Best ways to utilise lower cost overnight electric tariff

[Brogues]

For those on cheaper overnight rates - economy 7, octopus high et al is there anything you are doing to make best use of the lower overnight costs. Most of the other threads are about saving electricity whereas this is more about shifting it.

As well as charging cars we run the dishwasher on timer.

Can’t really run the washing machine because it plays a tune at the end of the cycle and we sleep above it. DH is also paranoid about it busting into flames (we have smoke alarms don’t worry).

I’ve been thinking about getting a couple of oil filled radiators for an early morning warm but not worked out how long we’d need to run one for to make a difference versus the cost and a bit like storage heaters they aren’t very controllable I think? We are about to get a new GCH boiler which should be more efficient so might hold off on this for now.

Phones and iPads charge overnight but not on a timer so that’s something we could maybe dig out the timers for.

Any other creative shifting anyone can share?

Have you looked to see if you can take off the tune from washing machine. I don’t really know what else you can do, apart from slow cooking, but I wouldn’t like the smell.

Could you delay the washing machine so it finishes at 7?

@Anunusualfamily our cheaper rate is only until 5:30 or yes the machine would be on in the evening and the dryer on the morning.

@Mindymomo There’s a quiet setting that I presume was more from a spin point of view but I’ll give it a whirl to test out whether the tune still plays.

Is it a Samsung that goes into a full bloody opera when it's finished a load? - because you can turn that off.

I have a 3l kettle that takes an age to boil once and then it uses very little power to maintain the heat for the rest of the day. But, I mean, I drink a lot of tea and I got it because my last kettle kicked the bucket, I expect the time to recoup cost could fall to the ridiculous.

If you have savings to burn you could install a home battery to charge during the cheap period and use through the day? That wouldn't take long to recoup at all if you could stomach the outlay.

@FourTeaFallOut we have a battery and in the dead of winter we’ll switch it so we can fill it at cheap rates whereas at the minute we are filling with solar for free and using it during the evening and emptying the last of it into the car. It’s a bit of a fine balance.

The kettle sounds like one of those popular abroad that is like a vacuum flask with a heater in. I don’t know why they aren’t a thing in the UK as they are useful for energy and safe to pour a cup from because it uses a push button. We have a hot tap so only boil what we need so it that way I think it’s okay. Any excess heat from the heating unit will go into the kitchen overnight but I don’t think it’s a big user either.

Oh, we have a similar set up battery/solar/ev but I locked in to a fixed standard combined gas/electric tariff back in January for two years before we had it all installed and I'm loathe to give up the gas unit price.

I think the oil heater could be an interesting idea to keep the ambient heat temperature higher so the gas doesn't have to work so hard to get up to temperature on the morning. But I think that's one of those theories that might not work in practice.

We’ve just ran out on our 5p tariff and to be honest I’m over the moon we could get 7.5p but the daytime rate is crazy!

That is really cheap. Perhaps you could throw an extension lead on a timer to a friendly neighbour for a reasonable price during the cheap hours? 😁

Can I ask what your day time rate is? We have economy 10 (2100-0700) but our night time rate is now what our day time rate used to be. Wonder if it’s worth switching to a lower nighttime rate as we will be getting solar panels and battery next week 🤞🏼

We do washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher but we are lucky that our cheap hours are 9.30pm-1.30am and my DH is late to bed so everything is pretty much done by the time he turns in. I don't think you save much from things like charging phones etc as it costs a pittance anyway, so just the big appliances and maybe if you have an electric shower having a late/v early one depending on your times!

Our night rate is 7.5p and day rate is 40p, but it's fixed for a year so come next month will be cheaper than the variable even during the day.

We’re 00:30 to 4:30 7.5p and 38.57 outside of those times. Normally all tucked up by 11 latest 😆. Octopus Go used to be for anyone who thought they would benefit from the tariff but now needs proof of EV ownership (although they haven’t asked us to confirm we still have the car).

You can switch to Go Faster if you message them - that lets you choose your timeslot. Earliest starts at 9.30pm - that's what we are on.

I don’t think the go faster is available to switch to at the minute but I’ll keep my eyes open. My parents are still on theirs but they don’t have battery storage.We were on agile at one point but the rates just kept up so it wasn’t worth it anymore and it took thinking about every day.

We just switched to it less than a week ago. You just need to contact them to do it. I DM'd them on Twitter and they sent me the form and we were switched by three days later!

Sorry to jump on, but can you buy and use a battery without solar? We are hoping to move in the next 3 years so really don’t see the value in outlay for solar PV, but have an EV, so have Octopus Go?

Yes, you can. This is a year old so obviously the figures are completely different but it looks at the benefit of battery storage without investing in solar.

We have economy 7, it came with the house, we don't have storage heaters and I set the dishwasher and washing machine to come on at about 6 or 7 in the morning depending on length of cycle, our time doesn't switch until 8:30 though, We also use our electric shower in that time also. Tumble dryer is used in the cheaper time in the winter also

Our cheap rate went up massively in our latest fix in July though to about 23p and 39p normal rate though that looks cheap now compared with the projections for next year.

We have the SMETS1 smart now dumb meter and it looks like it's difficult to get a new Economy 7 smart meter though you can get one for an EV which is quite odd considering they are essentially the same thing.

I had economy 7 with Scottish Power but I didn't use enough overnight (>40%) to make it worth while. They now add the 2 readings together on day time rate.