Octopus saving sessions coming 1st Nov

[Ken]

What is it with people.
Centrica a private Co says there is potential gas shortage but National Grid says there is no such thing. Media loves a good story that scares the public but more importantly sells newspapers etc, The true story is that Centrica is trying to scare the public and hence politicians to stump up a load of money so that they can reopen storage which they themselves closed.

The Leccy Grid came nowhere near meltdown. The Grid carries/plans for a buffer to counter the risk of a large supplier going offline. The Grid will clearly ask if any supplier could produce more, over and above what is contracted and at what price. This action will only be required in local spots which in this case was Yorkshire i believe. They are not interested in extra production from the other end of the country for technical reasons.

Long before eating into the insurance reserve the Grid will put big users on notice that their demand will be reduced as per the contract they have signed up to.

We came no where near blackout conditions and largely shows how ignorant people are of how this comes about. It happens when something out of the blue such as transmission or production fails and then the knock on effect can cause others to automatically trip like dominoes. This rarely happens because of all the measures in place such as demand trips, storage ,spinning reserve, production on tick over., quick start up diesel gens, etc etc.

The UK has one of if not the most secure grids in the world.

I find it ironic that this false news makes the headlines when nothing is mentioned about the amount of wind that gets curtailed. The order of £1,000 million last year compare that to few £M last week for which we did at least get something!

[Fintray]

Long before eating into the insurance reserve the Grid will put big users on notice that their demand will be reduced as per the contract they have signed up to.

Same thing used to happen to the gas supply at a papermill I worked at, we would get notice to switch to heavy fuel oil for the boilers.

[dan_b]

It's because 99% of people don't know, or want to know, about the complexities of the system - they just want the lights to turn on when they press the switch. So for those people also, it's all very simple. And people want simple solutions. And 364 days of the year that's how it all seems. So when an occasional non-news event happens, those same people get upset and demand a simple answer to that "almost avoided a blackout" - and that is at the moment easily answered with "well it's all the fault of woke wind".

With wind curtailment, this is something that's going to keep happening perhaps even more than now as we have to build enough over-capacity to accommodate more of those lighter wind days across the whole year, and alas it's cheaper to pay them to be turned off than build storage/ reinforce the grid/ build interconnectors.

[Ronski]

If they paid enough to save electric just imagine how much could be saved, and those of us with big batteries, or even smaller batteries can put substantial power back into the grid as well.

I suppose having a power station fired up guarantees supply, but surely from last years sessions they know how much is available.

Yep, the media certainly blows things out of all proportion, a bit like the cost of living crisis, drive past McDonald's and see how busy it is, I've just been to a car supermarket and I was amazed at just how busy they were.

[AE-NMidlands]

I have had an email saying

You reduced power by 1.658 kWh compared to normal, earning you 960 octopoints. (That's £1.2)
Together, customers in North Wales, Merseyside & Cheshire managed to reduce power by 5.986 MWh.
So far this winter, Octopus customers have saved 238 MWh — that's enough to power nearly 30,000 houses for a whole day!

the cash value of the octopoints is on top of the payment for the export of 1.7(?) kWh at peak rate so it's better than a poke in the eye with a dry stick...
however I think I exported 3.5 kWh compared to the usual zero import, so I might take this up with them.

[Ronski]

You reduced power by 7.867 kWh compared to normal, earning you 4536 octopoints. (That's £5.67)

That's about right for me.

AE-NMidlands if you take it up with them, use Twitter or the phone, the AI bots that answer emails get all confused

What does https://savingsessions.streamlit.app show?

[AE-NMidlands]

it's showing

session imported exported baseline saved reward earnings
2024-12-11 18:00:00 0 3.485 -0.5305 2.9555 1424 £1.78
2025-01-08 17:00:00 0 1.657 0.0012 1.658 952 £1.19

which isn't a million miles away from

You reduced power by 1.658 kWh compared to normal, earning you 960 octopoints. (That's £1.2-)

[Ronski]

Well that's the data that Octopus holds, so it makes sense that it matches.

Do you keep any logs of your smart meter readings, so you know what it was before and after the saving session?

I use HA to record these.

[Moxi]

We saved a massive 0.025kWh aka 2p or 16 October-points - not massive but we managed to save something even when we should be on batteries.

Moxi

[dan_b]

I reduced overall energy consumption by 0.239 kWh compared to normal, earning you 144 octopoints. (That's £0.18)


Annoyingly in the email from Octopus it says "you reduced power by 0.239kWh".

ARGH!