In fairness, most people here pay about 24p/kWh which is about 32¢/kWh and on my tariff sometimes prices will peak at 45p (about 55¢) so we're not too far behind!
rmuk
joined 2 years ago
I'm surprised, to be honest, since I worked out a while ago that if I had an EV - even something like a Zoë doing 20 miles a day - I'd be saving a lot of money, but if you've done the maths then fair enough. Keep in mind, though, that since you're alreay with Octupus you could just switch to Agile for a month and switch back if it doesn't work out.
Dingdingding! Correct. For the chepest two hours a day (or any time cost is negative) Home Assistant gives Portainer a kick and I sail the high seas. Whenever costs are negative I saturate my servers with BOINC CPU-heavy workloads like ClimatePrediction, Rosetta@Home, LHC@Home and World Community Grid.
Whole-home metering is done with a Home Mini, a device that Octupus gives away to any customer that asks nicely and provides real-time data. For devices with plugs is mostly LocalBytes smartplugs or similar. For the heaters, well, hypothetically, that would require installing something like a Shelly PM Mini Gen 3 inside the wall box behind the heater without asking the landlord's permission.
I'm currently paying £50/mo and that's with credit building up on my account. My initial investment in HA has paid for itself many time over.
Yup! No EV here, sadly, and I live in a flat but I've got storage heaters and a big hot water tank. I've got an incredibly janky template sensor that works out how many hours of heating I need for each room based on the weather forecast and an automation that activates the heaters for that many hours a day at the cheapest times. It can also turn the heating on when the price drops below a certain threshold, currently 0p.
It's Home Assistant. If you're not familiar, it's an insanely powerful open-source platform for self-hosting your smart home. It can handle heating, lighting, security, charging, presence, all sorts. I highly recommend it if you have any smart home kit at all. But it is a bit of a rabbit hole.
The data you see there is being automatically imported from Octopus and Home Assistant uses it to calculate the best time to run the heaters; it even takes the weather forecast into account to make sure that the walls are warmed through so the heaters don't need to run when energy is expensive.
The 22:30 is highlighted because it's the cheapest rate for the period.
No, but I live in a flat in an old building with thick walls that hold onto heat well. I'll be toasty throughout the next 24-36 hours and it won't cost me a penny.
Obviously if I had an EV it'd be even better.
When you put it like that, it's even more amazing. "Yeah, we've got these machines that can absorb a bit of a storm to warm our homes."
Yo mama's like exFAT; she's got no permissions so anyone can access anything and her low requirements mean she gets embedded everywhere.
In my old place I actually did this: replacing my fridge and freezer's thermostats with an ESP Home controlled relay and thermometer. This place has a fancy integrated unit that I don't want to play with too much.