Phil Himsworth

"Flexible" is Octopus' standard rate. I think quite often you have to switch to or from other tariffs via the Flexible tariff, possibly so they have the time to make sure the smart meter is working properly.

"Intelligent" is a smart tariff for EVs where Octopus can control when your car charges. If you have a compatible EV or charger it is generally the best bet; the off-peak rate is cheaper and with more hours than Go, which is their other EV tariff where Octopus don't control your car charging.

"Agile" needs you to know what you're doing. The price changes every half hour depending on the wholesale price of electricity at the time; daily prices are generally known late afternoon the day before. It can be great; over the weekend the price went negative at times so people on Agile were being paid not insignificant amounts to use electricity. On the flip side though, if the wind is low and electricity is expensive it can be very expensive. It probably only makes sense if you're willing to keep an eye on the price and are able to move large loads like EV charging, appliance running or even dinner cooking to different times of day or even different days. To be honest I wouldn't recommend it; it sounds like a pretty full time job keeping on top of it for extremely marginal gain. You would need a lot of negative prices on a Sunday to make up for all the much more common high peak time prices.

A good website for comparing Agile is https://agileprices.co.uk/. You can see a lot of slots lower than the standard rate, but there are also an awful lot over it.

On 15/07/2023 at 08:34, hayfield said:

I have a basic Octopus account so qualify for 15p per kwh on exports. If you have one of Octopus deals (fixed etc) then the export rate is 7.5p per kwh

There are two main reasons I like how Octopus do things; one is the variety of their tariffs so there is more scope to find one that matches your energy consumption and production if you've got PV; the other is the dashboards on their website that gives you a lot more visibility of what you're using and how much is costing you.

We have a fairly large array so export quite a lot, so Flux is great for us, over summer at least; come winter low solar output, charging the car and running off the house battery means one of their off peak tariffs will do the trick. Nobody else offers options like this.

If your usage is more balanced I think the combination of a standard import tariff and the 15p export like you've got is the best combination.

Before we moved to Flux our export was briefly with British Gas; their rates were slightly higher than the standard Octopus export rate (6.5p vs 4.1p) but the extra bit wasn't worth it, they were dreadful; no online account at all, billing by cheque every three months... with Octopus I can see how much we used or exported and check things are working the day after, never mind three months later!

Our solar generation on Thursday was dreadful, the worst day we've had since early April, well under the next lowest day recently! It is like someone flicked a switch mid June; it was wall to wall sunshine for weeks before then, but patchy at best since...

If on average you export more than you import then I think Octopus Flux has to be the best; export at peak time (4-7pm) is ~30p/kWh which I think is miles ahead of anything else current. If you're able to charge your battery on PV or overnight cheap rate electricity then discharge some of it at peak time, or have a west facing array that gives its best output later in the day, you can be quids in. It's been excellent for us recently.

The night rate isn't as cheap as other overnight tariffs, so while Flux is great now we'll be changing to something like Octopus Go in late autumn when we stop exporting and start using more.

The forum only loads images when they are in view; I think if there are lots of images the page jumps to the new post, but then some images from before get loaded and push everything downwards so you end up looking at older posts.

If you try to scroll up from the bottom it jumps all over the place as images appear...

2 hours ago, young37215 said:

I think you'll find that they said the panels are less efficient, not rubbish which is borne out by my personal experience

 I was being a bit flippant, but the gist of their article is that coal was required because solar didn't produce as much as it would because of the heat; this just isn't true. Yes solar panels are less efficient in the heat but yesterday's solar input still peaked at 9.1GW, not that far from the 10.1GW all time record and a fair bit higher than the preceding days when it was cooler but cloudier. Coal was required briefly because of offline nuclear power stations, no wind and the temporarily down link to Norway. It wasn't required because of inefficient solar or demand from a/c or fans; a/c doesn't cause much demand here because very few houses have it and it doesn't get that hot compared with other countries, and fans use naff all anyway so I don't know why they even mentioned them...

