Hit the nail on he head there, Gary. This seems to be focused on new stuff and specific manufacturers - but what about all this existing tech? I hope consumers and hobbyists aren't locked out - we need open APIs so anyone can join in, benefit, and innovate.
Another great, informative video Gary. I really enjoy your distillation of new tech developments. A thought to share with you... when customers have a battery of sufficient size, they can help the grid two ways : decrease demand AND increase supply simultaneously!! And vice versa, when the grid has too much energy, they can increase demand AND decrease supply, such as in the middle of the day. There is then some saturation point of battery systems, when the grid can be easily stabilised. Cheers, Mick from Brisbane
Hi Gary, informative as ever.its a pity we need you to keep a beady eye out for what should be a given today.corporate greed and weak government worldwide with no statesmen standing up for ordinary people.shame on them.keep up the great work and information you supply on superb channel.
Great video, lets try be cautiously optimistic. I agree with you in that the consumer must have a positive experience and be along for the journey. However we see that the DFS rates are to be a fraction of what they were... So is greed going to kick in and the carrot replaced by the stick. We could end up doing all this only to have normal prices (high) then the high usage rate (even higher). This is somewhat of a common theme in today's society where doing the right thing gets you punished! Happy to be proved wrong.
Thanks and agreed--cautious optimism is a prudent approach. This initiative has enormous potential to fail it's not managed correctly. Looking at Mercury from a utility perspective, it looks like utopia--and you can understand everyone getting excited about it. But, if the consumer needs and wants are ignored or glossed over, I can see the initiative failing. Consumers will not hand over control to utilities unless they believe they're getting a fair deal. And the current situation with DFS in the UK looks to be a prime example of that.
@@GaryDoesSolar Dear Gary, The only way I would let a commercial company take charge of my [one day before long] battery charge would be a ten year contract based on actual percentages of the standard tariff figure. That is never going to happen, and I think hell would freeze over before I would cede such control in reality. On the other hand I hope before long to get a battery to charge at the Octopus night tariff, and carefully husband that charge through the day to avoid using the day rate grid mains as far as conceivably possible. The cheaper night tariff has been a thing for longer than I have been alive, and is likely to remain for the rest of my life, though I can see that with much more grid-scaled solar PV there may be periods in the daylight hours which might also become cheaper than standard, especially in summertime. Living in a flat in a historic building, there is no possibility of me ever have my own solar PV array, but that is a situation a sizeable number of people will also be in. I do think that a domestic scaled battery at home might well be a sensible way forward to charge at the most advantageous times and unit rates. And if is the rates ever became flat all the time, it would also be some protection against power cuts, so even then it would still have some value; even if one probably would not get e battery for that alone. In my county as of lunchtime [Tuesday 10the December] there were still 180 homes without mains electricity from the stormy weather over the weekend. Best wishes from George
I think we're just seeing the market trying to work out what price people will accept. If the price is high enough, people will invest in a battery or home automation, but if it's low they won't. Last year they found out how many people could do DFS, this year they'll find out whether we'll do it for a lot less. I suspect the price will bounce around for a few years while they work out how much elasticity there is in the system. Personally, my Solis inverter is a PITA to change for a one-off event so I'm not going to bother this year. It looks like the payments wouldn't even cover the cost of setting up home assistant!
@@robinbennett5994 Will they even bother with DFS at all in the future once everyone has batteries, instead the price will just go up and up and you will disconnect to NOT pay the price, erm I mean penalty! What is the chance this feature of essentially shedding load from the grid will instead be an excuse to strategicly UNDER invest. That's a solution right, just raise the cost and people switch themselves off?
@@elslopez I think you're being too cynical. It's a market and prices change as supply and demand change. They probably will raise the cost at peak times, but some people (or businesses) will be willing to pay that price. That means there's money to be made supplying that power. The electricity companies just need to work out how much of the profit they can keep for themselves and how much they need to pass on before you and I will take part.
One thing I'd like to see is proximity based savings. In my village in the Warwickshire there are petitions against a new solar farm, which I'm not too concerned about, but given the sacrifice of green space for walking etc, I feel the local community should benefit from energy being produced on our doorstep. It feels like a reasonable compromise to me.
where i live you would get power savings compared to a 6kw system if a big company sets up local and the local companys can acces the power to a cheap price, so the investers have a garentie for the time it takes to get their money back (0.05 € per kw/h) or else our companys have little chance of competing with the power costs in the US and china, without these deals selling to varible prices also makes it a more long term investment so its win win for everyone on top of that they often choose the project that comes with the best gifts local like something like a play ground for the kids or a building/shed for the local comunity, it depends on the needs and the offers but they are taking that part away, to much of the wild west in that
That would be a great addition to the planning system in general. Things like new railway lines, extra runways or even just new housing estates would be a lot more popular if the local community would get a share of the profit they make. Instead the developer gets the profit and everyone else has to live with it.
I’ve already gone as far as I can towards a green energy world. Solar, 27kwh battery storage, EV, and a heatpump. All of which amounted to quite a large investment and for me it’s meant very low energy bills. Now I’d like to see more cars with V2G as this would be the icing on the electron cake. I would be more than happy to sign up to Mercury if that would help our country reach its goal of carbon neutral and perhaps give me a small saving on my energy bills.
One potential problem with Mercury could be if it causes too many electrical loads to be switched into or out of the grid at exactly the same time. Could cause instability unless there is some randomness added into the signal somehow.
Great video and yes you are 100% correct user engagement is the way forward. Gamification, financial reward or just being made to feel part of the solution all helps
@@GaryDoesSolar Great creation that is worth sharing! It seems that home power equipment such as batteries, heat pumps, photovoltaics, etc. will develop in the direction of intelligent integration and we are moving towards a larger intelligent network for future clean energy, especially in the UK.
I agree with a lot of this premise but the grid and major battery storage needs to be updated. I have solar, batteries and an air source but if we have a week of gloom, I am using say 80% grid energy and if that is coming from a majority of solar and wind, what is generating that?? Nuc is a must for baseline and we need major storage solutions in every town. We can't be furling turbines when we could be storing it..
