At present, I’m compiling ‘data’ for an article to be published some time hence when I have a significant amount of history on the subject of whether Agile or Cosy provide the better regime for us as we have battery, heat pump, solar and are an all-electric home. Weighing up whether exciting plunges on Agile with the ‘Faff Factor’ involved compete well with the ease of using Cosy ‘set and forget’ regime. Time will tell - but I know which is the easiest on the brain - but is it better for the wallet? Regards, Toodle Scrooge.

@majordennisbloodnok

I believe that the EV charging protocol has a lower charging limit of 1.4kW (At least my Zappi does).

I am presently planning on using the Predbat HA AddOn when the available solar energy diminishes.  It's currently running in a 'Monitor' mode. You may wish to investigate.  Ask questions if you wish and I'll answer if I can (I'm not an expert user 😉 )

That is indeed an interesting path, @ianmk13. I’m still discovering things about how my charger and EV work together that might complicate things a bit but I’m confident they can be ironed out.

I’ll try installing predbat and see what it says.

@majordennisbloodnok 
I've still to configure my electricity tariff (I'm STILL awaiting an export MPAN) but the Solcast integration works well.  The solar prediction is usually a little on the high side but there is an option for a fixed fudge factor that I could use; I'm just waiting to see how accurate it is on poor solar days.

I already use Forecast.Solar so I’m going to install Solcast alongside and see how they compare.

@ianmk13 I’m glad someone replied who is monitoring using Predbat, since I’m lurking at a further distance. (I’m not currently Home Assistant (HA) compatible and without huge effort may never be).

There is a lot about Predbat on https://community.givenergy.cloud and as a givenergy battery owner it’s always worth a good look. You don’t need to be an owner to register. There’s a log of details from which version is under virtually alpha test as well as some toys being thrown from prams, (inevitably).

In terms of effort and return it’s a very silly game.

I will use an hour of my time to save ~80p on Octopus free electricity including the gaming of the pre-existing average to allow more headroom. There’s no other task where I price my time so low!

It does at least make me feel better when others admit to lots of effort to save <30p. If it’s a game you see, then it’s always worth playing! But if it saves carbon good!

@judith Keep the comments coming; it makes me feel my nerdyness is not only considerably lower than I had reckoned on but also, I am being green and helping out that little bit more.😉

It is a game with very restricted monetary returns but… I do feel better for doing my bit - however insignificant it appears to be! Like you, (because I have energy storage) I am able to game the ‘normal consumption’ for that hour to have a nil or very low consumption during that hour historically. So I save a little carbon and enjoy playing this nerdy game as well!

This summer game is not likely to pay me £200 because it is my birthday or that someone has landed on Mayfair where I have an hotel 😧 (I don’t know why, but few players ever want a second game if I am playing😉!) but the rewards are there nevertheless.

Mine dew, when the savings sessions return in the winter, I shall also be saving some hundreds of pounds as I did last winter. But obviously, my main objective is to save carbon and relieve the struggling grid on that steep rise to the duck’s head, in the early evening🥹. Rewards, Toodles.

@toodles 
I've been subsisting on solar since my PV panels and battery were installed on 1st July so I was amused to receive this email from Greg today

@judith I was led to believe that I would be watching clouds all day once I got my PV panels installed but I find I'm watching various graphics etc. on Home Assistant all the time.
I started my HA journey around December, connecting wireless temperature sensors all over (central heating, greenhouse, etc). I started with a PC but asked for a HomeAssistant Green for Christmas (it was easier to procure than a Raspberry Pi at the time). I can find my way around reasonably well now so I'm generally in my comfort zone.  I'd like to get into Python more.  Maybe a winter project.

@ianmk13 198,839% more than usual! 😵‍💫 Wow, you must have a very low ‘nothing’ then!!! I have done no work today, but, to make up for it, I will do a Million% more tomorrow. Computer generated messages can be very amusing sometimes.

Having said all that, last winter OE informed me I was in the top 1% of saving sessions participants! I did not have my Tesla equipment set up for ‘Everything’ on the export tab until late December so I must try harder this year. More Rewards, Toodles.

Posted by: @judith

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In terms of effort and return it’s a very silly game.

I will use an hour of my time to save ~80p on Octopus free electricity including the gaming of the pre-existing average to allow more headroom. There’s no other task where I price my time so low!

It does at least make me feel better when others admit to lots of effort to save <30p. If it’s a game you see, then it’s always worth playing! But if it saves carbon good!

Good point well made, @judith, but I guess that depends on how you play it.

I'm a strong believer in the 80:20 rule; 80% of the benefit for 20% of the effort. From what I've found out with renewable energy is that it's an even more skewed figure than that - perhaps the 90:10 rule instead. As a result, I've been hitting the obvious gains first and then seeing what remains. If a quick look at the remainder shows something significant that can be tackled relatively easily, I'm tackling that next and so on. Simply installing an air source heat pump and solar PV at a time when the old oil boiler was on its last legs anyway was a real no brainer and has most certainly provided the lion's share of the benefit. The sums suggest our simple financial return on investment will have been achieved before the last RHI payment is in, so it was well worth doing.

However....

It was pretty obvious we were missing some big tricks by not integrating all the elements into a more intelligent whole, and the most stark of these was to move to a TOU tariff and make use of the ability to fill up the battery from the grid at cheap times and power the house from battery during the expensive stretch. The differences per unit are significant and whilst a single unit doesn't warrant it multiple units each and every day certainly add up.

Of course, in order to make all this both worthwhile and even possible it was necessary to put in place a home automation system of some kind. That was certainly a significant bit of effort, albeit less so for me than many given my profession. However, with that in place the game changes from trying to save a few pence to putting in place a rule that will save those few pence multiple times without me needing to touch it. In effect, delegation.

And here we come back to the 80:20 rule. If I spot a less than optimal situation with how my home is running I'm weighing up the cost of putting that rule in place once versus the benefit gained long-term. I am not, for instance, filling the battery at one point during the day, discharging it when the export is slightly higher than the buy price and then refilling the battery ready for the peak evening period. I might make a few pence but it'll wear out the battery too quickly to make it cost effective even if I could spare the time to work out an algorithm that worked for all situations. I do, however, have a rule that says I should pile all I can into the battery and EV if we get some plunge pricing; I'm never going to be ignoring a request to pay me to take electricity.

In all of this, however, I'm generally expecting the cost of the leccy to be a proxy for environmental friendliness; if the cost is low, the carbon footprint is likely to be. Nonetheless, since I have a system that's already doing a fair bit of number crunching I can add that in as a check and, in fact, that's what I'm working on now. I just need to decide on a certain baseline of what I see as a reasonable carbon emissions value per kWh and include that in my plunge pricing rule so that I don't partake of the "all you can eat buffet" if it's all fossil fuel electrons that are being negatively priced.