Explained above, I WFH, single (no kids) and have an EV - but I don't use the car for commute etc so I can be choosy about when I charge the car and take advantage of the ultra cheap periods.
Fixed price advantage is you use power whenever you want. Your average unit rate is just the price on the tariff. Predictable and safe.
Agile price changes every 30 minutes, so you need to do a little planning. But if you take advantage of the cheap periods you'll generally come out on top. My average unit rate last year was like 16.5p p/kWh whereas the standard tariff was 23-24p, so some nice savings. There's also some risk involved - the price can go up to £1 p/kWh and a few days in winter in 2024 it did that for a short while (around the peak periods) so you have to take on that risk - and obviously being exposed to the world energy markets does mean you get exposure to stuff like wars impacting global markets.
I mean there's nothing stopping you from using lots of power between 4pm-7pm it's just you'll drag that average unit rate up to the point where it's probably not worth it. When I say "use lots of power" I don't mean like I sit in the dark between 4-7pm, it's just I avoid the big ticket power users like ovens, showers, cookers etc
Yeah, and the really important point is that you get to see the prices a day ahead, which is what makes it actually pretty easy to live with.
For instance, if I know it's going to be expensive when I'd be cooking tomorrow's evening meal, then I won't make something that would need a long time in the oven. And if it's going to be particularly cheap around lunchtime, then I'll plan to do a big load of laundry then.
I have electric heating, which I thought might be a cause of anxiety but it's not really worked out that way. The temperature in my flat won't go down by more than a degree or two with the heating off over the course of the sort of 4 hour price spikes you tend to see in mid-January. If it looks like it's going to be unusually bad, I could always raise the temp by half a degree beforehand, but in reality I've only bothered to do that maybe three times in the past couple of years.
Basically, it's just another thing to factor in when planning my day. No more of a hassle than checking the weather forecast or glancing at my calendar.
> Basically, it's just another thing to factor in when planning my day. No more of a hassle than checking the weather forecast or glancing at my calendar.
Sounds like an incredible hassle at a level I would pay hundreds of dollars per month to avoid. That sort of mental overhead is crazy to me. But I'm also someone who finds having a single event on my calendar for the day disrupts my productivity and mental peace to an absurd level.
Time of day billing is definitely the future for renewables though, once they hit a saturation point for the grid it's the only thing that makes any sort of sense. Perhaps residential is the last place it needs to happen, but eventually it will be the norm. I see it working more in an automated fashion though. Smart load centers (panels), smart appliances, etc. that are connected to the local power company's API. Then you set some rules around it.
Stuff like cooking dinner though? I cannot imagine planning my day around saving a couple bucks. That's just insane to me. Energy use and all this mechanization/automation/technology exists to make life more convenient in the first place! Stuff like EV charging, raising/lowering temps in anticipation of power pricing, laundry (dryer) scheduling, etc. seems to be where 80% of the wins can be made, and are all much more automatable to avoid having to think about it. That last 20% can simply be taken up by whole-home battery storage, which by the time any of this happens at scale will be pretty much the norm.
The thing that concerns me most though are regional "seasonal" events where a once-a-decade lul in energy production happens and there is simply not enough dispatchable power on the grid to meet demand due to everyone hyper-optimizing their loads in such a fashion.
A decade back, in the US, the local power company would give you a discount if you used less energy than average during peak hours. At the time I had a vacant rental, very little energy use. (FWIW I’ve since sold it, being a landlord isn’t a good time)
I watched a specific neighbor go through great pains to honor this system and so as to reap the benefits of a much lower bill. Sweating their buns off during the hottest part of the day, open windows, no tv on, etc. fully committed.
They saved 8 dollars that month. My vacant rental, not doing a goddamn thing, saved 6 dollars.
If your system is similar, you’re optimizing your life around the cost of a monthly Netflix subscription, at best.
There is an element of truth in that if you go to the extremes, where it's almost definitely not worth it.
I don't sit in the dark during the peak times, during the week I'm working during that time anyway and I still have my monitors etc on. It's just I don't usage high-draw appliances like cookers during that time. I eat dinner after 7pm anyway.
Also I have an EV, but don't commute or travel long distances regularly, so I charge my car when opportunity strikes, especially when the prices go negative - this means I don't really spend that much on fuel really. The savings really start to come in if you have "bursty" high energy stuff that can take advantage of the cheapest periods like an EV or home battery. If you just have "baseload" stuff that runs all day like A/C or whatever then yeah you won't really see any significant savings.
Not GP but I assume the fixed prices have to be fairly high to account for people using lots of power during peak demand when most people use lots of power?
For me I'm happy to avoid big power draws during the peak times, as I'm 'compensated' for it outside of those periods with a little planning. Downside is when the wind is not blowing AND disruptions to global energy markets - I'm exposed to that, warts and all, there's definitely been an increase in prices over the past 4 weeks, although there has been a few days (including today) where the wind has basically made the energy free and my average unit rate is dropping again.
It's not only that, you also need reserve for the intermittent sources like wind and solar.
I live on an island, we have big batteries that can supply up to 15 MW of power for a period. In the Netherlands we have natural gas plants that are called up when the wind or sun output decreases, lest the grid frequency drop.
