How much power do you use overnight?

The 7 hr from midnight to 7am cost me £0.70 every night.

Is some of that the standing charge being applied?

You're not forgetting that your daily standing charge is likely to also be included in that value are you?

Just that this tripped me up when I first got the octopus Ihd monitor

I dont think so....it now says £0.75 and 0.50kWh

This is after the kettle has boiled 3 cups of water too.

I think then it definitely is as half a kw isnt going to cost £0.75

Do you have a gas boiler and is it on? Our old one guzzled electricity.
Similarly fridge - swapping our ancient Gumtree one for a (big) super efficient one saved a chunk of energy.

Overnight we use 1p or 2p an hour - tend to be in bed at 11 and up at 7am, so 12-15p overnight.

If I don’t load-shift anything to that period, midnight to 7am costs me around 14p. Standing charge is 47p. My base load is around 60w.

Always ‘running’ during that period:
- gas boiler in standby
- freezer
- fridge
- Sky Q and Mini in standby
- Three TVs and three monitors in standby
- Two Xboxes in standby
- Mac Mini in standby
- Mesh Wi-Fi with three nodes
- A couple of phone chargers
- EVSE in standby

Ours uses around 350w/h of which 150w/h is the inverter/batteries and 200w/h is the house which includes Wi-Fi, security, pond pump, fridge and some small electrical outputs and a ceiling fan.

If running on mains power (the batteries and inverters would look after themselves), we’d use 1.5-2kWh between 00:00 and 07:00 as the boiler would fire at 06:30, which consumes around 600W, so including the standing charge would be around your figure.

Our base loads 210-320 depending on which fridge is firing and includes the inverter.

So we use about 2kwh while in bed according to the meter

Smart meter shows the standing charge of 57p as we don't import that 2kwh

I was just checking for deals and my Octopus tariff is around 27.5p per kWh, which is much of a muchness as everything is linked to the cap right now. You could even be a bit under on some deals. Not over

So if you're paying 70p for half a kWh it HAS to include SC as well. You're not on a £1.40 per kWh tariff guaranteed. If you are - change today!!

I was just checking for deals and my Octopus tariff is around 27.5p per kWh, which is much of a muchness as everything is linked to the cap right now.

Not everything. I’m currently paying 18.07p per kWh on Octopus Tracker, but that’s a topic for a different thread.

Ok...i will check what the tafiff for us is. Im hoping that thats the SC included too. I may go crazy and stay up until midnight to see what the meter says!

Thanks

Ian

@bensales - start it then...... or (and this is STW) let it thread drift!

I was as I said looking at options and I can stay on variable, or do a 12mo fix at exactly the same rates. Have not shopped around, these are Octopus offers but no mention of your Octopus tracker. If I can get on one that's a third cheaper, what's the catch? Big SC?

https://mysmartenergy.uk/Default.aspx. Will tell you region and SC costs

I've been on tracker since end of winter last Yr over winter was on eco 7. I think  going to stick with tracker over winter. Be aware if you leave tracker can't return on it until 9 months have past.

Roughly use 1-2kwh overnight

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this is our usage when we’re not at home. Running fridges, tv etc in standby, pumps for HW system, supplemented by solar panels which I guess is what explains the zero usage in the middle of the day.

Have not shopped around

Worth doing some research then. I'm not on tracker and I'm paying 17pence/kwh - but 57p SC. Works for me because gives me access to higher export which balances out the higher SC

who are you with / what tariff then - I just checked on a couple of savings sites and best they can do is about £25 a year vs current variable Octopus - which I expect to get lower in future anyway.

I'm on octopus flux now was on ovo power move last winter

Contemplating registering for tracker now the feed ins gone up

On average we use 0.5 kWh between midnight and 7am, costing 15p approx.

That's not including any part of the standing charge.

