Octopus Agile is certainly expensive at the moment, bouncing off the cap at 35p/kWh & has been doing this in the off peak daytime periods for quite a while now. Many are moving from Agile to Go tariffs, wheras some of us are awaiting next Tuesday’s stormy weather.
The interlink with the Netherlands has been down for months & no fix mentioned as yet, butthat wouldn’t help much as that just widens the wind catchment area.
Lots of nuke capacity is offline for maintenance.
Two more coal stations closed in 2020 which has also reduced baseline generation.
Then there’s a COVID effect, the effect that reduced electricity consumption during the first lockdown (when factories closed) is different to the current lockdown where factories are open, plus, many other people are at home needing winter heating, which has increased demand.
As Brydo mentions, V2G is potentially one solution but it’s not here yet. Some first adopters have their powerwalls & are buying cheaper electricity during the night & feeding it back into the grid gradually during the day at crazy prices (another feature of Octopus Agile), but these systems were for managing excess solar capacity (mid day to 4-7pm peak shifting) and are not large enough (typically 4-10kWh) to do much in the way of grid relief, although their owners are making a few pound back on their 1000s of pound outlay.
So, we patiently either wait it out, shifting as much usuage as possible into the night (my washing/drying machine ran midnight to 3:30am last night, & my 4kW home brew power pack was idle as it’s not finished yet, but fortunately my wheelchairs charged overnight too (all lithium powered)). Salad for lunch in the winter is weird but saves putting the oven on, lighting reduced in the daytime is weird but necessary, & thankfully I still have gas central heating so I’m toasty whilst I’m on a fixed rate for that.
I’ve already reduced my peak electricity usuge & shifted most things to run at night so 35p/kWh during the day is for running the fridge/freezer & the laptop computer so won’t bankrupt me anytime soon. My daily consumption is around 6kWh at the moment, mostly after midnight. I’m looking at running the coffee machine from a 2kW inverter from the spare wheelchair batteries…. how Scrooge am I?
As for the EV, the battery is clinging on to a combination of negative priced 27th Dec power plus a top-up from a Polar 50kW Rapid at 15p/kWh for 10kWh worth. If I feel particularly Scoogey I’ll park it down at the station for free & charge it up for free, & then pull a few free kWh into my wheelchairs from the car, saving maybe as much as £1….. or maybe I’m simply not quite that sad just yet.