Explained above, I WFH, single (no kids) and have an EV - but I don't use the car for commute etc so I can be choosy about when I charge the car and take advantage of the ultra cheap periods.
Fixed price advantage is you use power whenever you want. Your average unit rate is just the price on the tariff. Predictable and safe.
Agile price changes every 30 minutes, so you need to do a little planning. But if you take advantage of the cheap periods you'll generally come out on top. My average unit rate last year was like 16.5p p/kWh whereas the standard tariff was 23-24p, so some nice savings. There's also some risk involved - the price can go up to £1 p/kWh and a few days in winter in 2024 it did that for a short while (around the peak periods) so you have to take on that risk - and obviously being exposed to the world energy markets does mean you get exposure to stuff like wars impacting global markets.
I mean there's nothing stopping you from using lots of power between 4pm-7pm it's just you'll drag that average unit rate up to the point where it's probably not worth it. When I say "use lots of power" I don't mean like I sit in the dark between 4-7pm, it's just I avoid the big ticket power users like ovens, showers, cookers etc
Yeah, and the really important point is that you get to see the prices a day ahead, which is what makes it actually pretty easy to live with.
For instance, if I know it's going to be expensive when I'd be cooking tomorrow's evening meal, then I won't make something that would need a long time in the oven. And if it's going to be particularly cheap around lunchtime, then I'll plan to do a big load of laundry then.
I have electric heating, which I thought might be a cause of anxiety but it's not really worked out that way. The temperature in my flat won't go down by more than a degree or two with the heating off over the course of the sort of 4 hour price spikes you tend to see in mid-January. If it looks like it's going to be unusually bad, I could always raise the temp by half a degree beforehand, but in reality I've only bothered to do that maybe three times in the past couple of years.
Basically, it's just another thing to factor in when planning my day. No more of a hassle than checking the weather forecast or glancing at my calendar.
> Basically, it's just another thing to factor in when planning my day. No more of a hassle than checking the weather forecast or glancing at my calendar.
Sounds like an incredible hassle at a level I would pay hundreds of dollars per month to avoid. That sort of mental overhead is crazy to me. But I'm also someone who finds having a single event on my calendar for the day disrupts my productivity and mental peace to an absurd level.
Time of day billing is definitely the future for renewables though, once they hit a saturation point for the grid it's the only thing that makes any sort of sense. Perhaps residential is the last place it needs to happen, but eventually it will be the norm. I see it working more in an automated fashion though. Smart load centers (panels), smart appliances, etc. that are connected to the local power company's API. Then you set some rules around it.
Stuff like cooking dinner though? I cannot imagine planning my day around saving a couple bucks. That's just insane to me. Energy use and all this mechanization/automation/technology exists to make life more convenient in the first place! Stuff like EV charging, raising/lowering temps in anticipation of power pricing, laundry (dryer) scheduling, etc. seems to be where 80% of the wins can be made, and are all much more automatable to avoid having to think about it. That last 20% can simply be taken up by whole-home battery storage, which by the time any of this happens at scale will be pretty much the norm.
The thing that concerns me most though are regional "seasonal" events where a once-a-decade lul in energy production happens and there is simply not enough dispatchable power on the grid to meet demand due to everyone hyper-optimizing their loads in such a fashion.
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Bananas. I hope you do this because it appeals to you at some level.
A decade back, in the US, the local power company would give you a discount if you used less energy than average during peak hours. At the time I had a vacant rental, very little energy use. (FWIW I’ve since sold it, being a landlord isn’t a good time)
I watched a specific neighbor go through great pains to honor this system and so as to reap the benefits of a much lower bill. Sweating their buns off during the hottest part of the day, open windows, no tv on, etc. fully committed.
They saved 8 dollars that month. My vacant rental, not doing a goddamn thing, saved 6 dollars.
If your system is similar, you’re optimizing your life around the cost of a monthly Netflix subscription, at best.
There is an element of truth in that if you go to the extremes, where it's almost definitely not worth it.
I don't sit in the dark during the peak times, during the week I'm working during that time anyway and I still have my monitors etc on. It's just I don't usage high-draw appliances like cookers during that time. I eat dinner after 7pm anyway.
Also I have an EV, but don't commute or travel long distances regularly, so I charge my car when opportunity strikes, especially when the prices go negative - this means I don't really spend that much on fuel really. The savings really start to come in if you have "bursty" high energy stuff that can take advantage of the cheapest periods like an EV or home battery. If you just have "baseload" stuff that runs all day like A/C or whatever then yeah you won't really see any significant savings.
1 reply →
Not GP but I assume the fixed prices have to be fairly high to account for people using lots of power during peak demand when most people use lots of power?
Exactly.
For me I'm happy to avoid big power draws during the peak times, as I'm 'compensated' for it outside of those periods with a little planning. Downside is when the wind is not blowing AND disruptions to global energy markets - I'm exposed to that, warts and all, there's definitely been an increase in prices over the past 4 weeks, although there has been a few days (including today) where the wind has basically made the energy free and my average unit rate is dropping again.
It's not only that, you also need reserve for the intermittent sources like wind and solar.
I live on an island, we have big batteries that can supply up to 15 MW of power for a period. In the Netherlands we have natural gas plants that are called up when the wind or sun output decreases, lest the grid frequency drop.