1 hour ago, Ian Morgan said:

A good portable air-con unit uses somewhere between 3kW and 6kW.

Uses, or removes as heat?

You can only get 3kw out of a 13A socket; a continuous load like an AC unit shouldn't do more than 2.4kw at 10A. On a sunny day like today a "normal" 4kwp solar install should be able to run one of those even at full load.

I don't know about portable ones but we've got a 7kw A2A heat pump with two indoor units that does aircon; today it's been keeping our house cool using about 300-400w continuously, what is nearly as low as it goes before cycling on and off (it's sized for heating, not cooling). I'm sure a proper permanent unit is much better than a portable one but even so...

For an average sized house aircon doesn't really take that much power; the temperature differential between a pleasant 21C inside and say 27C outside is small compared to 21C inside and say -3C outside in winter.

Despite the Telegraph's assertion that solar panels are rubbish in the heat we've just had our best day of generation so far, beating the previous record by 3kwh 🙂. I'm looking forward to our first Octopus Flux "bill" in a few days. Is it still a bill if they'll be paying us?

I think the Telegraph are overegging it a bit, but then I'd take anything they say about energy with a pinch of salt. Solar panels do lose efficiency as they get hotter, but this only happens on summer days which are sunny and long; the small reduction in efficiency is more than compensated for by the much longer days and higher solar intensity in the first place. Today ours seemed to peak at about 7.1kw instead of about 7.7kw, which is a visible reduction but with the very long days we still end up generating more in total as they start working shortly after 5am and are still going at 9pm; the absolute peak being very slightly lower doesn't really make a difference. It's still higher than it was a month or so ago when the sun wasn't quite so high.

Four nuclear power stations are offline at the moment coupled with little wind; this is the main reason a coal power station was turned on, not solar panel efficiency.

11 hours ago, hayfield said:

We are with Octopus who credit the account monthly, May was just over £30, even April was £25 but don't ask about December or January

We originally went with British Gas as the standard SEG rate was a bit higher than Octopus; I wish I hadn't bothered as they took aaaaaages and Octopus are just so far ahead on visibility of what you're using or producing.

Now we're with Octopus we can go online and see both import and export for every day up to yesterday; on British Gas we didn't even have an online account, so would just have to assume the cheque (!) every three months (!!) was right.

Just being able to see that everything is working properly and what is going on day to day is worth way more than the difference between 4.1p and 6.4p per kwh.

Now we're on Flux though, with a fairly large array and a battery, it beats any competing tariff by miles... 35p export during peak hours? Yes please!

5 hours ago, SteveyDee68 said:

Rails of Sheffield are having a flash sale on batch #1 Hunslets…

 

I don't need another, I'm fine with the one I've got.

I don't need another. Well, I don't need another, but...

1 minute ago, hayfield said:

I have heard tales that both lead times this past year have increased, at times waiting for inverters to be installed and as you say lack of electricians

Last year our panels were installed in June, then we had to wait all through the very sunny summer until the beginning of October until the inverter turned up and everything was finished. We even had the battery in a cardboard box in a garage for over a month, as the installers had a shipment of batteries before they had a shipment of inverters. It was very frustrating for us, but it sounded worse for the installers who must have had panels on countless roofs they hadn't been paid for, and were spending all their time delivering bits as they turned up without being able to actually finish anything.

It was a good job we had a very sunny October so we still had good use out of them before winter.

4 hours ago, hayfield said:

lets hope the next revision of prices due in a month or so reflect this in the energy price caps

I'm hopeful that it will. The Octopus Tracker tariff for today, based on the wholesale price, has electricity at 19p/kWh and gas at 4.35p/kWh; this is far below the current unit rates at the price cap.

If some normality, and a wider choice of tariffs, could return before next winter it would be most appreciated.

On 18/04/2023 at 21:03, Wheatley said:

The disadvantage with this method is that somewhere in the study is a small cardboard box full of telegraph poles, poseable gates, piles of barrels and pallets etc but I'm blowed if I can find it. 

That's the problem I have, only I know exactly where the box is, I'm just too lazy to actually put everything back!