I have issues giving up control. I like having cheap rate 12-7 and will not join go intelligent. We have a small old ev and the battery is holding up far better than they were predicted to. But I need a full battery ready for if I need it. I do not want the grid to stop a charge because some late adopter wants to boil a kettle. I should have the benefits of the solar and battery I paid for. If octopus wants to site their battery at my home and give me some benefit of doing so fine.
I live in Alberta Canada. I have contacted the Alberta energy commission concerning this type of technology. Their reply was very disappointing. They seem to want to keep with the tried and tested technology, when in fact they just want to burn baby burn. So sad.
I am trying to programme my Tesla 2 for Octopus Flux. I can't work out how to enter the Flux tariff. The programme expresses figures in £ with 2 decimal points, e.g.£14.53. So if I the figure I'm trying to enter is 14.53p the nearest I can get is £0.14. It is a stupid thing, and the answer must be staring me in the face. Can anyone help?
I wouldn’t worry about not being able to enter the exact valiue-the exact times are more important. The values just help Tesla to determine when to charge and discharge.
The reduction in price for the demand flexibility service essentially renders it dead. The Octopus FAQ’s suggested 24p/kWh saving compared to £2.50/kWh last year. Considering that I’d have to charge my battery up at 26.5p/kWh just before the savings session, it’s just not worth it (and yes I’m already charging the battery up at 7p/kWh overnight, but it’s fully drained by 3pm on a cold day like yesterday) I’m guessing that Ofgem have decided that they don’t need it, but they can’t kill it. It’s a shame, but if they have judged it wrong, and we end up with not enough supply to meet demand on a winters evening, it’s going to end up being front page news. But whether the mercury project will succeed or fail depends entirely on setting the right price. I’m happy to discharge my battery to the grid, but batteries do suffer degradation with each cycle, so the price margins have to be worthwhile.
Hi Anthony-as always, you have a good handle on matters 👍🏻 And today was a good example where DFS would have helped the country enormously, but I can imagine the number of participants was well down on previous sessions 🤷♂️
Not having been around for DFS, I see the manual nature of it as retrograde. We still need customers to learn to respond to price signals, so keeping a reduced element of this is good.
That’s great but octopus can’t get my smart meter working on 4th meter. This needs to be sorted out before it works. Octopus can’t accept my Tesla figures. I have switched to be all electric so hopefully this can be fixed. I am looking forward to Mercury . Thanks for all your contebt
Australia is to develop its Australian Standards for v2g EVs by the end of the year. Can I suggest that with the ability to turn grid supply off, grid owners may be incentivised to encourage home owners to turn their grid supply on more often. Savings can be Imported petroleum Gas not needed Grid electricity not needed More rooftop PV would be needed.
Time and again, standards enable success. But time and again there are one or two major players that see them as a threat and sink the boat. I wish Mercury every success. May it repel pirates vigorously.
I do some of this already through Home Assistant where as many as my devices including solar and sockets to load balance and minimise energy costs. The airer only comes on when >800W of solar going back to the grid!
Yeah, Home Assistant is certainly a very powerful capability to get devices talking together-at least through a management entity-but unfortunately, it’s not really suitable for the mass market. And Mercury seeks to provide a near-fully automated solution for that market. Let see what happens! 😀
From the financial benefit and also help in balancing the grid, you would be better to export everything possible and then switch on equipment at the cheap night rate
I do hope it succeeds - but almost all our manufactured products are designed and made abroad - especially China and Japan. So I don't see how it can work unless it can be made an international standard, involving the governments of these countries. The presentation looked UK focussed; is there any international involvement?
Thanks for taking the time to comment, Tony. The good news is that Mercury is global incentive. Have another look at some of the organisations involved on the logos screen I showed in the video, or click this link and you'll see there are many from USA, Japan and other parts of the world: kraken.tech/press-releases/mercury-consortium-launched-to-boost-adoption-of-clean-energy-tech
Thanks for the update Gary. Absolutely right, it will need consumer buy in - which has been difficult to achieve. Just look at the smart meter roll out 😁 I managed to earn £500 last summer from my export, which was useful and worth the effort of managing the export from batteries etc. Next year, who knows. However, I now have my first EV, so can use it for free miles if the price incentives are not enough. I suspect that savings passing from Generators, to the Grid, to District Network Operators, to Utility Companies may be rather diluted by the time they get to consumers.
What's your thoughts on bifacial PV panels on domestic property? Do they really give up to 30% extra power compared with other panels? Ecocute seem to promote them.
I'm very skeptical about bifacial panels on a roof. I can see under my panels on my roof (via a loft window) and even in bright sun, they're totally dark underneath. Now, I know that some bifacial panels have transparent edges (around the solar cells) that allow sunlight though onto the roof tiles/slates, but I cannot see that accounting for anywhere near 30%--more like 1-2%. I'd like to see some testing carried out, which I might have to do myself...
@@GaryDoesSolar you could leve a few cm between each panel to let a bit more light through 30% what are you taslking about bifacial are not more expensive then normal panels, you get 100-200w on the backside for free so if it just makes 1% more you have a bennefit clear glass bifacial are to expensive to bring up in a normal household they should give something like 10%ekstra on a rack so how are you getting 30% from anywhere the backside on a 400w gives 100w backside on 550w 200w i agree how would you ever get 30% by turning that away from the sun even in a perfect condition you have to turn the side that makes most the way the sun is most, the backside should very rare produce 100% thats not what it is for but when the sun goes down you might catch some with bifacial on the roof, you would not have picked up without allways go with the bifacial the have most W on the backside you can double your extra producion for the same amount of money, and then your numbers dont end up like garys
General service that the govt provides included five parts, and Energy provision was one of them. All through Europia governments are trying to relieve themselves of this duty. I see Mercury as a very good civic initiative that could replace govt if applied to all: domestic solar, commercial solar and wind, and other generating entities. It is not about reward, but about energy safety and security, AND independence after all. BTW. Zoe; s consumption in this freezing temp is 18,4 KWh/100km which makes 3,37 miles/KWh.
In order to future proof the product and ensure success Mercury needs to define what success looks like and the applicable algorithms. These must be hardcoded and intangible to provide a cast iron consumer guarantee. This might form part of a time based contracted consumer guarantee from energy providers and governments to assure return on investment. No easy task but ultimately doable.
