As everyone knows, the cost of electricity has gone up drastically - perhaps by as much as 100% (probably more).

Today I got my quarterly Feed-In Tariff (FIT) payment for my solar panels. The rate I get paid has just gone up - by roughly 7%.

Somehow, this just seems rude...

I may go over to Octopus in the future (I can't at the moment, as they can't do FIT and Octopus Go* at the same time). Octopus promise to pay near to the market rate for anything that goes to the grid, minus their own admin and handling costs, so as their supply day rate is around 35p per kW/h this could be beneficial. Note that currently I get paid for every kW/h that comes from the roof, regardless of whether it goes to the grid so it will require a bit of calculation for which is the most profitable!

At the moment I often don't actually export that much as I plug in our 2 electric cars at every possible opportunity, which often means that I get paid for my mileage. In the near future I also plan to have a storage battery that will take surplus power during the daytime for use in the evenings (this will hopefully happen once the parts arrive from China).

However, it would be nice to know that I'm being paid a fair rate when I do export energy!

* Octopus Go is a special tariff for electric car owners - mine is 5p per kW/h for 4 hours from 00:30 every night, for new subscribers it's 7.5p per kW/h. Normal day rate outside of those hours.

David, I assume your panels have been fitted relatively recently? Ours went in way back in 2011, long ago paid for themselves & make us over 2k a year in FIT payments & savings on leccy, we were able to switch to Octopus GO without any problem as the FIT payments are totally independent of supplier, perhaps later FIT payments work differently?

Octopus have been absolutely BRILLIANT for us, you can't join on the GO tarif, but providing you follow a recommendation link, mine is https://share.octopus.energy/ashen-light-15 then both you & the referee get £50, which more than covers anything you'd lose whilst waiting to switch to GO, so you start on their standard tariff & then they switch you over, it took about a month in our case, would have been a little quicker except EDF who were our previous supplier were utterly awful & had screwed the smart meter up onto a single instead of dual tariff, they'd had 4 months of trying to sort it out saying they'd have to end an engineer out, they never sorted it! Octopus had it sorted without an engineer's visit within 48 hours of us joining!!! & I've never waited more than about 12 hours for a response to emails etc. their customer service is second to none

We pay around 18p per kW for leccy, day rate & 5p overnight, 00:30 to 4:30am, takes 2 & 1/2 nights to charge the car if run right down, but costs me the princely sum of £3.20 (1 & 1/2 gals of diesel!!!) to charge for a 300 mile range! The gas price isn't particularly greatat around 6p per kW, but we're using way less than we used to as I've added a Solic immersion controller, which senses when you're sending power back to the grid & instead switches it to your immersion heater (assuming you have a tank of course), we had the tank & it cost me about £130 for the Solic & £20 for an immersion element, did the wiring up myself, dead simple, it will have paid for itself within about a year & 1/2 as I'm now getting free hot water for around 8 months of the year, saves around 6kW of gas a day, plus getting assistance with the water heating for the remaining 4 months, tho' very little in Dec/Jan obviously

I've also added a bunch of second hand solar panels, batteries, a controller & an inverter, total cost around £1400, but about half the house is now off grid, I reckon this will pay for itself within 2 - 3 years, plus it can all be removed quite easily & taken with us if we move - an investment for life - so not only are we much greener, we're also vastly better off than we would otherwise be - I hate giving my money to money grabbing energy companies, even good ones like Octopus!

[Edited on 1/6/22 by russbost]

Ours have been on the house since around 2019. FIT payments dropped massively from the early years of panel installation - you will be getting a lot more than we do now.

Octopus Go is very good - we've been on it for a while. As far as FIT is concerned, instead of a flat rate for whatever comes from the roof panels (as we get at the moment), Octopus uses the smart meter to actually measure whatever goes to the grid so, if you use all the power from your panels, you don't get any income. Using the smart meter for this purpose actually clashes with the way they use if for Go (apparently) so currently you can't have the 2 together - but they're working on it.

You will find that the rates for Go will have gone up considerably at your next contract renewal... 35.11p day rate, 7.5p night rate, 37.65p daily standing charge.

We were very fortunate in that Octopus screwed up my electricity renewal notice in May, so we didn't get notification at the time required under the regulations - so Octopus said that the next year will be at last year's rates!

I had panels on an old house in 2011 just before the end of the peak FiT rates, shame you can't take that deal with you...