5 hours ago, davknigh said:

I find that for things like figures that either need to be moved or that are still looking for their “home” a tacky/sticky wax does the job. It can be had from a variety of suppliers, mine came from a miniatures show but fly tying wax also works well.

That is a really good idea, I hadn't thought of something that will hold stuff down but not as permanently as glue. I don't have anything like wax but I do have copydex, which I guess should do a similar job...?

My layout is generally permanent, except for times like Christmas when we need the room and it has a brief holiday in the garage.

This means removing anything that isn't glued down, but then when it comes out again I often never quite get round to putting all the loose bits back.

To avoid this I'd have to glue pretty much everything down to avoid the layout looking a bit bare most of the time. But I'm hesitant to do this; what if I want to move little things round a bit, remove something I don't want, or add something new instead?

How does everyone else manage? Do you fix everything permanently in position, or spend aaaages setting everything out again? Or do your layouts just look a bit bare most of the time because playing trains or making new things is more fun than setting out a thousand little scenic items?

I assume on an exhibition layout you've got no choice; stuff has to be fixed down. But on a layout that only moves a few times a year, I'm torn.

I'd be interested to hear from others with almost-permanent (or not permanent at all) layouts about how you manage all the little fiddly bits...

1 hour ago, hayfield said:

but the drawback in having optimum orientation for solar panels may lead to reverting back to boring housing estates. Then of course its increasing the burden on affordability to first time buyers

With a lot of solar generation it is best to vary the time at which each system peaks to prevent a thousand south facing arrays all peaking at once and generating nothing the rest of the time. This could mean that actually the best housing estates might have a range of orientations across different houses or maybe even possibly a range of orientations for a single house, so each house has a few smaller arrays instead of one big one... maybe this could lead to more diverse housing estates? We can but hope :-)

We have quite a large SE facing array but especially in winter its very noticeable that by the afternoon even if it's still sunny we don't generate much. Having a few panels on the other side facing NW would help.

As for the cost, given how a lot of the cost of a PV system is the installation, I can't imagine installing PV when the house is built would add very much at all. The panels could be installed when the roof is being done, running the wires in a half built house would take no time at all, and the inverter and whatnot could be done when they're installing the consumer unit.  I wouldn't be surprised if the average rise in house prices over the years means a PV installation is probably less than a month or so of natural rise anyway...

The last couple of days has been weird. Yesterday it snowed all day but didn't settle so our system actually did quite well and managed 7kwh; today it has been a lot brighter but our panels are now covered in snow so they've done practically nothing so far!

8 hours ago, Norton961 said:

Regarding Holly Bank No3 don’t forget the loco was transferred to Granville Colliery in Shropshire in 1964 and worked there until scrapping in 1966.

 

David

No way!

I knew it worked where I used to live, by the Littleton Colliery, I didn't know it also used to work where I live now 🙂

That's really interesting, thank you...

2 hours ago, RAYTHEROCK said:

Same here Phil; entry to goods/fiddle yard is via a 90 degree curve, laid to 30" radius with Tracksetta, and a joint halfway round. All the other yard locos, including a Peckett B2, Kerr Stewart and Austerity had no trouble, but that little kink at the joint was enough to send the Hunslet into the six-foot. Like you, a bit of brute fore with pliers to eliminate the minute kink which I had never noticed, cured the problem.

I almost don't mind because it even derailed in a cute way; the middle wheels stay on the track and it seems perfectly happy to just trundle along like this, see-sawing back and forth between the front and back axles like a dog wagging its tail... :-)

I had another decent running session with mine last night and had no problems at all. It pulls heavy trains up the fairly steep incline on my layout better than several much larger locomotives.

3 hours ago, Captain Kernow said:

The coupling rods are NOT articulated, which could be a problem on the sharp A5 crossover (also OO-SF) on the layout, for which this loco is intended.

 

The solution would be to remove the rods and replace them with some articulated ones, probably from an Alan Gibson etch, but hopefully that won't be necessary. I can't test it on the layout at the moment, as I haven't got the space to put it up, but I will test the general running on my (straight) test track in a while.