There are two major hurdles for any such system. Interoperability and compatibility with existing appliances is one, because many people have already invested in products like heat pumps, solar systems and EVs, and those products have a lif span of many years or even decades. The second hurdle is one you mentioned...customers must see the benefits! Here in Germany, many customers switched to Tibber since you could get pretty good average prices there in 2023 with a moderate level of effort. Sadly, the cheap hours appear to be getting fewer and fewer while entire days or even weeks with high prices have lately been the norm, so many, including myself, are now looking at alternatives. I am currently in the process of switching to Octopus Intelligent Go, since that promises a lower average price with less risk and less effort. What will happen if Octopus has to significantly raise their prices after a year or two? People will be out looking for alternatives yet again.
I agree, Roland. If the benefits to consumers are not there, or are not long-lasting, Mercury is likely to fail. And on the first hurdle you mentioned, I'd like to think that manufacturers would be able to update many of their existing products. For example, I have a GivEnergy inverter and battery solution, which is connected to the GivEnergy cloud and can be remotely controlled from there. It should be straight-forward to add in Mercury support. Let's see how the market reacts in time...
@GaryDoesSolar That's why Home Assistant is so popular. It allows you to interconnect Devices from pretty much any manufacturer. Sadly, this is mostly done without manufacturer support and often manufacturers even actively fight it. This has recently been happening with Vaillant (I have an arotherm heat pump) where the HA integration has started to fail. My Huawei Inverter and battery are safe, since they are connected locally using Modbus TCP. I have switched to using the "hacked" ebus protocol to get my Heat Pump working reliably with Home Assistant again. But it's a constant battle in many cases with manufacturers doing everything they can to keep their little "walled gardens" and cloud based systems closed.
when i look at the prices in the longer term, the only safe and cheap way would be to be 100% offgrid right now it would have to be with old nissan leaf batteries or something like that, thanks to the cost of batteries but i also have a hard time finding plenty of cheap space for the panels in dk so my longer term plans are spain i pay 10x for the land here in dk and the sun shines less if we dont do anything about the storage problems the grid have in northern europe we will both have more expensive electricity in the future in the days where there is no sun or wind or water electricity and we will have to live with 30% more cut outs in the grid then we do today all within 10 years
@Hansen710 Going 100% offgrid is pointless. To get the last 20-30% you need enormous investment. Make as much energy yourself as you can easily manage and pay for the rest. That's the sensible approach.
Compatibility with existing devices is achievable. My growatt battery is currently under the control of a remote system that's in development. If the company running this system can manage to control my battery I'm sure similar interfaces can be built between Mercury and almost any smart device.
Thanks Gary for this update - unfortunately SunSynk seem to be reluctant to join the party. I have been in touch with them and they are not connected to Octopus Energy yet so their battery is not controllable remotely. I am not sure if you can help but I thought it would be useful to highlight this. 😁
A fine vision but I can’t see any meat on it yet, anywhere. Is it a radio standard or a wired standard? Will it work over zigbee or a similar mech radio network or use WiFi or sit on any of those or will it be its own thing? Without any details I fear it may take way too long to become something that we can actually use. Hopefully they already have a protocol and approach scoped out and will simply be looking for members to tweek it and commit to it.
I was on a FB group saying a similar thing , the advent of the control to balance the grid is key. I also wanted to get some of the energy supplier's to make a small plug in inverter that is controlled by kraken or similar. 800 watt output and say a 5kw battery. Plug in arrangement to a 32a ring main or separate supply and a good discount for the user in return the energy company controls the battery. The kit should be under £1k and meet new standards to allow them to be licensed in the UK.
Writing from the UK. Smart meters that work must play a large part. Once Mercury is established, will it then have an upgrade and leave consumers with dumb products incapable of connecting properly? Would Mercury preclude any future peer to peer micro trading of home produced electricity? (Trading surplus home electricity might be a way of preventing pro/consumers from being taken for granted.) Will anyone ever represent the consumers interests and charge for electricity on its actual cost, and not what the gas price is for all modes of generation? Mercury seems essential to maximise the efficiency of the grid, but that needs to be for everyone's benefit and not just the DNOs. (And I liked the way you managed to get a question in on the actual day).
Any good standardisation, which Mercury seeks to be, should allow for all manner of value to be built on top--which could even include the ability to micro-trading. Hopefully, any eventual standard won't be crippled against that. I certainly plan to feedback all these comments into the Mercury team, so that consumers get a voice. Furthermore, I've already expressed an interest in having some involvement with the Mercury programme--against to ensure that the consumer voice is heard. And you're right, the current state of play with smart meters in the UK is not helping (at all). This is a basic hygiene factor that should have been addressed years ago... and because it wasn't, it's now holding things up massively :-/
This sounds very good but it relies on each part of the jigsaw running reliably in its own right. Octopus can't read my Smets 2 smart meter, 6 weeks now and they have no solution. If they can't get the basics right what chance is there of interconnectivity between different organisations!
Interesting. We could ultimately end up with a new breed of smart meter that could facilitate trading at the local level: I export from my EV to my neighbour's hot tub on a peer-to-peer basis paying only a tiny fee for use of the LV network. It wouldn't even be using the transformer. G100 on steroids. With a software broker & GPS timing it could synchronise the Mercury devices & ensure stability. Let's make this happen
Now, Bluetooth was purely highlighted at the event as an example of how hundreds of organisations were able to collaborate on a successful device-connecting technology. It’s highly likely that Mercury will build on Matter at the very least 👍🏻
@@GaryDoesSolar There's a famous prize for best British and Irish album every year that was originally sponsored by a phone company called Mercury, and it's still called the Mercury Music Prize nearly 30 years later, even though the company disappeared within about 5 years. Would seem like a good co-publicity opportunity!
@@GaryDoesSolarThey've had trouble getting sponsorship for decades because everyone knows it as the Mercury Music Prize. They'd probably love the idea!
Yes, alongside the technical specifications, it’s essential that the consortium establishes comprehensive process guidelines to ensure clarity, fairness, and consumer trust.
