"Cheap" Off Peak Electricity.

[SamThomas]

Will cheap off peak electricity be a thing of the past ?

 

Many decades ago "off peak" electricity was introduced. In those days a lot of UK power was produced using coal. It was more economical for GEGB (as it was then) to keep these power stations turning 24/7.

 

Nowadays it is a lot easier to match demand to production, especially with the contribution of wind power & solar (during the day) - these sources can effectively be turned on & off at very short notice which is not the case with other sources.

 

Demand will become more uniform with the prolification of EV's being recharged at night &/or weekends so there will be no/less incentive for the energy suppliers to encourage the use of off peak power ?

 

For example, a couple of years ago (in roughly broad figures) my on peak was 20p/kWh, off peak was 5p/kWh - now it is 19p on peak & 10p off peak - my bills have overall gone up (I don't have starage heating).

Personally, I see the on peak rising & the gap between on & off peak narrowing.

[RFS]

My house has a GEC Nightstor central heating system.  One large box in the utility room that heats up overnight like a storage heater, and then delivers heat round the house during the day via radiators. It totally depends on cheap overnight electricity rates. Currently I pay 23p for daytime and 8p for night time, and my annual usage is about 80% night rate. Fixed my rates for 2 years last August just in time.

 

Eliminating Economy 7 would put my costs through the roof and I doubt it will happen. There's no gas in our village.

 

Of course electric car charging overnight could screw things up a bit, possibly!

Edited January 3, 2022 by RFS

[SamThomas]

I installed a few of those in the 1970's where there was no mains gas & they worked very well.

 

AFAIK the energy suppliers cannot force you to change tariff's but they can of course adjust the off peak closer to the on peak prices.

[30801]

There will always be an off-peak so long as there is finite supply and demand that can't be moved. Even if EVs fill up the off-peak time slots so demand is even you still need to discourage use at traditional peak times when supply is limited. 

[Ron Ron Ron]

If the difference between daytime and overnight off-peak prices is eroded too much, then the incentive to predominantly charge EV’s overnight on cheap electricity, will also be eroded, leading to a big problem for the grid if too many people want to charge in the day or evening.

This isn’t a marginal threat, as there will be millions of electric vehicles on our roads in ten years time and the electricity supply industry already has a lot of work to do in beefing up the networks to cope with the transition to greater dependency on renewable and “greener” energy generation.

Off-peak will remain a vital tool in managing supply to demand.

What we are likely to see though, is dynamic pricing at some point, using remotely controlled smart meters.

It’s even theoretically possible that with next gen smart meters, electricity pricing could vary from house to house at different times of the day, depending on individual usage patterns.

 

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Edited January 3, 2022 by Ron Ron Ron

[Jonboy]

Sitting here in an all electric, storage heated, block of flats can I put my fingers in my ears and shout lalala at this point????

[Zomboid]

I think the days of "cheap" energy are behind us.

 

I don't think the concept that energy will be cheaper at certain times will ever vanish, though. It might not be that over night is when it's cheapest though, that'll depend on the generation methods etc.

[Ron Ron Ron]

…..I should add, that growing use of home electricity storage systems (presently that’s batteries) will allow consumers to increase their access to cheaper and even free electricity , even during “peak-price” periods.

 

 

 

 

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Edited January 3, 2022 by Ron Ron Ron

[30801]

11 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

I think the days of "cheap" energy are behind us.

 

It certainly is right now! This December's bill was £120 more than last year's for about the same use. 

[Zomboid]

1 minute ago, 30801 said:

 

It certainly is right now! This December's bill was £120 more than last year's for about the same use. 

We're not feeling the full pain of it right now either. Which is the worrying bit.

[30801]

1 minute ago, Zomboid said:

We're not feeling the full pain of it right now either. Which is the worrying bit.

I signed up for a spot on Ripple Energy's wind farm share scheme. Not decide yet if it's a good idea but if you buy enough capacity to match your use you'll save the wholesale cost of your electricity 

[Nearholmer]

Both peak, and off-peak prices will go up, but I’d firmly expect differential pricing to remain all the time that nuclear is in the mix. It might even be the case that a “shoulder” tariff will be introduced, half-way between the two.

 

The peak/off price gap could close though, if off-peak demand rises significantly.

[APOLLO]

Smart meters will allow peak time pricing. Say 4pm to 8pm rates go up. Been talked about for a long time, not enough smart meters in use I think for it to start soon.

 

Resist smart meters as long as you can.

 

I also dread when my contract ends next May - at least it will be the start of Summer !!

 

Brit15

[Nearholmer]

Given that costs will be recovered, and profit made, one way or another, I can’t see the point in resisting smart meters, in fact I wonder why we aren’t all grabbing them as fast as we can, because at least with all the information they provide it becomes simpler to tailor your demand to the times of lower tariff.

 

While metering remains non-smart, the tariff system has to be a blunt instrument, and will effectively ‘overcharge’ as much as it ‘undercharges’.

[Ron Ron Ron]

28 minutes ago, APOLLO said:

Smart meters will allow peak time pricing. Say 4pm to 8pm rates go up. Been talked about for a long time, not enough smart meters in use I think for it to start soon......

 

There has already been talk in the press about treating that time frame differently, with the expected increase in EV charging looming.

 

Even without Smart Meters, you may be on a completely different peak / off-peak tariff, with different timings, to your next door neighbour.

Most of us probably are already.

Smart Meters could allow even more flexibility in pricing periods and tariffs.

 

We could get to position, at some point in the future, where variable, dynamic pricing affects each household/property differently and at varying times of the day, depending on the actual network demand, time of the day or year etc.

