Time to give electricity the flick?

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#1626264 9-Sep-2016 08:55

How much time does one spend monitoring the price and buying the electricity? and when significant savings are mentioned what are talking about in dollar terms? I ask these as I am unfamiliar with this model and always used traditional suppliers like Genesis.

We have some heavy power usage devices at home, for example, our Spa Pool.

Our water heating and main house heating is reticulated Gas, so no real saving can be gained there.

jonathan18

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#1626287 9-Sep-2016 08:59

MikeB4:

How much time does one spend monitoring the price and buying the electricity? and when significant savings are mentioned what are talking about in dollar terms? I ask these as I am unfamiliar with this model and always used traditional suppliers like Genesis.

We have some heavy power usage devices at home, for example, our Spa Pool.

Our water heating and main house heating is reticulated Gas, so no real saving can be gained there.

I think you may be merging the different models used by Flick and PowerShop in your head. With Flick there's no purchasing ahead of power; just that what you pay is based on the real-time market price of power. Hence, when there is a spike in price, there will (if it's still there when the price is finalised) a corresponding increase in the price you need to pay for the power over that period.

(Edit: we were previously with Powershop, and TBH I found that far more irksome than the Flick model: with Powershop there was a far greater need to actively manage your account with purchasing power way ahead of time to ensure cheaper rates.)

If you go back a few pages there's a decent amount on the savings people have experienced; Tim's mentioned his savings as someone who's done a lot to maximise his return, whereas I've mentioned our 19% saving doing not much (and in the same boat as you with gas). Tim quoted the 14% saving figure even if you don't change behaviour - so, yes, there still probably would be savings for you if you wanted to give it a go.

MikeB4

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#1626305 9-Sep-2016 09:04

I will have to look closer at this I think, a winter power account costs us around $380 (1491units) for electricity and $140 (1017kwh) for Gas

timmmay

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#1626306 9-Sep-2016 09:05

MikeB4:

How much time does one spend monitoring the price and buying the electricity? and when significant savings are mentioned what are talking about in dollar terms? I ask these as I am unfamiliar with this model and always used traditional suppliers like Genesis.

We have some heavy power usage devices at home, for example, our Spa Pool.

Our water heating and main house heating is reticulated Gas, so no real saving can be gained there.

You don't have to spend any time. You get alerts when power is more expensive than usual, if you want them. If you choose to you can try to minimise power use during peaks and shift some load to off peak times (11pm to 7am) to save more - that's why I have hot water on a timer at 2am, in the winter heaters come on at 3pm or so before the 5:30pm peak, that kind of thing. That's almost it really.

michaelmurfy

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#1626309 9-Sep-2016 09:06

So myself and @asmallchild will look at doing something for those on Spot power pricing since there is a current gap.

- Notification based events (via Pushbullet, email (maybe) and a Geekzone notification) and integration with IFTTT - Initially this may only be a threshold price we decide on to make it easy for a start.
- Programmed in Node + PHP (for the web frontend).
- Designed to be simple for the end user to more give them a reliable notification of when power pricing is abnormal.

How we'll look at doing this:

1) Query the API every 5min - if the power is spiking over lets say 15-20c/kW to send a notification.
2) Whilst it is spiking don't spam notifications - instead, only notify if it gets far worse (30c+/kW).
3) Provide a quick and easy to read web frontend to current spot power pricing (likely in Bootstrap so it is light).
4) Post in a Geekzone thread if power pricing is looking bad. I need to check with this.
5) Can potentially sort by region or work out the average price NZ wide (to make it easy). Basically want a solution you can use to get a better notification than anything else provides right now.

Hopefully by doing this we can automate things in the home much easier (with IFTTT) and lower the price of peoples power bills by providing reliable notifications using a real push mechanism.

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MikeB4

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#1626322 9-Sep-2016 09:14

timmmay:

MikeB4:

How much time does one spend monitoring the price and buying the electricity? and when significant savings are mentioned what are talking about in dollar terms? I ask these as I am unfamiliar with this model and always used traditional suppliers like Genesis.

