[wizzo227]

@geoffers
Thanks. It was quite satisfying to see that the electricity wholesale price at Nordwhatsit (£/MWh) closely resembled the retail price which I pay, with passthrough of the near-nil price hours during the windy weekend of 20th-21st October. Intermittent renewables are going to do that; they don't always conveniently fit the Economy-7 timetable of 40 years ago, so we should want methods in place to exploit the windy hours whenever we can. passthrough of near-nil prices by the half-hour did work for me to get my house to preferentially use near-nil CO2 electricity last week.

I noticed that on the deal which I'm on, 4-7pm is consistently always most expensive, so between those times I use less than I usual. For example no cooking in the big oven, heat pump and room heaters OFF between those hours.

When I was 4 years old, my Mum worked out a good trick to tell us that "the telly doesn't work" at particular times of the week, notably Saturday mornings. She'd secretly switched it off at the wall, and we weren't allowed to touch the switch at the wall. Could that approach help economiser households ?

[wizzo227]

Well, the bill is in for the past month. And the average number is ...

[wizzo227]

The all October price records from the other place who do by-the-half-hour electricity are as pictured (possibly except for the last point in October. My especially fiddly computer program might have missed a bit?)



Summing 1490 prices x quantities over the month, I'm estimating that electricity units cost me about £15.63.02 in October and averaged about 17.1 p/kWh incl.
From the chart one sees times almost every day in October when electricity costs more than twice that much, which is usually at the evening peak time, so that is when I avoid using anything big. The near nil prices were on usefully windy days in October. You get a day's notice to schedule things to use up some of that, and it is usually obvious to be likely from the weather forecast too. An economy-7 schedule could have hit probably 2/3 of the bill savings which I got but isn't as good because economy-7 does not ever seek or reward times when there are plenty of renewables like this pricing does.

[Andy65]

@wizzo227

It would be interesting to see the distribution of prices across the 24 hours. For example, looking at your graph if you plotted 15p kWh to 25p kWh as one, above 25p kWh and then below 15p kWh.
I'm assuming that there's a general pattern even though some of it will be weather dependant.

[geoffers]

@Andy65 Interesting to see how the daily average price has nearly doubled from the annual average in the last few weeks, presumably because we're stuck under a cloudy high pressure system with little wind, so not much solar/wind generation possible at the moment

[wizzo227]

The histogram of available prices did not explain the prices which I paid, which are lower than 2.1 x the daily average price plotted above, /1000 then x100 for p/kWh instead of £/MWh.
That 2.1 is the fixed markup of <somebodies' variable retail electricity price agreed dayahead> by comparison to a wholesale electricity price, by which the tariff which I'm on stays trustworthy.
You correctly spotted the higher recent average price of electricity than early October, which is just about visible in the dark blue points of last nights' chart, though smaller than the intraday variation so you really need to place a ruler over the visually weighted 'middle' and read off p/kWh from the y axis. 1st week vs last week of October price rise is apparent.

That price rise is insignificant by comparison to this afternoons' anonamously expensive evening peak. I noticed a week ago lots of sun forecast for about now, and there isn't any. I'd expect Europe to be worrying about other things and disinclined to export to us. The reasons for an extra-expensive peaking price vary, but this time they all happen at once. There are two possible solutions now that we've got rid of old coal : we could turn up the peaking generation and everybody will die sooner from climate change, or You adapt your plans to wait for cheaper renewable electricity at a better time.


I'd prefer to see ofgem define a "cap markup" instead of defining a "cap price" but I'm not most people and standing charge works differently. Consider the situation where electricity companies were allowed to load standing charges with costs plus allowed profits of building new roller-disco facilities with bad music and a glitterball. We'd see standing charges creep upwards and a proliferation of windowless concrete buildings which hum with <your choice of worst ever music at a roller disco>. That is why it is a really bad idea for central government to let for-profit companies build stuff for defined profit and be allowed to move the cost of it onto the standing charge part of electricity cap price. At least if it is on cap markup, then if the general population think that a rollerdisco is a wate of time and a worthless and expensive waste of concrete, they don't have to go there. Sneak it into a cap price and having paid for it already, some people can't afford to go somewhere better on a Friday night.

So I'm really against electricity companies being allowed to increase standing charge at more than inflation vs. twenty years ago standing charge, which is quite a lot less than what they all charge this year.