Gary, it sounds good on paper, but we've been here as you highlighted with the demand flexibility service. Unless there are clear and obvious benefits then this will go the same way and unfortunately I think there are a number in the energy market who think the benefit us to ward off the stick of increased time based pricing, not the carrot of savings. It needs to be plug and play for it to gain mass market appeal and without product price premiums, as adoption needs to be encouraged not discouraged. But it also needs guarantees, I can see in the winter time the increased demand meaning that things get throttled or turned off, it needs to ensure that I get my car charged if I need that and also that it doesn't suspend things like drying wet washing in the middle of a cycle, potentially this could mean damp smelling washing that needs to be washed again, causing inconvenience and additional cost to consumers. The real wins are making products more efficient so they use less energy in the first place.
Call me a cynic but wherever big business is involved they will all cream off as much as possible at the expense of the consumer. I admire the vision but I doubt it will become reality with the greed in this world. I'd rather try and move myself towards as much independence from grid supply as possible as economically as possible. It would require legislation to really come to fruition IMO.
Yeah, if the way the UK is managing DFS is anything to go by, certainly! But... what such an initiative could provide is a standardised way for anyone with low-carbon assets to 'rent' them out to the market. And hopefully, open-market conditions would prevail...
These aren't people from "financial" services whose business model is to screw the public hence the misselling scandals of the last few years and the banking crisis of 2008. It will be as fundamental to grid engineering as cables and so will have to work. I trust Greg Jackson to be fair. He has set th standard and pace and others have to keep up otherwise nothing would happen. However 10 years ago I worshipped Elon Musk. We will have to pray for Greg's continuing good mental health.
Who decides if your not going to do a long drive so that you don’t need that 100% charge or you get that 100% and they decide the grid needs some back, fridge or freezer turns off and for some reason your wifi is down does it work via wifi? or are we talking power line tech which would be more of failsafe! The use should be the one in control but it looks like they want the user out of the picture, always said they should send a notification we would like to shut off XYZ for an hour you will get XYZ and for batteries and cars to use it they should say your batteries are at XYZ if we use 10% of it what is left will be XYZ. Face it most homes only have enough capacity in there batteries to see them through Peak times, what happens when your battery capacity is used and pushes you on peak power who pays then? Who really has your best interest at heart to save you money YOU or the Energy Company charging you for it. If it could intergrate into Home Assistant and give the end user local control im all in BUT remember the savings we are getting this year what a joke for using and wearing out my battery i'm out of this year's grid shedding sessions and plan to use the power just for my needs i see no point in taxing my batteries and not being compensated for the wear and the fact by sending to the grid i could push myself to be drawing power from the grid at peak rate. I End With: Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely!
I don't think you're alone with that view. Handing over control is a big step for anyone to make--and I think it can only ever work if the consumer is fully made aware of what actions the controller might make and under what conditions. And of course, the consumer needs to be satisfied of the benefits being offered in return.
Last month Octopus did not charge my battery twice. This forced me to use peak electricity for three hours. Last Thursday and Friday they did the same so no export and increased cost. To be honest these actions by Octopus do not encourage me to consider Mercury products.
@@iansinclair7581 Thanks. Hmmm, might be worth checking out this group, just to see if others are having similar issues: facebook.com/groups/octopusgoandgofaster (Despite the URL name, the group actually covers all the Octopus tariffs these days)
So it’s a new spec but isn’t a new spec? Something tells me that this will be a slow burner - as you say how does the consumer benefit? And why would they choose a ‘Mercury’ product over one that isn’t - after all many of those examples are possible without it seemingly- so why change the hardware. I remember the early days of Bluetooth when I started working and that took well over a decade to feature on practically every device but only once at a price point that was negligible much like wifi that had a clear need and benefit - it was also possible to add it as a peripheral such as via USB for example - something like that seems impossible for Mercury on an existing application such as a heatpump or car. I see the need and point but generally consumers only care about themselves and not the grid (unless they get paid £££) hence your example of rates coming down - gaming the system at the expense of others isn’t sustainable either 😳
Thanks for your comments! Yeah, no guarantees Mercury will be successful, but if it is, then those with Mercury-badged equipment should have multiple options on how they can best "deploy" that equipment, either for maximum revenue or maximum environmental benefit--equipment for hire, so to speak :-)
Do you live in the UK? Switch to Octopus Energy using my code and we'll both get £50: share.octopus.energy/blue-wind-201
was GREAT to finally meet you
Yeah, likewise! 😀😀
Hit the nail on he head there, Gary. This seems to be focused on new stuff and specific manufacturers - but what about all this existing tech? I hope consumers and hobbyists aren't locked out - we need open APIs so anyone can join in, benefit, and innovate.
I totally agree-these APIs need to be open wide! When things are open, that’s when the real innovation comes! 😀👍🏻
Another great, informative video Gary. I really enjoy your distillation of new tech developments. A thought to share with you... when customers have a battery of sufficient size, they can help the grid two ways : decrease demand AND increase supply simultaneously!! And vice versa, when the grid has too much energy, they can increase demand AND decrease supply, such as in the middle of the day. There is then some saturation point of battery systems, when the grid can be easily stabilised.
Cheers, Mick from Brisbane
Thanks Mick - and yeah, I’m hoping that it won’t be long before what you state becomes normal practice 😀
Hi Gary, informative as ever.its a pity we need you to keep a beady eye out for what should be a given today.corporate greed and weak government worldwide with no statesmen standing up for ordinary people.shame on them.keep up the great work and information you supply on superb channel.
Cheers Mick-just trying to do my bit! 💪 😀
Great video, lets try be cautiously optimistic. I agree with you in that the consumer must have a positive experience and be along for the journey. However we see that the DFS rates are to be a fraction of what they were... So is greed going to kick in and the carrot replaced by the stick. We could end up doing all this only to have normal prices (high) then the high usage rate (even higher). This is somewhat of a common theme in today's society where doing the right thing gets you punished! Happy to be proved wrong.