I think the issue with having Go and also an export tariff is that it would be simple to add a battery system and load up at 5/7.5p per unit then sell it back to them at peak times for more.

That said very happy with Octopus, they also made an error re our notification and so we've got another year at those rates. I've grabbed a portable air con unit that has a heat pump which will use to augment our gas heating this autumn and winter (gas price hike coming in Oct). Claimed CoP of 3 or so, i.e 1kW electricity will produce 3kW heat, so even before the hike it's cheaper than using gas, we are on Go Faster so have 5hrs from 2030hrs so effectively 1.8p/kWh of heat during those hours.

If anyone wants £50 for both of us referral then fill your boots and see my link below, I'm adding a battery system for when the electric hike finally hits as at ~35p Vs 7.5p (current Go rates) the pack back is a lot shorter

https://share.octopus.energy/sage-queen-253

I knew FIT payments had reduced drastically, but didn't realise that the system of what you get paid for had changed completely, I assume ours hasn't changed as when the legal jargon was written I don't think smart meters were being installed, or would certainly be in their infancy, hence, presumably they have to stick with the legal agreement of the time.

Nevertheless, surely something like the Solic still would work with your system as if it's saving 30p+ a unit that's a lot better than getting paid a meagre few pence per unit.

I think at present payback against the very high cost of batteries can be quite long, but obviously as prices rise, that will improve the payback rate/time.

My DIY panels (as opposed to the original MCS 4kWh system that was installed back in 2011) & batteries are all SH, tho' the batteries are 2021 units, but lead acid rather than Li, at present Li prices seem to be going up rather than down as demand is exceeding supply, hopefully by the time I need to replace my lead acid units Li prices will have dropped

Must admit, having switched to Octopus only last October, I didn't realise that prices had gone up so much more since, we're already paying mearly 3x what we were 2 years ago for gas & almost double for leccy!

If you're on a FiT your almost certainly best off staying on it both in terms of the regular payments and the export continues to be assumed at 50pc (hence you can use 100pc and still get the smaller payment for this)

Post FiT they brought in the Smart Export Guarantee, which I think set a minimum of 5p/unit, although others offer higher, 7.5p fixed with octopus (if you're a regular customer). Then if you think you can export at times of higher demand you could try a flexible rate export tariff like Octopus Agile Outgoing. It'll pay more at peak times but less at other times (listed as negative but in reality is zero).

https://octopus.energy/help-and-faqs/categories/tariffs/seg-tariff/

https://octopus.energy/outgoing/

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Originally posted by David Jenkins
As everyone knows, the cost of electricity has gone up drastically - perhaps by as much as 100% (probably more).

Today I got my quarterly Feed-In Tariff (FIT) payment for my solar panels. The rate I get paid has just gone up - by roughly 7%.

Somehow, this just seems rude...

I may go over to Octopus in the future (I can't at the moment, as they can't do FIT and Octopus Go* at the same time). Octopus promise to pay near to the market rate for anything that goes to the grid, minus their own admin and handling costs, so as their supply day rate is around 35p per kW/h this could be beneficial. Note that currently I get paid for every kW/h that comes from the roof, regardless of whether it goes to the grid so it will require a bit of calculation for which is the most profitable!

At the moment I often don't actually export that much as I plug in our 2 electric cars at every possible opportunity, which often means that I get paid for my mileage. In the near future I also plan to have a storage battery that will take surplus power during the daytime for use in the evenings (this will hopefully happen once the parts arrive from China).

However, it would be nice to know that I'm being paid a fair rate when I do export energy!

* Octopus Go is a special tariff for electric car owners - mine is 5p per kW/h for 4 hours from 00:30 every night, for new subscribers it's 7.5p per kW/h. Normal day rate outside of those hours.

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Originally posted by chillis
hey want us to go all electric but at these prices its unaffordable

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Radiator temps on condensing boilers are around 50-60C anyway. Heat pumps are going to have to suit you soon, if your boiler dies

I thought FiT was a thing of the past? And SEG replaces it, and requires all PV has to be MCS certified to apply. Ugh.

[Edited on 2/6/22 by coyoteboy]

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Originally posted by coyoteboy
Heat pumps are going to have to suit you soon, if your boiler dies

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I thought FiT was a thing of the past? And SEG replaces it, and requires all PV has to be MCS certified to apply. Ugh.

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