This month marks 1 year since I turned on my Solar and battery installation and I will add commentary regarding this in a separate post.
April Electric:
I managed to maintain a 13% Peak/Off-Peak ratio, which is an improvement on last month’s 24%.
There were only a handful of days that were overcast, and on the rest I managed to have only minimal peak usage.
The Peak usage on the sunny days is largely balancing the load between solar and battery as it takes a little while to switch from charging to discharging when the sun goes behind a cloud or comes back out again.
The high off-peak usage on the 26th was me leveraging the fact that Octopus gave me a day time charging session for the car and I used it to charge up my new fourth battery.
Electricity costs for the month of April: £99.66 for 2025, £266.26 for 2024 and £381.49 for 2023 – some great on-going savings.
Electricity demand for the month of April: 1627kWh for 2025, 1662kWh for 2024 and 944kWh for 2023.
The additional savings for this year are almost entirely down to the Solar and Battery as I was on the same tariff last April as I am now, I used about the same amount of electricity, yet it cost me about 62% less.
The off-peak/peak/SC values for April were £0.075/0.2794/0.4785 for 2024 vs £0.07/£0.2896/0.47605 for 2025, so not a huge difference.
This can also be seen in the month on month usage vs cost graphs:
April Solar:
Actual production for April far exceeded the forecast for every day, often by way more than double.
The various arrays produced the following levels of energy: Garage 326.78 kWh, Office 262.99kWh, East 247.13kWh, West 247.3kWh for a total of 1047.83kWh which is mu best month to date.
A very good month for solar production, I also managed to export 246.43kWh for a total saving of £36.96.
The import costs of £99.66 less the export savings of £36.96 means my net cost for April was £62.70 for 1627kWh of demand making my average rate £0.0385/kWh.
April Gas:
Gas costs for the month of April: £35.23 for 2025, £27.82 for 2024 and £156.36 for 2023.
Gas usage for the month of April: 555kWh for 2025, 450kWh for 2024 and 1524kWh for 2023.
£6.00 more than last year, 23% more gas consumed and on the Octopus Gas Tracker tariff vs the Octopus Standard Gas Tariff.
Gas prices have started to fall again this month, I would have paid a lot more had I still been on the Octopus Standard Tariff, which was £0.0603 per kWh for March £48.10 ((555 * 0.0603) + 14.64) or an additional £12.87 for the month.
The heating was off for the entire month, so gas was only used for heating the hot water.
Again all visible in the usage vs cost graphs
I will continue to compare to my old 2023 E-ON Prices for ongoing savings which for this month amount to £434.01.
There was one Saver Session this month on 24/04, my Home Assistant automation signed me automatically
I received notification this session via emails sent round midday of the day in question.
The session was between 18:00 and 19:00 of the 25th April, offering 95 Octopoints (11.875p) per kWh saved.
Since this was offering less than my export guarantee and way less than the peak rate, I made no effort to charge the batteries beforehand, or discharge them during the sessions
As a result my savings were somewhat low.
I saved 0.25kWh on the 25th, which netted me 24 Octopints (£0.03).
The saving absolutely not worth bothering with.
There was also a ‘Plug in and save’ day, on the 28th of April, where if you charged your car overnight on the 28th and did not plug it in on the night of the 29th, you would receive half price electricity during the off peak session.
That means that I would be paying £0.035/kWh for the 6 hours from 23:30 – 05:30 instead of my normal £0.07/kWh off-peak rate.
I followed the rules as specified and used 22.4kWh of electricity that night which would normally cost me £1.57 and should now cost me £0.785, but I will have to wait and see if I actually receive the discount.