 

 

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Edited January 3, 2022 by Ron Ron Ron

[Nearholmer]

5 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

We could get to position, at some point in the future, where variable, dynamic pricing affects each household/property differently and at varying times of the day, depending on the actual network demand, time of the day or year etc.

Which is one possible way of maximising the efficiency of use of generation capacity, and therefore minimising overall costs, because it tends to flatten the demand profile overall.

 

The supply of anything becomes more costly per unit, the peakier the demand profile, so it makes sense to try to flatten the demand profile. The logic applies to railways, roads, gas, water, electricity, bread, beer, anything, because if there are high peaks, the overall system has to be sized to accommodate them.

 

 

[30801]

41 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Both peak, and off-peak prices will go up, but I’d firmly expect differential pricing to remain all the time that nuclear is in the mix. It might even be the case that a “shoulder” tariff will be introduced, half-way between the two.

 

That's been around for a while. There's a night time off peak, a high teatime peak and a rate for the rest of the time. I signed up to Green Energy for a rate like that but they never got arount to fitting a smart meter.

With a smart meter some suppliers offer a tarrif that varies (in half hour slots IIRC) depending on demand. Those rates can go negative on occaision.

[Ron Ron Ron]

5 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

......it makes sense to try to flatten the demand profile. The logic applies to railways, roads, gas, water, electricity, bread, beer, anything,.......

 

 

Mmmmm?

Maybe I should drink beer all day long, 365.....to smooth out the flow, so to speak?

 

 

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[RFS]

13 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

 

Even without Smart Meters, you may be on a completely different peak / off-peak tariff, with different timings, to your next door neighbour.

Most of us probably are already.

 

 

I don' think this is the case. My Nightstor box gets a signal via supply when it's night-rate and there's an LED that lights up when the signal is being received which tells the unit it can charge. Currently the light is on between around midnight and 7am. Don't see how this signal can be different for the house next door.  I think you need smart meters for this function.

[Ron Ron Ron]

...and in the news today,

All Smart Meters in the UK will have to be replaced, due to the plan to switch off the 2G and 3G mobile networks.

 

SMETS 1 completely replaced.

SMETS 2 some replaced, others modified with new communications modules.

 

 

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[spikey]

You know, I'd swear that when Windscale went online it was announced that electricity was soon going to be so cheap to produce that it wouldn't be worth metering.

 

I saw it on the television, so it must have been true ...

[Michael Hodgson]

28 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Both peak, and off-peak prices will go up, but I’d firmly expect differential pricing to remain all the time that nuclear is in the mix. It might even be the case that a “shoulder” tariff will be introduced, half-way between the two.

 

The peak/off price gap could close though, if off-peak demand rises significantly.

Nuclear is one of the better ways  of generating power.  It can be switched on or off as required by moving the control rods in the reactor.  It takes longer for gas or particularly coal fired stations to come on stream as they have to raise steam, rather like a steam loco.   These two types, apart from their environmental issues are dependent on continued availability of fuel imported from states who may not always be willing or able to supply it at a reasonable price.  Nuclear is "expensive" only because of the cost of decommissioning reactors once they are no longer considered fit for keeping in service.  The early (Magnox) ones were built as part of the cold war era sentiment that we needed an independent nuclear deterrent and were capable of producing material required for the weapons (without our needing to go cap in hand to a foreign power).  The need to dismantle them after a few decades was not thought out, so decommissioning has proved very expensive.  More recent models whilst still costly to dismantle have had rather more thought applied at the design stage, and advances in robotics enable the "hot" stuff to be handled with less risk to the workforce.

 

The supply industry works on a competitive pricing basis, with power stations bidding to the National Grid for half-hour slots of generation.   The economics of power stations are very different.  A gas fired station incurs a cost to generate, in that it has to buy the imported fuel, likewise the remaining coal; a wind farm can generate effectively for no marginal cost as long as there is wind, and a nuclear station can also generate at no marginal cost.  So broadly speaking it makes both economic and environmental sense to schedule those all the time.  However the Grid needs to control voltage & frequency, so it needs to be able to shut down what isn't needed and it makes technical sense to do that by adjusting the nuclear generation.  The only significant way of storing surplus power currently is the Pumped Storage system at DInorwic, although EVs may be a practical way of doing this in due course.

[RFS]

6 minutes ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

...and in the news today,

All Smart Meters in the UK will have to be replaced, due to the plan to switch off the 2G and 3G mobile networks.

 

SMETS 1 completely replaced.

SMETS 2 some replaced, others modified with new communications modules.

 

 

.

 

Do you have a link to the news article about this?

[Michael Hodgson]

1 minute ago, spikey said:

You know, I'd swear that when Windscale went online it was announced that electricity was soon going to be so cheap to produce that it wouldn't be worth metering.

 

I saw it on the television, so it must have been true ...

My father was at Calder Hall when the Queen opened it.  The TV cameras filmed a giant replica of a domestic meter which had to start turning when Her Majesty declared it open and moved a big switch.  The meter was actually operated by a man pedalling a push-bike geared to the dials !  

[BernardTPM]

Just now, Michael Hodgson said:

Nuclear is one of the better ways  of generating power.  It can be switched on or off as required by moving the control rods in the reactor.  It takes longer for gas or particularly coal fired stations to come on stream as they have to raise steam, rather like a steam loco.

Nuclear power stations still make the electricity with steam turbines. The most turn-on, turn-off power plants are the pump storage Hydro-electric plants. In effect very large batteries.