Dynamic Electricity Price Tariffs Consultation Paper

Add it to the list there.

Did you know we're making a list? 🤣

I think the likes of octopus agile still have standing charges

If agree there should be price controls on the standing charges. It should be to account for the network charges only, any "admin" costs from the supplier should be in the unit rate

I have a spreadsheet which I'll share with you all. It has a breakdown of the unit price ranges taken off the SEMO website over the period of a year. It should be interesting reading as you'll most likely be able to review the price-ranges per season. I'll try get the finger out this weekend and get it finished.

Here's some of my personal analysis for the days sampled:

Lowest rate periods: The lowest rates are strictly speaking 01:00 to 05:59, especially so during Winter. 22:00 to 22:59 and also 06:00 to 06:59 also offer good rates with little variability. The 95th percentiles are short with long 5th percentiles meaning that you're more likely to get a better rate during these times than a bad one. 23:00 to 23:59 appears to be a sham of a time to buy power.

Highest rate periods: Unsurprisingly the daily highs are seen around the 09:00 and 18:00 marks with very high upper variability in the unit price right though from 08:00 to 19:59.

Seasonal standard deviation: Seasonal SD (variability on price around the mean) is highest during Winter at around 53 (EUR/MWh) and lowest in Spring at around 17. The unpredictability around wind is probably a significant factor here, maybe Spring brings steady gusts while Winter brings more reliable airflows, but the ongoing conflict in Ukraine will also have added to the variability.

Point highs and lows: The 20th of September 2023 brought the lowest price point of -3 at 02:00 and 04:00 (Met.ie: "Strong winds were also a feature between the 18th and 20th with low pressure to the north of Ireland"). The 28th of February was the high point for the year with the day being the highest overall for 19 of 24 hours (Met.ie: "high pressure built over Ireland from the west and dominated for the rest of the week, keeping it mostly dry"). Another notable high-point for the year is the 10th of March where it beat the 28th Feb on two hour periods and remained in second-place for much of the rest of the day.

So trying to present a market trader's view or a template for Home Assistant/NodeRed from all of this.. I think we already know the simplistic lie-of-the-land in that respect: Buy between 01:00 and 05:00, sell between 08:00 and 11:59 and 16:00 to 20:59), but the seasonal variation especially in Winter would be one to keep an eye on. Moderate storms are beneficial in terms of pushing down the unit rate overnight, but high pressure creates a lull and pushes it upwards. There are generally no "good deals" between 07:00 and 21:59 where the price dips unexpectedly low, so the chances of a cheap-charge between these times is limited, but you might get a relatively ok deal between 14:00 to 15:59. Looking ahead on the day will tell you how good of a deal that short time period really is.

In terms of modeling a storage system and energy plan, having the ability to run the whole-house for an 18 to 19 hour period would be a minimum to avoid day-long highs. I'd stay away from building a storage system to charge another battery (such as EV's), those should take all of their power between the low times indicated above (and quadruple-conversion is a killer). I'm going to say that having a battery which is 1.5 to 2.0 times the daily household consumption average is where you want to be to best manage the rates and to get you though some of the Winter-induced extended weather-related events.

In terms of running the rule over what return on investment one could make by moving to Dynamic Electricity Price Tariffs or 'DEPT', I'll gladly contribute if somebody else kicks it off.

I'd appreciate further feedback on this if people have it. As always it's presented as-is and E&OE, so to speak.

Anyway lads, have a think about the proposals in that consultation document and try to specifically match it to your own personal use-case or apply what you know about other regions where this is in place. See what holes and opportunities are present and pop any ideas here. The closing date is the 5th April, we should aim to have a submission that we can all email in and hopefully have a say in the matter.

There's a lot of potential here, I've a few suggestions/requests. Feel free to take them or leave them

First I'd recommend scanning more than the previous month. For a better overall picture, you'd probably want to see a 12 month overall cost as well as a month by month breakdown

Second, it would be good to have a surcharge per kWh rate applied to the rate. I believe dynamic pricing allows suppliers to tack on a fee above market rate and its likely they'll use that option

Similarly, it would be good to include export into the overall total. Since there doesn't seem to be dynamic export happening, this could again be done with a user set value

Finally, a nice extra would be to allow users to try and see how things would look if they optimised consumption. You could have them input a battery charging rate and time and then pick the cheapest window each day to fit that into. Show the user how the price would change versus their current consumption pattern