Thanks and agreed--cautious optimism is a prudent approach. This initiative has enormous potential to fail it's not managed correctly. Looking at Mercury from a utility perspective, it looks like utopia--and you can understand everyone getting excited about it. But, if the consumer needs and wants are ignored or glossed over, I can see the initiative failing. Consumers will not hand over control to utilities unless they believe they're getting a fair deal. And the current situation with DFS in the UK looks to be a prime example of that.
@@GaryDoesSolar Dear Gary,
The only way I would let a commercial company take charge of my [one day before long] battery charge would be a ten year contract based on actual percentages of the standard tariff figure. That is never going to happen, and I think hell would freeze over before I would cede such control in reality.
On the other hand I hope before long to get a battery to charge at the Octopus night tariff, and carefully husband that charge through the day to avoid using the day rate grid mains as far as conceivably possible.
The cheaper night tariff has been a thing for longer than I have been alive, and is likely to remain for the rest of my life, though I can see that with much more grid-scaled solar PV there may be periods in the daylight hours which might also become cheaper than standard, especially in summertime.
Living in a flat in a historic building, there is no possibility of me ever have my own solar PV array, but that is a situation a sizeable number of people will also be in. I do think that a domestic scaled battery at home might well be a sensible way forward to charge at the most advantageous times and unit rates. And if is the rates ever became flat all the time, it would also be some protection against power cuts, so even then it would still have some value; even if one probably would not get e battery for that alone. In my county as of lunchtime [Tuesday 10the December] there were still 180 homes without mains electricity from the stormy weather over the weekend.
Best wishes from George
I think we're just seeing the market trying to work out what price people will accept. If the price is high enough, people will invest in a battery or home automation, but if it's low they won't. Last year they found out how many people could do DFS, this year they'll find out whether we'll do it for a lot less. I suspect the price will bounce around for a few years while they work out how much elasticity there is in the system.
Personally, my Solis inverter is a PITA to change for a one-off event so I'm not going to bother this year. It looks like the payments wouldn't even cover the cost of setting up home assistant!
@@robinbennett5994 Will they even bother with DFS at all in the future once everyone has batteries, instead the price will just go up and up and you will disconnect to NOT pay the price, erm I mean penalty! What is the chance this feature of essentially shedding load from the grid will instead be an excuse to strategicly UNDER invest. That's a solution right, just raise the cost and people switch themselves off?
@@elslopez I think you're being too cynical. It's a market and prices change as supply and demand change.
They probably will raise the cost at peak times, but some people (or businesses) will be willing to pay that price. That means there's money to be made supplying that power. The electricity companies just need to work out how much of the profit they can keep for themselves and how much they need to pass on before you and I will take part.
One thing I'd like to see is proximity based savings. In my village in the Warwickshire there are petitions against a new solar farm, which I'm not too concerned about, but given the sacrifice of green space for walking etc, I feel the local community should benefit from energy being produced on our doorstep. It feels like a reasonable compromise to me.
I agree! And I'm wondering if legislation will change in this direction soon. I know Octopus Energy (for one) is advocating hard on this!
where i live you would get power savings compared to a 6kw system
if a big company sets up local
and the local companys can acces the power to a cheap price, so the investers have a garentie for the time it takes to get their money back (0.05 € per kw/h)
or else our companys have little chance of competing with the power costs in the US and china, without these deals
selling to varible prices also makes it a more long term investment
so its win win for everyone
on top of that they often choose the project that comes with the best gifts local
like something like a play ground for the kids
or a building/shed for the local comunity, it depends on the needs and the offers
but they are taking that part away, to much of the wild west in that
That would be a great addition to the planning system in general. Things like new railway lines, extra runways or even just new housing estates would be a lot more popular if the local community would get a share of the profit they make. Instead the developer gets the profit and everyone else has to live with it.
I’ve already gone as far as I can towards a green energy world. Solar, 27kwh battery storage, EV, and a heatpump. All of which amounted to quite a large investment and for me it’s meant very low energy bills. Now I’d like to see more cars with V2G as this would be the icing on the electron cake. I would be more than happy to sign up to Mercury if that would help our country reach its goal of carbon neutral and perhaps give me a small saving on my energy bills.
V2G not a fan as it means your battery can be pinched by the grid. Be in control of your food, home and car.
Key to success is good control systems that interact effectively with the devices in homes
Agreed 👍🏻
One potential problem with Mercury could be if it causes too many electrical loads to be switched into or out of the grid at exactly the same time. Could cause instability unless there is some randomness added into the signal somehow.
It’s all still to be decided, but I’d imagine fine control will be an important part of the guidance 👍🏻
Great video and yes you are 100% correct user engagement is the way forward. Gamification, financial reward or just being made to feel part of the solution all helps
Well said, Ian!
Sounds great. I have Octopus, an EV and battery and solar panels arrive in January 🎉🎉🎉
Excellent! Hopefully, the initiative can make rapid progress!
Thanks for your sharing Gary, it sounds advanced. Do you think Mercury is a type of VPP for the clean energy future?
You’re very welcome! So, Mercury won’t be a VPP itself, but it could be the technical mechanism by which many VPPs are managed 👍🏻
@@GaryDoesSolar Great creation that is worth sharing! It seems that home power equipment such as batteries, heat pumps, photovoltaics, etc. will develop in the direction of intelligent integration and we are moving towards a larger intelligent network for future clean energy, especially in the UK.
I agree with a lot of this premise but the grid and major battery storage needs to be updated.
I have solar, batteries and an air source but if we have a week of gloom, I am using say 80% grid energy and if that is coming from a majority of solar and wind, what is generating that??
Nuc is a must for baseline and we need major storage solutions in every town.
We can't be furling turbines when we could be storing it..
I agree, distributed battery storage is becoming more and more important (by the day).
Spent a good couple of hours watching the launch. It was mostly great, but i felt a prosumer panel would have been great to add.
I agree.
I have issues giving up control. I like having cheap rate 12-7 and will not join go intelligent. We have a small old ev and the battery is holding up far better than they were predicted to. But I need a full battery ready for if I need it. I do not want the grid to stop a charge because some late adopter wants to boil a kettle. I should have the benefits of the solar and battery I paid for. If octopus wants to site their battery at my home and give me some benefit of doing so fine.
