What You Need To Know About Flexible Electricity Tariffs

Demand Flexibility!

With a smart meter and a flexible electricity tariff you can modify your household electricity consumption to use more when there is a lot of renewable electricity in the grid which is also usually when electricity prices are lowest. This is called demand flexibility (or demand response or demand management).

In today's video we talk with Phil Steele from Octopus Energy about their Agile Octopus plan, how customers are connecting electric vehicles, batteries, air source heat pumps, hot water systems and other energy intensive appliances like pool heaters or pool pumps for those lucky enough to have them.

Bookmarks:
00:00 Intro
00:19 "Baseload" electricity and offpeak pricing
01:32 Modifying demand to suit variable generation
02:48 How does Agile Octopus work?
05:00 What smart appliances can you use with a flexible tariff?
08:08 How much can customers save off their electricity bills?
09:41 Flexible tariff horror stories like in the Texas Freeze
10:16 Giving customers ownership and control
11:36 Fuel poverty
12:59 Is it too complicated?
13:39 Octopus Energy's "Big Switch On"
14:59 Can it scale beyond the enthusiastic early adopters?

🔗🔗Links:
Image at 01:22 from WattClarity:

You can find out more about Agile Octopus here:

#technology #engineering #stem

Thanks for watching the video Demand flexibility: Save the Climate, Save Money

[EngineeringwithRosie]

Are flexible tariffs available where you live? Share your experiences, whether you chose that option or if you decided against it tell us why.

[glennjgroves]

I am with Amber in Australia so am on a wholesale price tariff (changing every 30 minutes as the wholesale price changes.) I use an app on my phone to warn me when prices are getting high, and when they do I turn off heating/cooling until the prices come down again. My monthly bills are about half of what they used to be (about $50 a month in summer, $100 a month in winter, instead of $100 a month in summer and $200 a month in winter previously.) I have gas for hot water and cooking, so the electricity covers other things (mainly heating/cooling, lighting, and of course anything that plugs into a power point.) My next place will be fully electric.

[AlexPacker]

I'm an Octopus Energy customer, but I'm on their simpler "Go" tariff. This gives a rate in my area of 14p/kWh most of the time, but with 4 hours at 4p/kWh in the early hours of the morning. This allows me to charge my EV cheaply at night when demand is low. It keeps it simple having two prices at fixed times I think. Especially if you're out at work. For people who are at home all day and have a flexible schedule, the Agile tariff probably works great though.

[scarecrw]

Awesome video! I really liked your point at the end about making sure customers feel involved in the process, rather than simply submitting to requirements. There have been lots of ads recently in California encouraging the use of smart thermostats and flexible consumption, and they always sound so resigned; as if power failures are inevitable and their program is a plea for help. I would love to see more companies showing flexible usage as the cool new technology that it is and how consumers are getting the opportunity to take advantage of it.

[barriedear]

Joined Octopus in December and only just got appointment next month for smart meter after many many phone calls and emails. You make it sound so easy.

[rubidot]

Yup. I've looked up our local energy generation/demand charts and am trying to squeeze in my usage between 8 and 11am when renewable generation is high and demand is low, even though time of use rates haven't started yet.

[johnsomerville]

There was a lot of reluctance around smart meters in the UK and Octopus' smart tariffs have helped to invert this - to the point there are now waiting lists for smart meters. We're on old fashioned economy 7 for import and agile for PV export which works well and leaves our electricity usage as the inverse of the national average (i.e. use grid at night and export all day and in the summer into the evening).

[PCRoss]

Hey Rosie, good video !!. In Australia with Amber Electric we get dynamic wholesale exposure (household). We get alerts (user controllable). I recently did some modelling which shows a switch to such a tariff WITH a battery provides an investment return around 6%. Last I heard Amber were doing an interface with Teslas Autobidder to control this.

[jescombe]

Hi Rosie, really enjoy the videos - thanks! Another satisfied Octopus customer here, I think they are really innovating in this space. Was on Agile until earlier this year, but switched to their Go tariff due to the ever increasing wholesale prices, hopefully that is a trend that will reverse at some point?!

[andrewpintar]

Amber Electric are doing that here in Australia, where residential customers effectively access Pool spot price pass through (with some cap protection to avoid the "Texas" scenario). I expect you've got a good % of Australian viewship, so worth seeing if you can get someone from Amber for a "local content" version of this same topic.

[apeck]

I am with Amber electric too and I have my EV charger come on when it am exporting from solar, or I can have it come on over night only when the price drops below a rate of my choice. Amber has a API that works with a thing call Home Assistant which can control a number of devices at home.

[scottmuench]

Very thorough coverage of the residential demand response topic, highlighting it's a complex technical, economic, and social challenge. Raising awareness of how much our energy costs (and the true cost of fossil fuel based energy) is the begining of forming the solution(s).

[robertcruikshank]

I'm with Amber Electric here in Sydney. I also use Home Assistant, Node Red and EMHASS to manage energy in the household. Amber Electric provide exposure to the wholesale tariffs for electricity supply and feed-in. These prices vary between -10 cents and +$20, but on average in summer usually -5 cents and +60 cents. But you make most of the money when the prices hit $20 and you dump your battery to the grid.

So with those variations every day and 15kWh battery I make enough money to pay for my consumption and be in credit a few hundred $ every year. It pays back the cost of a battery much more quickly.

EMHASS uses MPC (model predictive control) to manages deferrable loads in the home like pool pumps, hot water, EV charging and the house battery etc (whatever I can leave to a computer to decide to run) and I load shift dish washing, cloths washing and drying to periods that don't cost. So it all adds up. You become very aware of your consumptiona and production patterns.

Node red is the heart of the system and takes the forecast calculations of EMHASS and processes them into inscructions to the varyous devices being controled.

Home Assistant is the IoT system and interface. It is the system that can turn on the pool pump and charge the Tesla and can display all the controls and dashboards etc.

[richdobbs]

Many years ago I bought a dishwasher that had an ability to have a delayed start, so that it could be run at night. If folks paid for electricity at rates that varied by time of day, there would be motivation to use this sort of feature, which could be added to dishwashers, dryers, and washers.

[RoelvanderArk]

I think it's very easy to see shortages or oversupply on the net frequency of your energy connection. If you make the hz a factor in the pricing you could stimulate consumption on a much smaller scale than grid wide.

[SirHackaLt.]

In the UK we have a disconnect from the generating companies through billing companies to customers. It seems that anyone can set up a billing company and buy electricity to sell to customers. Unfortunately most of these companies don’t have decent systems in place for billing, customer service and complaints and some go bust now and then.

[Jakob_DK]

In Denmark all household consumers and businesses has a meter that is read every hour. The data is in a central database with the TSO.
We then buy electricity from a power company that buy the electricity for each hour and sell it to us. Prices are in general set at the Nordpool exchange.

[richdobbs]

Colorado has had "Smart Switches" that moderate air conditioners for more than a decade. During heat waves, these switches prevent some fraction of air conditioners from running at any particular time. It doesn't reduce overall air conditioning load on the grid, but it moderates peak usage to prevent air conditioning triggering black or brown outs.

[zen]

@12:47 regarding wealth people getting most of the benefit- those wraith people are the early adopters that are driving the future forward for the Benfield of us all. Which would you prefer - them buying an oversized wasteful house, or solar+battery+smart appliances?

[SuperS]

Another great video! I wish we had a flexible tariff in Ontario. We have fixed ToU rates.