We have some heavy power usage devices at home, for example, our Spa Pool.

Our water heating and main house heating is reticulated Gas, so no real saving can be gained there.

You don't have to spend any time. You get alerts when power is more expensive than usual, if you want them. If you choose to you can try to minimise power use during peaks and shift some load to off peak times (11pm to 7am) to save more - that's why I have hot water on a timer at 2am, in the winter heaters come on at 3pm or so before the 5:30pm peak, that kind of thing. That's almost it really.

Thanks for that, very helpful.

jonathan18

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#1626329 9-Sep-2016 09:18

michaelmurfy:

So myself and @asmallchild will look at doing something for those on Spot power pricing since there is a current gap.

- Notification based events (via Pushbullet, email (maybe) and a Geekzone notification) and integration with IFTTT - Initially this may only be a threshold price we decide on to make it easy for a start.
- Programmed in Node + PHP (for the web frontend).
- Designed to be simple for the end user to more give them a reliable notification of when power pricing is abnormal.

How we'll look at doing this:

1) Query the API every 5min - if the power is spiking over lets say 15-20c/kW to send a notification.
2) Whilst it is spiking don't spam notifications - instead, only notify if it gets far worse (30c+/kW).
3) Provide a quick and easy to read web frontend to current spot power pricing (likely in Bootstrap so it is light).
4) Post in a Geekzone thread if power pricing is looking bad. I need to check with this.
5) Can potentially sort by region or work out the average price NZ wide (to make it easy). Basically want a solution you can use to get a better notification than anything else provides right now.

Hopefully by doing this we can automate things in the home much easier (with IFTTT) and lower the price of peoples power bills by providing reliable notifications using a real push mechanism.

Great initiative.

Because I'm only a faux geek, can you please explain something that I don't understand?

Given that power prices are localised, and that there's no guarantee that such spikes in prices will be faced across the country or the rate of increase will be the same across the country (eg, I'm sure that one bad spike we had this year was limited to the NI), would such a system take into account the localised price of the person accessing this data, or be based on some higher-level overall rate? Ta!

timmmay

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#1626333 9-Sep-2016 09:31

michaelmurfy:

So myself and @asmallchild will look at doing something for those on Spot power pricing since there is a current gap.

- Notification based events (via Pushbullet, email (maybe) and a Geekzone notification) and integration with IFTTT - Initially this may only be a threshold price we decide on to make it easy for a start.
- Programmed in Node + PHP (for the web frontend).
- Designed to be simple for the end user to more give them a reliable notification of when power pricing is abnormal.

How we'll look at doing this:

1) Query the API every 5min - if the power is spiking over lets say 15-20c/kW to send a notification.
2) Whilst it is spiking don't spam notifications - instead, only notify if it gets far worse (30c+/kW).
3) Provide a quick and easy to read web frontend to current spot power pricing (likely in Bootstrap so it is light).
4) Post in a Geekzone thread if power pricing is looking bad. I need to check with this.
5) Can potentially sort by region or work out the average price NZ wide (to make it easy). Basically want a solution you can use to get a better notification than anything else provides right now.

Hopefully by doing this we can automate things in the home much easier (with IFTTT) and lower the price of peoples power bills by providing reliable notifications using a real push mechanism.

Sounds great :) An Android widget so you can see prices at a glance would be interesting, so long as it didn't chew up too much batter power / data. A simple web service request at a selected interval should be sufficient and resource light. I could probably work out how to do that, but I've never written for Android, so it would take some time I probably don't have right now.

michaelmurfy

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#1626336 9-Sep-2016 09:32

jonathan18:

Great initiative.

Because I'm only a faux geek, can you please explain something that I don't understand?

Given that power prices are localised, and that there's no guarantee that such spikes in prices will be faced across the country or the rate of increase will be the same across the country (eg, I'm sure that one bad spike we had this year was limited to the NI), would such a system take into account the localised price of the person accessing this data, or be based on some higher-level overall rate? Ta!