Yeah, those are fair comments, Mark. A larger battery in time might be the key…?
The beginnings of something great. I hope 🤞🏼
Yeah, me too, Ian! 😀
I live in Alberta Canada. I have contacted the Alberta energy commission concerning this type of technology. Their reply was very disappointing. They seem to want to keep with the tried and tested technology, when in fact they just want to burn baby burn. So sad.
Looking forward to seeing how it works when available. Thank you.
Cheers Andrew!
I am trying to programme my Tesla 2 for Octopus Flux. I can't work out how to enter the Flux tariff. The programme expresses figures in £ with 2 decimal points, e.g.£14.53. So if I the figure I'm trying to enter is 14.53p the nearest I can get is £0.14. It is a stupid thing, and the answer must be staring me in the face. Can anyone help?
I wouldn’t worry about not being able to enter the exact valiue-the exact times are more important. The values just help Tesla to determine when to charge and discharge.
The reduction in price for the demand flexibility service essentially renders it dead. The Octopus FAQ’s suggested 24p/kWh saving compared to £2.50/kWh last year. Considering that I’d have to charge my battery up at 26.5p/kWh just before the savings session, it’s just not worth it (and yes I’m already charging the battery up at 7p/kWh overnight, but it’s fully drained by 3pm on a cold day like yesterday)
I’m guessing that Ofgem have decided that they don’t need it, but they can’t kill it. It’s a shame, but if they have judged it wrong, and we end up with not enough supply to meet demand on a winters evening, it’s going to end up being front page news.
But whether the mercury project will succeed or fail depends entirely on setting the right price. I’m happy to discharge my battery to the grid, but batteries do suffer degradation with each cycle, so the price margins have to be worthwhile.
Hi Anthony-as always, you have a good handle on matters 👍🏻 And today was a good example where DFS would have helped the country enormously, but I can imagine the number of participants was well down on previous sessions 🤷♂️
Not having been around for DFS, I see the manual nature of it as retrograde. We still need customers to learn to respond to price signals, so keeping a reduced element of this is good.
That’s great but octopus can’t get my smart meter working on 4th meter. This needs to be sorted out before it works. Octopus can’t accept my Tesla figures. I have switched to be all electric so hopefully this can be fixed. I am looking forward to Mercury . Thanks for all your contebt
excellent
Thanks for the great feedback! :-)
Australia is to develop its Australian Standards for v2g EVs by the end of the year.
Can I suggest that with the ability to turn grid supply off, grid owners may be incentivised to encourage home owners to turn their grid supply on more often.
Savings can be
Imported petroleum
Gas not needed
Grid electricity not needed
More rooftop PV would be needed.
Time and again, standards enable success. But time and again there are one or two major players that see them as a threat and sink the boat. I wish Mercury every success. May it repel pirates vigorously.
Well put, Mark!
I do some of this already through Home Assistant where as many as my devices including solar and sockets to load balance and minimise energy costs. The airer only comes on when >800W of solar going back to the grid!
Yeah, Home Assistant is certainly a very powerful capability to get devices talking together-at least through a management entity-but unfortunately, it’s not really suitable for the mass market. And Mercury seeks to provide a near-fully automated solution for that market. Let see what happens! 😀
From the financial benefit and also help in balancing the grid, you would be better to export everything possible and then switch on equipment at the cheap night rate
I do hope it succeeds - but almost all our manufactured products are designed and made abroad - especially China and Japan. So I don't see how it can work unless it can be made an international standard, involving the governments of these countries. The presentation looked UK focussed; is there any international involvement?
Thanks for taking the time to comment, Tony. The good news is that Mercury is global incentive. Have another look at some of the organisations involved on the logos screen I showed in the video, or click this link and you'll see there are many from USA, Japan and other parts of the world:
kraken.tech/press-releases/mercury-consortium-launched-to-boost-adoption-of-clean-energy-tech
Thanks for the update Gary. Absolutely right, it will need consumer buy in - which has been difficult to achieve. Just look at the smart meter roll out 😁 I managed to earn £500 last summer from my export, which was useful and worth the effort of managing the export from batteries etc. Next year, who knows. However, I now have my first EV, so can use it for free miles if the price incentives are not enough. I suspect that savings passing from Generators, to the Grid, to District Network Operators, to Utility Companies may be rather diluted by the time they get to consumers.
What's your thoughts on bifacial PV panels on domestic property? Do they really give up to 30% extra power compared with other panels? Ecocute seem to promote them.
I'm very skeptical about bifacial panels on a roof. I can see under my panels on my roof (via a loft window) and even in bright sun, they're totally dark underneath. Now, I know that some bifacial panels have transparent edges (around the solar cells) that allow sunlight though onto the roof tiles/slates, but I cannot see that accounting for anywhere near 30%--more like 1-2%. I'd like to see some testing carried out, which I might have to do myself...
@@GaryDoesSolar you could leve a few cm between each panel to let a bit more light through
30% what are you taslking about
bifacial are not more expensive then normal panels, you get 100-200w on the backside for free
so if it just makes 1% more you have a bennefit
clear glass bifacial are to expensive to bring up in a normal household
they should give something like 10%ekstra on a rack so how are you getting 30% from anywhere
the backside on a 400w gives 100w
backside on 550w 200w
i agree how would you ever get 30% by turning that away from the sun
even in a perfect condition
you have to turn the side that makes most the way the sun is most, the backside should very rare produce 100% thats not what it is for
but when the sun goes down you might catch some with bifacial on the roof, you would not have picked up without
allways go with the bifacial the have most W on the backside
you can double your extra producion for the same amount of money, and then your numbers dont end up like garys
General service that the govt provides included five parts, and Energy provision was one of them. All through Europia governments are trying to relieve themselves of this duty. I see Mercury as a very good civic initiative that could replace govt if applied to all: domestic solar, commercial solar and wind, and other generating entities. It is not about reward, but about energy safety and security, AND independence after all.
BTW. Zoe; s consumption in this freezing temp is 18,4 KWh/100km which makes 3,37 miles/KWh.
I like your thinking. Let's see how the Mercury initiative pans out...
And that's pretty good efficiency on your Zoe!
