffs accordingly.

Moxi

[Oldgreybeard]

While I agree the demand ratio between peak and off-peak hasn't changed in the whole market, I suspect the relatively few people actually on a TOU tariff (including E7) may be significantly changing their behaviours, exacerbated by EVs and home batteries thus necessitating the increase of the cheap rate.

There are currently around 4 million homes using E7, so not really that small a proportion. I think there are 27.8 million homes in the UK, so E7 customers make up about 14.4%. That's not that representative, though, as a large proportion of the E7 homes are social housing or homes occupied by the elderly or otherwise vulnerable. The policy around here has been to replace boilers in social housing with storage heating when houses get refurbished, driven to some extent by this area being off the gas grid, I think. The council estate a couple of miles up the lane from us had all the solid fuel boilers (1960's ones at that) taken out a few years ago and replaced with storage heaters, for example. Going to be a tough winter for them if it gets really cold, for sure.

[nowty]

If a million UK homes were to install batteries, and were each to charge those batteries overnight at 3kW for 4 hours, then that would increase grid demand overnight by about 3GW for that 4 hour period, and reduce daytime demand by perhaps 0.6GW for the remaining 20 hours.

But they could reduce the evening peak by 3GW over 4 hours, that could ease the load on the grid and avoid using (presumably less efficient) peaking generation.

I agree that EVs will likely have more impact, is it my imagination or was average electricity consumption higher this summer than last?

Although EVs will have more impact on increasing off peak demand, they are new additional demand devices so will still make peak time demand worse.

Its not your imagination that Summer demand was higher this year, I just compared June to Aug this year verses last year on Gridwatch and this year was 3.8% higher. But we have been exporting more this year.

[marshman]

Its not your imagination that Summer demand was higher this year, I just compared June to Aug this year verses last year on Gridwatch and this year was 3.8% higher. But we have been exporting more this year.

Since mid June we have often been supplying the best part of 3GW to France which I don't think we have in previous years, that is more than 3.8% of demand - but do the "demand" figures refer to UK only consumption or is it just a total figure including the interconnectors?

[Countrypaul]

If a million UK homes were to install batteries, and were each to charge those batteries overnight at 3kW for 4 hours, then that would increase grid demand overnight by about 3GW for that 4 hour period, and reduce daytime demand by perhaps 0.6GW for the remaining 20 hours.

But they could reduce the evening peak by 3GW over 4 hours, that could ease the load on the grid and avoid using (presumably less efficient) peaking generation.

I agree that EVs will likely have more impact, is it my imagination or was average electricity consumption higher this summer than last?

Although EVs will have more impact on increasing off peak demand, they are new additional demand devices so will still make peak time demand worse.

Its not your imagination that Summer demand was higher this year, I just compared June to Aug this year verses last year on Gridwatch and this year was 3.8% higher. But we have been exporting more this year.

How much of that 3.8% is a direct result of the reduced effacts of Covid? As usual with figures covering a multitude of sins, it can be very difficult to seperate out the effects of just one change.

Having raised the quesion, I thought I ought to see if anywhere had already looked into it. Here's just one summary: https://www.electralink.co.uk/2022/01/c ... ductivity/