[retrotecchie]

@WizzyWigg

I'm just generally tight! I don't like paying out money when I don't need to. Fortunately for me I live in a house with 32" thick stone walls and the indoor temperature stays at a fairly constant 17 °C all year round so it's cool in summer and toasty enough in winter with the dragons doing their bit.

Nothing a smart meter can bring to the party that I don't already do already. But the biggest energy saving trick in the book by far is not to have teenage offspring living at home. I use my 7 or so kWh a day. Very little of it is wasted. Two teenogres could easily waste that much in a day, I found! And proven, too. I couldn't believe how much they rinsed until I submetered their bedrooms and docked their pocket money according to their usage. That learned 'em!

[Mailman]

@Actual

You will be pleased to know that the one-day adjustment did not appear in the latest National Grid ESO guidelines for the forthcoming DFS events. The upshot is that we will likely see the system used by Eon Next in the latter part of last winter continue. Absolutely no incentive to load usage to a 3 hour window earlier on an event day. It will be all down to energy reduction in the specified time period compared to your average on similar days prior to the event.

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by retrotecchie

@WizzyWigg

I'm just generally tight! I don't like paying out money when I don't need to. Fortunately for me I live in a house with 32" thick stone walls and the indoor temperature stays at a fairly constant 17 °C all year round so it's cool in summer and toasty enough in winter with the dragons doing their bit.

Nothing a smart meter can bring to the party that I don't already do already. But the biggest energy saving trick in the book by far is not to have teenage offspring living at home. I use my 7 or so kWh a day. Very little of it is wasted. Two teenogres could easily waste that much in a day, I found! And proven, too. I couldn't believe how much they rinsed until I submetered their bedrooms and docked their pocket money according to their usage. That learned 'em!

I think you guys are kind of missing the point - you're just looking at it from the individual point of view & I agree totally with your statement "Nothing a smart meter can bring to the party that I don't already do"

However what it does bring to the party is the ability for the supplier to monitor the meters every half hour (rather than read the dumb meter every three months or whatever) and consequently will aid balancing the load over low demand periods

It may not be relevant to everybody, however energy shifting has certainly worked for me, charging my EV between midnight and 7:00 a.m. at nearly a quarter of the cost of the daytime rate

[retrotecchie]

@geoffers

The suppliers can only pull those half-hourly readings after the fact..Usually around 1am the following morning. Long after any energy has been 'shifted'.

If they could physically read the meters every half hour in real time, and plan the next half hour period in advance - different story entirely.

And your case is exactly what the EV tariffs are for.. Because electricity is usually cheaper at night and there is a surplus on the grid so they encourage you to buy it at a cheap rate when the unused energy is costing them anyway, keeping the baseline generation running.

Round here, we are a small hamlet of 30 or so houses. However, there is a large dairy farm at one end of the line, and a very large food factory at the other. I worked at the factory for a bit and I've seen the electricity bills for the farm. They are scary. No point in anyone shifting anything round here as there is no such thing as off peak. The factory pulls megawatt hours, not kWh and runs a 24/7/365 operation running spray drying and powder drying processes through the night that use more energy an hour than I use in a month. I, and the rest of the village, could turn our main breakers off for a whole day and it wouldn't even make a drop in the ocean compared to the load the factory pulls!

So shifting, for any 'demand planning' or 'load balancing' purposes is just irrelevant round here. But simply not using the energy in the first place makes all the sense in the world.

[WizzyWigg]

@retrotecchie
Don't think it's being tight. Why waste money when you don't need to. Utilisation of your surroundings and nature is a great way to save energy and money. There is always some little thing everyone can do. Let common sense prevail. 😉. Sorry @meldrewreborn I know what you are going to say about Common Sense. 😂 My young'uns learnt and are now having to run their own houses and bring up their kiddiwinks. Okay my offspring didn't have all these fancy gadgets and luxuries that are available today. They knew who paid the bills and that there was only a finite resource. 👴

[retrotecchie]

@WizzyWigg

No, I'm tight. One of the reasons I moved to Ceredigion. You think the Scots are canny with their pennies? Aberystwyth Uni does postgrad degrees in how to be frugal. Plus the natives round here have very long pockets and very short arms, which gives them a distinct advantage. You can learn a lot from the Cardis. And any pub charging more than £3.25 a pint won't be in business very long!

[WizzyWigg]

Originally Posted by retrotecchie

@WizzyWigg

No, I'm tight. One of the reasons I moved to Ceredigion. You think the Scots are canny with their pennies? Aberystwyth Uni does postgrad degrees in how to be frugal. Plus the natives round here have very long pockets and very short arms, which gives them a distinct advantage. You can learn a lot from the Cardis. And any pub charging more than £3.25 a pint won't be in business very long!

Perhaps then I need to come to your neck of the woods. I'm always willing to learn. 😂

[JoeSoap]

Originally Posted by WizzyWigg

True. It's just me. Being sensible in when and how we use energy (shifting) combined with reducing usage should be an everyday occurrence. That way everyone benefits. I do it even without, like you, fully functioning smart meters. Sorry for the rant, it's an age thing 😂.

You’re not ranting. Unless we have something like Economy 7 we can shift energy use all day and not save a thing. On the Energy Shift days, if we shift usage out of the window that’s normally around dinner time, then although we pay the same for the energy use, we get a financial bonus credited to our account.

They used to have an in-day adjustment period to shift to that earned substantial cash but it wasn’t well advertised and when folks caught on to it we soon found out they scrapped it.

[Actual]

Originally Posted by Mailman

@Actual

You will be pleased to know that the one-day adjustment did not appear in the latest National Grid ESO guidelines for the forthcoming DFS events. The upshot is that we will likely see the system used by Eon Next in the latter part of last winter continue. Absolutely no incentive to load usage to a 3 hour window earlier on an event day. It will be all down to energy reduction in the specified time period compared to your average on similar days prior to the event.

Good to know thanks.

But times chnage...

Previously I was on a stonking low Eon fixed tariff and I was charging 2 PHEV during the day and so I could easily reduce my usage compared to a previous average at the same time of day and earn some DFS cash even if Eon Next failed to pay me what I was owed. CON

Now that my fixed tariff has ended I need to chnage to an EV friendly tariff and so I will generally be charging overnight.

Also I have moved house and I may not be using Eon Next.

[Mailman]

Originally Posted by JoeSoap

They used to have an in-day adjustment period to shift to that earned substantial cash but it wasn’t well advertised and when folks caught on to it we soon found out they scrapped it.

Effectively the forthcoming winter DFS events will be all about a reduction in the event time window and the shifting aspect largely irrelevant unless as you say you have Economy 7 and you start cooking your evening supper at 1am in the morning 😆 I daresay that the odd high energy appliance usage will done outside the event period and the most I would be expecting from these future events is likely to be in the order of 30-40 pence/event. So that would pay for a heat pump tumble dry load of clothes partially dried outside. I'll not be busting a gut though and might do better to trawl the LIDL supermarket for stray £1 coins dropped near the trolleys 🤣

Of course general reductions over the whole day will lead (and has led) to much much larger savings in utility bills (compared to these DFS rewards) as many of us have found over the last 2 years. 👍