Free Energy Wed 21/8 (13:00-14:00)

[DaevM]

I never got anything. Two emails about it have not had any response. Chalk it up to experience.

It'll arrive soon... probably. ?

 

[Rolfe]

I doubt it.

 

[Grandadgeorgec]

One weird thing is that those figures don't add up to £4.29!

But I guess they had already told me about a £1.01 session, so that makes sense.

70 or so miles worth of free electricity (though some of it was actually for bread making and laundry & dishwashing)- not to be sniffed at!

You've used £7.04 of Free Electricity so far Very happy with that.?

 

[Gomev]

The first 2 sessions I missed as I wasn't in and the 3rd I forgot until half way through, so not much data to work with ....but.
I downloaded my Octopus data from their website for the month of August into a spreadsheet and using that did a few calcs on the data to get my own figures.
For the two sessions I missed their numbers align with my calcs from their data, however for the day I did use the 'free' electricity somehow the amount of my regular usage for that hour was 3 times more and didn't tally with my figures at all.
This is from their email and I have bolded the relevant parts. So the first two times I normally use 0.17kWh in that 1 hour timeslot but all of a sudden for the Saturday I use nearly 3 times as much normally !!

Here’s a breakdown of how you did:

On Sunday 18th August, you used 0.03kWh extra electricity, worth £0.02. You used 0.2kWh during the session and based on your meter data from the previous few weeks, you'd normally have used 0.17kWh at this time. On Wednesday 21st August, you used no extra electricity. You used 0.16kWh during the session and based on your meter data from the previous few weeks, you'd normally have used 0.17kWh at this time. On Saturday 31st August, you used 3.94kWh extra electricity, worth £0.88. You used 4.4kWh during the session and based on your meter data from the previous few weeks, you'd normally have used 0.46kWh at this time.

Well maybe it's true so I checked my Saturday usage from their own figures for that hour.

My figures based on Octopus data.

Daily average at that time 0.18 kWh - tallies just about with their figure of 0.17kWh
Saturday average at that time 0.17 does not tally with their figure of 0.46kWh.

As my usage is low anyway I'm not overly bothered about the discrepancy but as they have over-estimated my normal usage then I will be paying full day rate for that amount.

Anyone on higher usage the discrepancy may be higher and therefore take away from the actual value of free electricity received.

 

[Rolfe]

It'll arrive soon... probably. ?

Well, it did, and now I'm confused all over again.

The credit in my account for £1.34 dated 27th August wasn't for the half-price charging session that day at all, as I thought it was. It was actually for the 18th August "free hour". This is more than I had anticipated, and does indeed more than compensate for the solar export I lost in that time. So I must have dropped a stitch somewhere, but now I have no idea how they work it out. I mean, given that I had to use all the solar first before I drew anything from the grid, how come?

Still no word on the half-price car charging session.

 

[Bam Bam]

Well, it did, and now I'm confused all over again.

The credit in my account for £1.34 dated 27th August wasn't for the half-price charging session that day at all, as I thought it was. It was actually for the 18th August "free hour". This is more than I had anticipated, and does indeed more than compensate for the solar export I lost in that time. So I must have dropped a stitch somewhere, but now I have no idea how they work it out. I mean, given that I had to use all the solar first before I drew anything from the grid, how come?

Still no word on the half-price car charging session.

I think they just ignore the export.

All my reference figures were positive, even though I would usually be generating a lot during that hour.

They are crediting you the import rate for the electricity, so it is 23p or whatever.

So I think it is well worth doing. Even if some of your solar is going into the consumption, 0p import cost and you are saving purchasing electricity at another time, even if that is at 7p. Plus you are helping use up the excess solar production that would otherwise have gone to waste.

Eventually I think electricity will be free (or nearly free) from 11am to 2pm in the Summer. Firstly it will be free on weekends and sunny days. Eventually it will be free every day in the Summer. Having a smart water heater or heat pump will make a lot of sense.

 

[Rolfe]

It's obviously worth doing on these figures, even if all I did was plug in the car and run the Eddi. I just haven't got my head round how they're calculating it. Obviously not the way I was calculating it.