Initially when major spikes happen it is normally noticed NZ wide so just for simplicity sake an average will be worked out - depending on the API and how we can integrate it (it is our first time dealing with Pushbullet + IFTTT) we'll look at doing localised notifications. Might at the start look at doing a NI and SI average with the Pushbullet notification linking to the site for further information (will be mobile and data friendly).

dolsen

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#1626340 9-Sep-2016 09:37

MikeB4:

We have some heavy power usage devices at home, for example, our Spa Pool.

When I had a spa pool I had a timer that would only turn on the heating for a few hours just before 7am, then a 15 or 30 minute top up just before 5pm. That was enough to keep it hot enough and saved a lot on power using the day / night rates. Being on Flick, I'm sure I would have saved even more with their very cheap off peak power.

Normal day / night plans from the traditional energy retailers had significant variance between the difference between day / night plans depending on where you were in the country. In Lower Hutt the difference on Genesis was quite good, in some other areas I checked the difference was only minor. I would expect Flick to be much more consistent across the country and for some areas this would give even greater savings again.

mentalinc

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#1626350 9-Sep-2016 09:48

How many of you are actually on the split peak / off peak rates Flick offer?

By default you're not put on this tariff type, you maybe going through a lot of pain changing your lifestyle but not actually on the plan that rewards it.

They do not clearly list anywhere on their website or your bill the tarriff type you need to work it out form what is being charged....

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k14

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#1626355 9-Sep-2016 09:53

Not sure if I am supposed to share this but there is a new webpage from electricity wits being tested currently, you can view it here uat.electricityinfo.co.nz and see what it looks like. Note that the info displayed is 5 mins delayed to the current site. I thought it looks pretty good, big improvement on the current site! You can provide feedback via this email address uat.wits@nzx.com

jonathan18

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#1626361 9-Sep-2016 09:59

mentalinc:

How many of you are actually on the split peak / off peak rates Flick offer?

By default you're not put on this tariff type, you maybe going through a lot of pain changing your lifestyle but not actually on the plan that rewards it.

They do not clearly list anywhere on their website or your bill the tarriff type you need to work it out form what is being charged....

Good point. In my case I'd assumed we were set for day/night rates, but checking my bill more carefully I see it's specifically the network charges that are specified as being charged differently depending on night and day; actual unit charges are given as a single-line average. I'm assuming if we were set up for day/night rates, we'd have two lines? (This would always need to be an average, given the actual rate is time-specific.) I'm not too worried, as we have little we can time-shift to the night time, but given we're keen on getting a Leaf it's something we'd need to clarify before then!

Kraven

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#1626367 9-Sep-2016 10:07

mentalinc:

By default you're not put on this tariff type, you maybe going through a lot of pain changing your lifestyle but not actually on the plan that rewards it.

Are you sure? I always thought this was how Flick worked and I was switched automatically from Controlled/Uncontrolled with Powershop to Day/Night with Flick when I changed over.

mentalinc

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#1626372 9-Sep-2016 10:17

Kraven:

mentalinc:

By default you're not put on this tariff type, you maybe going through a lot of pain changing your lifestyle but not actually on the plan that rewards it.

Are you sure? I always thought this was how Flick worked and I was switched automatically from Controlled/Uncontrolled with Powershop to Day/Night with Flick when I changed over.

100% sure.

I checked my first bill couldn't see it clearly laid out so emailed the very helpful folk their response below. Id suggest you run your life in the peak off peak mode for bit (few weeks or month) then request the data set to see how well it rewards you.

"We can switch you to the smart plan, but we don’t normally recommend it unless you have very specific usage patterns, as the peak rate is significantly higher. You might want to have a look at your usage graphs (in the Analyse section of your online account) to see when you’ve been using power, and see how much is being used in the off peak times to find out if it’s worth switching. I can also send you a full history of your meter readings in a spreadsheet format if you’re interested in that."

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