What is Octopus Flux? - Finally a solar and battery tariff

well would you believe it I was literally just about to record an update to my cozy octopus versus Ghost spreadsheets to include solar power and what happens octopus goes and announces another tariff well what's that all about I'll show you so apparently octopus have been getting a lot of requests from people who own solar panels and battery storage for a tariff that better suits their needs because already there are tariffs for Ev owners octopus go for example and heat pump owners cozy octopus and I've done a spreadsheet video to help me calculate whether or not it would be better for me to get um octopus cozy or octopus go at the moment I'm on go and the aim of that spreadsheet was to calculate whether or not it'd be worth me switching to Cozy however they have introduced now a tariff specifically for battery and solar panel owners and it's called octopus flex and they literally only just announced it so I thought well I'll do a very quick video and just to show you what it's about and see if it might be something that's suitable to uh to your needs if you happen to own solar panels and battery storage so I will be adding this into my ridiculous spreadsheet um I can't guarantee it'll be super accurate but I think it'll be worth doing since it's um something that we are going to get we're getting our solar panels and battery storage installed literally in another what another three weeks I think um so it's going to be relevant to us um so yeah let's see what it's all about so it's um designed to uh assist um solar panel and battery storage owners that enables them to now export um at a higher rate than they were before using the sort of Standards smart export guarantee so what does the Tariff look like on a half hourly basis well we've got a similar pattern to octopus go where we have a cheap overnight period but this time it's now only limited to three hours so it starts at two and it ends at five and that cheap period is not quite as cheap as octopus go I'll show you in a second um but it might be beneficial to do that because it's coupled with a more expensive period in the evening from what's this four until seven o'clock where you the import is expensive but um the export is also very high so you can see that um the export actually goes up above the import rate during the day which is uh important because if you've charged your battery up during the day when there's lots of nice Sunshine um you can then export what you've stored in your battery at a more expensive rate which um can obviously be beneficial financially so let's have a look at the actual values of those rates we've got a day rate of 34 Pence for import and 23 Pence for export and during that three hour period overnight from two until five o'clock in the morning the import rate is down at 20 pence and contrast that with um octopus go which is currently at about 12 Pence I believe I'm on seven and a half but um I fixed that last September so it was a bit lower at the time but you can see the the export rate is now down at 9.4 Pence as you'd expect and then you've got this peak period between four and seven where the import rate goes way up to 47.5 Pence but the export rate is 36.5 Pence per kilowatt hour so that's crazy you could um you know fill up your battery at 20 pence overnight and then export it at 36 Pence so it strikes me that this is a sort of money making machine if you've got a sort of decent sized battery um I mean there are reasons why you may not want to do that if you cycle your battery a lot then it reduces the um the lifetime of that battery but even so this seems very very interesting and I'm I'm surprised they're able to offer this sort of uh this sort of tariff so yeah let's have a look at um some of the the FAQs to see if there are any catches so now we're on the FAQ page let's see if there are any gotchas so what do we need to join octopus flux well I need to be a member of octopus obviously smart meter pretty standard um a solar system and a maximum generation of nine kilowatt Peak that's okay my my export would be seven at the most well the um my solo array is 7.1 kilowatt Peak but actually I um because I've got an East-West array um I reckon I could only generate up to about four kilowatts something in that region so that's not a problem uh copy the MCS document that's fine confirmation your local energy network was notified of your installation yep that should be fine and if you receive a feeding tariff payment from octopus or another supplier we will need a copy of your micro generation certificates okay I don't think there's anything problematic there I have an electric vehicle can I still get flux yes you can still join octopus flux if you're not having electric vehicle that's good I already have solar and Battery what's next well you can just switch no problem [Music] um will I lose my feeding tariff well I don't have a feeding tariff but I know some people will do there is no requirement to switch or feed into our generation contract octopus um your payments for energy generation will remain the same export tariff you will need to permanently opt out of deemed export payments okay um if you receive a fit export payments from a supply other than octopus we will let you know you need to contact them to cancel once you've confirmed also should talk to us flux okay nothing unusual there is there a limit on the amount I can export there is no limit on the export rate set on our tariff or on your smart meter and the total electricity you export per month isn't Limited okay um obviously it's limited by your breaker in your house that's fair uh is it affected by that same time of course um right well I don't think there are any Gorges there I think unless I've missed misunderstood something so yeah that's a really interesting tariff um something I'm going to investigate a bit more given that we're getting our solar panels and battery installed in the next couple of weeks um so yeah I'll be um adding that to my ridiculous spreadsheet and um hopefully I'll make that available as and when I've done that work because um obviously I'm going to need to account for different export rates at different times of the day and honestly I don't know how quite how I'm going to do that in terms of a sort of daily average but let's see um I will get on that and I will let you know how I get on and in the meantime thanks for watching and I hope you found this interesting I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Tim & Kat's Green Walk

Views: 13,166

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Id: pRJitCMZYeI

Length: 6min 39sec (399 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 16 2023