I’m not really sure, I’ve got my new TV on standby, along with my Mac Mini, and my Sky Q box, plus a few small items like clock radios and the like. My latest statement from Scottish Power shows I’m £314.53 in credit, my energy usage for gas this year/last year is 113kWh/67kWh, and electricity is 423kWh/375kWh

I use about 70p too for just leccy. Got 2 freezers (big one in the shed). Bulk buying somewhat offsets that.
The only horror is when your away and ticking up you know you've left something on.

you've got me interested though. I'll be checking the reading as I turn in tonight and then in the morning now! That's a meter too so will only be units, not a mix of electricity and SC

@theotherjonv

I was as I said looking at options and I can stay on variable, or do a 12mo fix at exactly the same rates. Have not shopped around, these are Octopus offers but no mention of your Octopus tracker. If I can get on one that’s a third cheaper, what’s the catch? Big SC?

https://octopus.energy/smart/tracker/

The catch with Tracker…

The price changes daily based on the wholesale price. It can go up, to a max of £1 per kWh. You need to actively keep an eye on it, using a site such as mysmartenergy to ensure you’re happy with the price. Average price for this year, for me, has been 21p per kWh. It did peak at 70p in September last year but dropped back pretty quick. I’m not expecting it to go up that much this winter, certainly not enough to outweigh the saving over being on the standard Flexible tariff.

Standing charge is 47p which I think is about average.

There is a similar one for gas, as of today that’s 4.75p per kWh.

Ah, so when you say you're paying 18p that's today's rate and it'll be different tomorrow.

Is your 21p average weighted? Or just all the different days averaged. Having looked now at tracker, the price varies by demand so does that mean in the winter your price is higher? In the end how many kWh do you use in a year and what's your bill?

It can go up, to a max of £1 per kWh. You need to actively keep an eye on it, using a site such as mysmartenergy to ensure you’re happy with the price.

If it does then what - you jump to a fixed rate? I assume you can't then change back over and over?

Ah, so when you say you’re paying 18p that’s today’s rate and it’ll be different tomorrow.

Correct. Today is 17.62ppkWh for example.

Is your 21p average weighted? Or just all the different days averaged. Having looked now at tracker, the price varies by demand so does that mean in the winter your price is higher? In the end how many kWh do you use in a year and what’s your bill?

21p average has been worked out by an app, Octopus Compare, for me. It gets my consumption data from Octopus for each day, and calculates it based on the historical prices for those days.

Price varies according to the wholesale price of electric. Many things influence that, but yes, it will likely rise in the winter. But bear in mind, Flexible works the same way albeit with a price calculated over a quarterly period, and fixed rates do too, they’re priced to take into account all eventualities. Arguably using Tracker is the most accurate way of paying for you electricity, as on a daily basis it’s simply not possible to buy it any cheaper.

Year to date cost and consumption compared to being on the standard Flexible tariff… I normally use about 5600kWh per year, including running an EV. (November ‘22 looks a little odd as the app only starts calculating from when the tariff starts)

If it does then what – you jump to a fixed rate? I assume you can’t then change back over and over?

Yes, Octopus allow you to switch at any time to any tariff without penalty. The only caveat they add to Tracker is that it may take up to two weeks to switch off (in practise it doesn’t) and you can’t rejoin it for nine months after leaving it. This is to prevent people bouncing back and forth when prices peak.

I’m happy to weather some peaks as over the whole year, it’s cheaper.

Our typical ‘low load’ consumption is 0.3 to 0.5 kW.

Our overnight consumption often increases between 02:00 and 05:00 when the PowerWall tops itself up on cheaper grid electricity. That’s usually not much more than a few kWh.

Our overnight consumption can be greater than our daytime consumption if we’ve plugged a car in. For example, consumption from 00:00 to 07:11 today has been 16.9kWh. With 14.9kWh from the grid when a car was charging between 02:00 and 03:42.

That 0.3kW is hard to reduce. I unplugged many of our standby devices at one point to see that it made no measurable difference.

@bensales have you seen the Protons for Breakfast ‘octopus seem to have got my bill wrong’ posts? I find Octopus good but it gave me pause for thought. https://protonsforbreakfast.wordpress.com/2023/01/24/appalling-error-by-octopus-energy/

@prettygreenparrot

I haven’t seen that, but I’m on a couple of Octopus Facebook groups and have seen similar issues. They seem to be fine with mine, I get bills monthly and they correspond with what I see from the smart meters, and via the Bright app. I’ve found the trick is to send a manual reading monthly (which is my habit anyway going back donkey’s years). That seems to trigger Octopus’ billing run.

I also tend to check Octopus Compare and Bright daily, so would notice any spikes such as that blogger had, because in the case of Bright, the data comes from DCC (who gather all smart meter data and send it to energy suppliers) and not from Octopus (which is where Octopus Compare gets it from). If the data from the two apps aligns, then here’s no errors.