I wondered about thinning the coupling rods by removing material from the back to make them a bit more flexible, in case having a go at the track didn't work. Luckily it did, so my thought process stopped there...

I blummin' love mine; it is by far the cutest loco I have. As far as I can tell it is a model of an engine built while my grandad worked there, and (I discovered recently) it worked very close to where I lived for a while. It looks fantastic and I'm dead chuffed with it.

I had a spot of bother to start with as it is not tolerant of even slight kinks in the track; I had a couple of flexitrack joins on bends which had slight kinks in them that nothing else cared about but this does. The axles have a bit of side to side play but the coupling rods are quite rigid and don't have any play, so tend to hold the wheels in line strongly, so even if there's play on the axle left to take up bends in the track the coupling rod can pop the wheel off the track anyway.

A bit of violence with some pliers to bend the ends of the rails into a smoother curve and it's fine now though.

This was the first loco I ordered since getting back into the hobby after a break of nearly 30 years so getting one with a few family connections does feel a bit special, and the model has not disappointed.

Today has been a terrible day for solar. The weather forecast said that once the early morning fog had burned off it would be sunny all day so I was looking forward to a productive day; instead the fog has not lifted at all!

Looks like a cloudy week going forward, but at least it's not getting my hopes up like today did... :⁠-⁠)

I think the most common way round it is just splitting the array into two strings, so shaded panels in one string can't affect the output of panels on the other string. Most inverters these days have connections for two strings.

Going even further optimisers can be used to separate individual panels, so any combination of shaded panels won't affect any unshaded ones. The cost obviously goes up though, so I guess it's not cost effective for most systems.

Next time you're going to Donnington could you pop over and do my car? Should only take you about thirty seconds at that rate 🙂

2 hours ago, big jim said:

I did hand clean one of the military themed 66s during the RHTT season ready for Remembrance Day!

Wow, I can rarely be bothered to wash my car, never mind a railway locomotive. How long did it take?!

8 hours ago, hayfield said:

I have also noticed recently my system seems to be waking up later in the morning, today 9:05  3 days ago 8:45. Though frost on the panels may be the cause? as earlier it was past 9 before they started to generate power

Is that just the last couple of days, or longer? The last two days ours has taken longer to do anything due to being covered in snow first thing. Yesterday there was loads, so even in full sun when it should have been doing about 2kw it was doing about 60w, it made an incredible difference! Alas shortly after the snow melted the sun went in, so the day was a bit of a flop.

Today was better, but you could still see the snow or frost didn't clear until mid morning, and the performance before then was much lower than it normally would have been.

I've noticed that having a PV system really does emphasise quite how short the days are in the depths of winter. On a good day ours can still peak at over 2kw, but it does it for such a short length of time it doesn't add up to much.

1 hour ago, hayfield said:

A big but, energy providers should be made to pay all domestic exporters a fair price !!  I am lucky to be with Octopus who now pay 15p per KWH  British Gas I believe pay just under 6p per kwh and EDF under 3p. I accept its a free market but how they can justify this disparity is beyond belief  

It is crackers how no-one else even comes close. We have the problem that we're on Octopus Go, for the low off-peak rate, but they only let you have the 15p export rate if you're on their standard rate; otherwise even Octopus just give you the standard 5p/kwh. I can see why, as if you have a battery you could turn a profit by buying power when it was cheap and selling it back to them when it was expensive! It does raise the quandary though of which is best financially - keeping the cheap off-peak rate (useful for winter, and charging the EV) but getting little from export, or scrapping the cheap off-peak rate but getting more from exporting in summer? We have a fairly large array so we will generate more than we need, but how much more?

Today started badly but has improved, I just saw 3.5kw from ours briefly!

8 hours ago, sjp23480 said:

Add some uprights to OHLE gantries and string the panels above the railway lines.  Network Rail would make a fortune

If you can make leaf shelters out of solar panels I'm sure Network Rail would be interested! 🙂