In order to future proof the product and ensure success Mercury needs to define what success looks like and the applicable algorithms. These must be hardcoded and intangible to provide a cast iron consumer guarantee. This might form part of a time based contracted consumer guarantee from energy providers and governments to assure return on investment. No easy task but ultimately doable.
I’ll certainly be following and reporting on the progress of the initiative 👍🏻
There are two major hurdles for any such system.
Interoperability and compatibility with existing appliances is one, because many people have already invested in products like heat pumps, solar systems and EVs, and those products have a lif span of many years or even decades.
The second hurdle is one you mentioned...customers must see the benefits!
Here in Germany, many customers switched to Tibber since you could get pretty good average prices there in 2023 with a moderate level of effort. Sadly, the cheap hours appear to be getting fewer and fewer while entire days or even weeks with high prices have lately been the norm, so many, including myself, are now looking at alternatives. I am currently in the process of switching to Octopus Intelligent Go, since that promises a lower average price with less risk and less effort. What will happen if Octopus has to significantly raise their prices after a year or two? People will be out looking for alternatives yet again.
I agree, Roland. If the benefits to consumers are not there, or are not long-lasting, Mercury is likely to fail. And on the first hurdle you mentioned, I'd like to think that manufacturers would be able to update many of their existing products. For example, I have a GivEnergy inverter and battery solution, which is connected to the GivEnergy cloud and can be remotely controlled from there. It should be straight-forward to add in Mercury support. Let's see how the market reacts in time...
@GaryDoesSolar
That's why Home Assistant is so popular. It allows you to interconnect Devices from pretty much any manufacturer. Sadly, this is mostly done without manufacturer support and often manufacturers even actively fight it. This has recently been happening with Vaillant (I have an arotherm heat pump) where the HA integration has started to fail. My Huawei Inverter and battery are safe, since they are connected locally using Modbus TCP. I have switched to using the "hacked" ebus protocol to get my Heat Pump working reliably with Home Assistant again. But it's a constant battle in many cases with manufacturers doing everything they can to keep their little "walled gardens" and cloud based systems closed.
when i look at the prices in the longer term, the only safe and cheap way would be to be 100% offgrid
right now it would have to be with old nissan leaf batteries or something like that, thanks to the cost of batteries
but i also have a hard time finding plenty of cheap space for the panels in dk
so my longer term plans are spain
i pay 10x for the land here in dk and the sun shines less
if we dont do anything about the storage problems the grid have in northern europe we will both have more expensive electricity in the future in the days where there is no sun or wind or water electricity
and we will have to live with 30% more cut outs in the grid then we do today
all within 10 years
@Hansen710
Going 100% offgrid is pointless. To get the last 20-30% you need enormous investment. Make as much energy yourself as you can easily manage and pay for the rest. That's the sensible approach.
Compatibility with existing devices is achievable. My growatt battery is currently under the control of a remote system that's in development. If the company running this system can manage to control my battery I'm sure similar interfaces can be built between Mercury and almost any smart device.
Thanks Gary for this update - unfortunately SunSynk seem to be reluctant to join the party. I have been in touch with them and they are not connected to Octopus Energy yet so their battery is not controllable remotely. I am not sure if you can help but I thought it would be useful to highlight this. 😁
A fine vision but I can’t see any meat on it yet, anywhere. Is it a radio standard or a wired standard? Will it work over zigbee or a similar mech radio network or use WiFi or sit on any of those or will it be its own thing? Without any details I fear it may take way too long to become something that we can actually use. Hopefully they already have a protocol and approach scoped out and will simply be looking for members to tweek it and commit to it.
Hi Pete, my understanding is that Mercury will be based on existing connectivity specifications, like Matter.
@ that would be logical and also make me happy! Do update us with a video with more details when you have it. Thanks for the channel.
I was on a FB group saying a similar thing , the advent of the control to balance the grid is key. I also wanted to get some of the energy supplier's to make a small plug in inverter that is controlled by kraken or similar. 800 watt output and say a 5kw battery. Plug in arrangement to a 32a ring main or separate supply and a good discount for the user in return the energy company controls the battery. The kit should be under £1k and meet new standards to allow them to be licensed in the UK.
Grid scale batteries are probably more economic to suppliers than batteries in houses? Both will be useful though.
Will this complement or compete with matter 1.4?
Thankfully, it will complement ✅
Looking forward to an update on mercury;s impact on wider uptake within Octopus and effect on IN/OUT rates for customers?
Give households a reasonable piece of the pie if we are helping the grid.
Agreed-fairness is the key to all this
Is it an open source standard?
Too early to say. It’ll likely build on standards like Matter 👍🏻
Writing from the UK.
Smart meters that work must play a large part.
Once Mercury is established, will it then have an upgrade and leave consumers with dumb products incapable of connecting properly?
Would Mercury preclude any future peer to peer micro trading of home produced electricity? (Trading surplus home electricity might be a way of preventing pro/consumers from being taken for granted.)
Will anyone ever represent the consumers interests and charge for electricity on its actual cost, and not what the gas price is for all modes of generation?
Mercury seems essential to maximise the efficiency of the grid, but that needs to be for everyone's benefit and not just the DNOs.
(And I liked the way you managed to get a question in on the actual day).
Any good standardisation, which Mercury seeks to be, should allow for all manner of value to be built on top--which could even include the ability to micro-trading. Hopefully, any eventual standard won't be crippled against that.
I certainly plan to feedback all these comments into the Mercury team, so that consumers get a voice. Furthermore, I've already expressed an interest in having some involvement with the Mercury programme--against to ensure that the consumer voice is heard.
And you're right, the current state of play with smart meters in the UK is not helping (at all). This is a basic hygiene factor that should have been addressed years ago... and because it wasn't, it's now holding things up massively :-/
This sounds very good but it relies on each part of the jigsaw running reliably in its own right. Octopus can't read my Smets 2 smart meter, 6 weeks now and they have no solution. If they can't get the basics right what chance is there of interconnectivity between different organisations!
