I have decided after a year of maths heavy monthly postings, to make these a little lighter from that view point. I will still be doing the maths in the background, but only posting the savings and comparisons here.
There were a number of Saver Sessions during the month of January, but more on those later.
January Electric:
I managed to maintain a 46% Peak/Off-Peak ratio, despite very poor solar generation.
My system shut down twice due to the main breaker on the Solar Sub Panel tripping (I am unsure why this happened) on two occasions, both of which took me a while to notice.
Electricity costs for the month of January: £278.70 for 2025, £391.73 for 2024 and £766.71 for 2023 – some great on-going savings.
Electricity demand for the month of January: 1718kWh for 2025, 1574kWh for 2024 and 2075kWh 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 January as I am now and actually used 200kWh more electricity.
This can also be seen in the month on month usage vs cost graphs
January Gas:
Gas costs for the month of January: £213.39 for 2025, £214.21 for 2024 and £375.78 for 2023.
Gas usage for the month of January: 3557kWh for 2025, 2258kWh for 2024 and 3740kWh for 2023.
No significant saving vs last year, however quite a lot more gas consumed and associated savings were as a result of being on the Octopus Gas Tracker tariff vs the Octopus Standard Gas Tariff.
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 £213.37.
There were three Saver Sessions this month, 8/1, 21/1 and 22/1 however I only participated in the last two, mainly because I didn’t notice the first one was happening until it had already started.
I received notification about all of these sessions via emails sent round midday of the day in question.
The first one was between 17:00 and 18:00 of the 8th January, offering 576 Octopoints (72p) per kWh saved.
The second one was between 17:30 and 18:30 of the 21st January, offering 192 Octopoints (24p) per kWh saved.
The third one was between 16:30 and 17:30 of the 22nd January, offering 448 Octopoints (56p) per kWh saved.
Had I noticed in time, the first one would potentially have been the most lucrative, however since I failed to sign up in time, I earned nothing.
For the second one, I again noticed the email late and immediately set my batteries to charge, since they were already empty due to a lack of solar that day.
The house then ran off the batteries, along with a forced discharge for the hour of the saver session earning me 1136 Octopoints (£1.42) for saving 5.92kWh.
The third saver session was the next day and I was a little more prepared, so had more time to charge up the batteries and then once again ran the house off the batteries along with a forced discharge.
For whatever reason the batteries seemed to be largely ignoring the forced discharge request and I earned 1560 Octopoints (£1.95) for saving 3.48kWh of electricity.
Neither of these sessions were great financially and many in the community did not bother joining any of them due to the low financial offer per kWh, last years sessions were offering over £0.90 per kWh.
The January 21st session was not even offering enough to cover charging the battery at the peak rate of £0.271/kWh, and therefore not worth the extra cycle on the battery to force discharge back to The Grid.
Octopus Energy even complained on behalf of its customers to OffGen, as the Gas Power Stations were being paid in excess of £5.25/kWh for the same sessions, and whilst they can provide a much higher return to The Grid, an offer of less than the peak rate is pitiful.