#SolarUpdate

My energy provider continues to be idiotic.

I actually had a moan at them last week because they recommended upping my monthly payment to £130 from it's current £100 after I switched to a fixed tariff to avoid the price rises from the 1st April.

They estimated my bills for the next 7 months at around £700, when based on the last 2yrs data... they would be in the £400 range and wanted us to make just over £900 in payments.

As we had £655 credit on the account already, this would have given us a credit in the region of £900-1000

So I told them off, gave them far more accurate figures (it's not like they don't have access to the smart meters and can actually see this for themselves).

They agreed to leave the payments at £100 which will not only gives us a healthy credit to protect from sudden larger bills next winter... But leaves the total monthly budget for the whole house, at a set level without any surprises.

So what do I find today... They've 'adjusted' their predictions to an even more ridiculous level, this time swinging so far under... that they're recommending the monthly payment (for gas & electric) should be £45.36... or a 55% reduction just a couple of weeks after recommending a 30% INCREASE.

Utterly stupid.

But not only that, some of the predictions they're making for bills are so stupid and so out of touch that they're laughable.

Like predicting we will use ZERO amount of gas for April through August, when we will still be using gas for hot water.

Predicting the total bills for June & July as £7... not a typo. Given the standing charges alone are about £30 a month and the most we've ever earned from solar export was £27 in a single month.

So here's their predictions with the last 12 months of actual bills in brackets.

March £118 (2 days ago it was £168, actual bill was £94)
April £67 (last year was £104)
May £30 (last year was £42
June £5 (last year £13
July £2 (last year £32)
Aug £14 (last year £34)
Sept £38 (last year £50)
Oct £89 (last year £108)
Nov £134 (last year £192)
Dec £174 (last year £207)
Jan £184 (this year £223)
Feb £152 (this year £185)

So, they think that 2 weeks after predicting our bills at around £700 between March-Sept and asking for £900 in payments for that period... We will now have bills totalling... £274 and they want payments of £371.86 (6x £45.36 as March already paid @ £100)

When the actual bills last year were about £380 for the same period and we'd paid £700 in monthly bills (we build up summer credit because we easily have £200 a month bills from Nov-Feb due to heating and less sunlight).

They have over 2yrs of data with the solar system in place and still don't have a clue that the actual import of energy is between 1800-2000kwh a year and now they seem to be assuming it's going to be around 1400kwh.

Thankfully, they're only recommending lowering the payments at this time.

But FFS, how can they go from recommending £130 2 weeks ago to recommending £45 now... If they're using some kind of AI to do these predictions... it just further proves how shite they are.

#Solar
#Battery
#GoingGreen
#Octopus
#DumbPredictiveBilling

#SolarUpdate It's an early one this month because I'll be busy for the next few days with work and DIY (plastering)

But the bill just dropped for March, and due to Feb being a short month it's only 28days billing (billing cycle is usually 29th of each month).

It's been an amazing month for solar generation. Unusually sunny weather, and most rain has been either overnight or in the mornings & evenings. Leaving the majority of the days sunny and clearish.

With the weather being clear and sunny today and reasonably good tomorrow. It's predicting around 32kwh of generation for the last 2 days of the month. So I'll be adding that to the figures, it will be within a couple of % of actual data (and the data is always 1-2% out anyway)

So, let's compare March to the previous 2yrs first.

2023 - 279kwh generation (avg 9kwh/day)
2024 - 309kwh generation (avg 9.9kwh/day)
2025 - 435kwh generation (avg 14kwh/day)

I'm honestly stunned by that last figure. 435kwh of solar generation in March.... Errm... thanks global warning

That's a whopping 126kwh higher than last year and 156kwh more than 2023.

Of that we exported about 66kwh and earned £9.85.

Due to the sunny weather, we were able to use the conservatory as a heater. It's old and tired with a laminate roof. It's like an oven when the sun is out and as such, kinda unbearable to sit in during the summer (we're going to replace it next year with a proper room). So, we open the doors to the conservatory and let the heat into the house, which means we don't need the heating on at all during the day, even when it's cold outside. This reduces the gas bill too.

Now comes the fun part.

Octopus, estimated our bill for March at £168

Our actual bill after adding the £9.85 export credit was £94

I'd been predicting a bill around £120-130 (before export credit).

We spent just £33.98 on electric, of which £19 was the daily standing charge.

We spent £69 on gas, of which £9 was daily standing charge.

So we generated about 40% more electric than last year and reduced the bill (from the estimated £168) by 43%.

We've spent 17 days effectively off-grid (where we import less than 1kwh of electric in a day) this month.

We'll have another full battery today and tomorrow, and with the weather for the coming week looking good... The first week of April will most likely be spent pretty much off-grid too.

With total consumption for the month looking to be in the region of 405kwh and total import (according to energy provider) of 63kwh and export of 66kwh... we almost had a net zero month (£13 spent on electric vs almost £10 earned).

#Solar
#Battery
#GoingGreen