That’s a fair point, Kevin
Interesting. We could ultimately end up with a new breed of smart meter that could facilitate trading at the local level: I export from my EV to my neighbour's hot tub on a peer-to-peer basis paying only a tiny fee for use of the LV network. It wouldn't even be using the transformer. G100 on steroids. With a software broker & GPS timing it could synchronise the Mercury devices & ensure stability. Let's make this happen
Zigbee or Matter could have been a better option than bluetooth.
Now, Bluetooth was purely highlighted at the event as an example of how hundreds of organisations were able to collaborate on a successful device-connecting technology.
It’s highly likely that Mercury will build on Matter at the very least 👍🏻
They should sponsor a Music Prize for publicity..
?
@@GaryDoesSolar There's a famous prize for best British and Irish album every year that was originally sponsored by a phone company called Mercury, and it's still called the Mercury Music Prize nearly 30 years later, even though the company disappeared within about 5 years. Would seem like a good co-publicity opportunity!
@@Danothebaldyheid Ah.... sorry--I was so slow to pick on that one! 😃
@@GaryDoesSolarThey've had trouble getting sponsorship for decades because everyone knows it as the Mercury Music Prize. They'd probably love the idea!
What if the powers that be can turn off your appliances when they see fit? What if.....
Yes, alongside the technical specifications, it’s essential that the consortium establishes comprehensive process guidelines to ensure clarity, fairness, and consumer trust.
Gary, it sounds good on paper, but we've been here as you highlighted with the demand flexibility service. Unless there are clear and obvious benefits then this will go the same way and unfortunately I think there are a number in the energy market who think the benefit us to ward off the stick of increased time based pricing, not the carrot of savings. It needs to be plug and play for it to gain mass market appeal and without product price premiums, as adoption needs to be encouraged not discouraged. But it also needs guarantees, I can see in the winter time the increased demand meaning that things get throttled or turned off, it needs to ensure that I get my car charged if I need that and also that it doesn't suspend things like drying wet washing in the middle of a cycle, potentially this could mean damp smelling washing that needs to be washed again, causing inconvenience and additional cost to consumers.
The real wins are making products more efficient so they use less energy in the first place.
Call me a cynic but wherever big business is involved they will all cream off as much as possible at the expense of the consumer. I admire the vision but I doubt it will become reality with the greed in this world. I'd rather try and move myself towards as much independence from grid supply as possible as economically as possible. It would require legislation to really come to fruition IMO.
Yeah, if the way the UK is managing DFS is anything to go by, certainly!
But... what such an initiative could provide is a standardised way for anyone with low-carbon assets to 'rent' them out to the market. And hopefully, open-market conditions would prevail...
These aren't people from "financial" services whose business model is to screw the public hence the misselling scandals of the last few years and the banking crisis of 2008.
It will be as fundamental to grid engineering as cables and so will have to work.
I trust Greg Jackson to be fair. He has set th standard and pace and others have to keep up otherwise nothing would happen.
However 10 years ago I worshipped Elon Musk. We will have to pray for Greg's continuing good mental health.
Who decides if your not going to do a long drive so that you don’t need that 100% charge or you get that 100% and they decide the grid needs some back, fridge or freezer turns off and for some reason your wifi is down does it work via wifi? or are we talking power line tech which would be more of failsafe!
The use should be the one in control but it looks like they want the user out of the picture, always said they should send a notification we would like to shut off XYZ for an hour you will get XYZ and for batteries and cars to use it they should say your batteries are at XYZ if we use 10% of it what is left will be XYZ.
Face it most homes only have enough capacity in there batteries to see them through Peak times, what happens when your battery capacity is used and pushes you on peak power who pays then? Who really has your best interest at heart to save you money YOU or the Energy Company charging you for it.
If it could intergrate into Home Assistant and give the end user local control im all in BUT remember the savings we are getting this year what a joke for using and wearing out my battery i'm out of this year's grid shedding sessions and plan to use the power just for my needs i see no point in taxing my batteries and not being compensated for the wear and the fact by sending to the grid i could push myself to be drawing power from the grid at peak rate.
I End With: Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely!
I don't think you're alone with that view. Handing over control is a big step for anyone to make--and I think it can only ever work if the consumer is fully made aware of what actions the controller might make and under what conditions. And of course, the consumer needs to be satisfied of the benefits being offered in return.
You really need to rethink.
Look up other users.
Is Octopus going bust?
What makes you think that?
Last month Octopus did not charge my battery twice. This forced me to use peak electricity for three hours.
Last Thursday and Friday they did the same so no export and increased cost.
To be honest these actions by Octopus do not encourage me to consider Mercury products.
Which tariff were you on, Ian?
@ Intelligent Flux Gary.
@@iansinclair7581 Thanks. Hmmm, might be worth checking out this group, just to see if others are having similar issues: facebook.com/groups/octopusgoandgofaster (Despite the URL name, the group actually covers all the Octopus tariffs these days)
So it’s a new spec but isn’t a new spec? Something tells me that this will be a slow burner - as you say how does the consumer benefit? And why would they choose a ‘Mercury’ product over one that isn’t - after all many of those examples are possible without it seemingly- so why change the hardware. I remember the early days of Bluetooth when I started working and that took well over a decade to feature on practically every device but only once at a price point that was negligible much like wifi that had a clear need and benefit - it was also possible to add it as a peripheral such as via USB for example - something like that seems impossible for Mercury on an existing application such as a heatpump or car. I see the need and point but generally consumers only care about themselves and not the grid (unless they get paid £££) hence your example of rates coming down - gaming the system at the expense of others isn’t sustainable either 😳
Thanks for your comments! Yeah, no guarantees Mercury will be successful, but if it is, then those with Mercury-badged equipment should have multiple options on how they can best "deploy" that equipment, either for maximum revenue or maximum environmental benefit--equipment for hire, so to speak :-)
@@GaryDoesSolar seems eFixx are doing their best to ensure their viewers are led to believe that Mercury is a bad thing 🙄
@@Umski Thanks for the word up! Here is the eFixx video for anyone who wants to see it: th-cam.com/video/fTQhXxzpoxI/w-d-xo.html
The eFixx video (but not the comments on it) seemed very positive. Enabling savings and control is where it is at.
@@Biggest-dh1vr sadly the click bait title is exactly what their commenters seem to thrive on 😐