I've had an email from Octopus Energy telling me that because of dramatic falls in wholesale electricity prices, they sadly have no choice but to reluctantly reduce the price they are paying me for the electricity I export from my solar panels.

statsguy@mas.to

@cgrymala Yeah, that's a lot cheaper than here. Though fortuntely we're nothing like 10 x that price. I pay about £0.3 GBP per kWh during the day time, and much cheaper at night.

statsguy@mas.to

@JustinMac84 No, there's nothing I can do about it except switch supplier. Which I may do, but I need to spend some serious time playing with spreadsheets first to see if it's worth it. There are many more things to consider than just the price I get paid for electricity export.

xoriff@hachyderm.io

@statsguy I wonder if anyone is working on a way to give/sell excess energy to local neighbors. I know nothing about this space from a feasibility perspective. But wouldn't that be a dream?

statsguy@mas.to

@Xoriff Yes, that would be awesome. But no idea if it's possible without some pretty major changes to the way we get our electricity.

justinmac84@mastodon.social

@statsguy I more meant are you going to query the unfairness that the price you pay for electricity hasn't dropped in proportion. If electricity is worth less, you should pay less.

statsguy@mas.to

@JustinMac84 There's really no point. They will not care.

john_loader@ohai.social

@statsguy they do try to explain it.

valen1@mstdn.social

@statsguy Can you reluctantly refuse to lower your price on energy to them?

t2r@infosec.exchange

@statsguy Get a battery bank and store your own energy and then use it at night so you have to use less of their energy.

etchedpixels@mastodon.social

@statsguy Anyone who has been following energy prices (as opposed to consumer prices) for the past year has been amazed it's taken so long for Eon and Octopus to jump.

Energy prices have fallen a chunk, so the government stuffed more taxes and levies on it quietly. Some is getting reversed in April when bits are moved to general taxation and the ECO4 scam goes away (the one where they charged mostly poor people to offer grants to poor people for substandard insulation that wrecked their homes)

etchedpixels@mastodon.social

@statsguy The long term CfD prices for new stuff strongly suggest it'll be down to 6p/kWh for flat rate solar in a couple of years.

Time based exports can still earn good money though - and that looks unlikely to change for quite some time.

etchedpixels@mastodon.social

@statsguy @davidbcohen Used to use them long ago before the boss turned into a biogas nut. Prices were never great but they did have customer service. British Gas still seem to be 15.1p export but I hope their customer service has improved a lot since I last dealt with them

grb090423@mastodon.social

@LordOfTheGeeks @statsguy @fak

Well said.

russss@chaos.social

@statsguy you can switch to Outgoing Agile and pay the market rate for your exports. The problem is that most people are exporting solar energy when it's sunny and power prices are low.

If you've got a battery and can export then Agile is probably better.

ohir@social.vivaldi.net

@Xoriff @statsguy „they” already worked it out - in many countries energy tax is excise. So selling or even giving away your solar energy to a neighbor is a crime.

statsguy@mas.to

@T2R Already have one. But the export tariff still comes in handy on sunny days when the battery is full and the sun is still shining

statsguy@mas.to

@valen1 Sadly not.

statsguy@mas.to

@russss I do have a battery, so I may well look into that. Trouble is that for much of the day the export price is lower with agile, the rates are only good in the late afternoon/early evening. I'll need to do some playing with spreadsheets to try to figure out if I'd be any better off that way.

clumpytree@c.im

I think it is mainly that they change the price for exports less often than the price for imports. When the 15p/kWh for export was set, the price for import was quite a bit more expensive than today. So you could argue they benefitted us by not dropping it earlier. In the end obviously it's just a market, they take the price they can get. I doubt I really get much better from others.

marnanel@anticapitalist.party

@statsguy Is there a group representing all the people who sell electricity to Octopus, so you can do group bargaining? Or can Octopus just unilaterally change the prices?

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I've had an email from Octopus Energy telling me that because of dramatic falls in wholesale electricity prices, they sadly have no choice but to reluctantly reduce the price they are paying me for the electricity I export from my solar panels.