Here’s Why I Changed My Mind About EDF Energy’s ‘Sunday Saver’ Challenge
In this post a few weeks ago I discussed EDF Energy’s ‘Sunday Saver’ challenge. I explained why I had some reservations about the scheme and wasn’t therefore taking it up.
The post attracted a lot of interest. It actually generated more comments than any other post I have made on Pounds and Sense. Various people (especially Harry and KenM – thanks, guys!) posted in some detail about their experiences with the scheme. As a result I changed my opinion somewhat and decided to sign up when the opportunity arose the following month.
In this update I thought I would talk about why I changed my mind and the results I have achieved myself over the last few weeks. But first, a word of explanation…
What is EDF’s Sunday Saver Challenge?
This scheme is intended to reward EDF customers for switching some of their energy usage away from peak times.
The way it works is that you’re given targets to shift your electricity consumption on weekdays away from peak hours (4pm-7pm). When you hit your weekly target (which is set individually for each user by EDF), you earn free electricity the following Sunday.
EDF say, ‘The more you shift, the more you earn – reduce your weekly peak usage by 40% and you could earn up to 16 hours of free electricity per week.’ The challenge takes place monthly, starting on the first Monday of each month.
Why Did I Have Reservations?
As I said above, I had various reservations about the scheme prior to signing up. I have copied below the relevant paragraphs from my original post.
- To benefit from this scheme you have to cut your daily energy usage every weekday between 4pm and 7pm. That’s quite a long period (three hours), and coincides with when I would normally be cooking my evening meal. To have any realistic chance of cutting my energy use during this time, I would have to eat either ridiculously early or significantly later than normal. For various reasons, including my health, I prefer to eat between 6 and 7 pm and no later. So that in itself is a big ask and would impact drastically on my normal routine.
- Free electricity on Sunday sounds great, but the devil is in the detail. EDF say that you will get ‘up to 16 hours’ of free electricity if you meet their targets, but are very vague about what this means in practice. Specifically, they don’t explain how your energy-saving targets are calculated, how any reduction in usage translates to free hours, or when on Sunday you will be able to use the free electricity awarded.
- In addition, they say there are ‘fair usage’ limits to how much free electricity you can have. Again, they are vague about what this means in practice. The obvious way to use your free electricity would be to charge your EV, and I strongly suspect limits would be placed on this. As for me, I don’t have an EV and don’t want one, so my options for benefiting from the free electricity would be limited. I could shift use of appliances like my washing machine to Sunday but doubt if I could save more than a few kw/h this way (obviously the exact number would depend on how many free hours I was allocated, which is anyone’s guess). That means my free electricity would likely benefit me by no more than a pound or two.
- Lastly, as a solar panel owner I already get some free electricity anyway. My panels obviously generate less in the winter, but during daylight hours they still produce something. That means any benefit from free electricity on Sundays will be reduced, especially if (as is likely) the free hours are in the day rather than at night.
So What Changed?
The comments and info posted by readers who had signed up for the challenge and (in general) had benefited from it changed my views somewhat. They also addressed some of the doubts I had expressed in my original post.
As regards the free hours on Sunday, depending on how much you reduce your usage you can get anything from 4 hours to a maximum of 16. The free hours always start at 8 am and go on until as late as 12 midnight if you achieve the full target saving.
There are indeed ‘fair usage’ limits for the free hours you are awarded. They are as follows: 11.25 kWh with 4 free hours; 22.5 kWh with 8 free hours; 33.75 kWh with 12 free hours; and 45 kWh with 16 hours. EDF say these amounts are subject to change.
I still don’t know how exactly the saving targets are set, but here is a screen capture showing the ones I was set last week and the results I obtained.
As you can see, that was a successful week! I’ll talk more about my personal experiences with the Sunday Saver challenge below.
I also realised that, while I don’t have an EV, I could use a fair-sized portion of my free electricity charging my home storage battery from the grid. This wasn’t something I had done before (I got my battery mainly to store power generated by my solar panels) but obviously I knew it was possible. As things turned out (see below) it wasn’t without its challenges. But without doing this I’m not convinced I could have used enough free electricity to make the scheme worthwhile.
I do, incidentally, still think that EDF should make the terms and conditions of the challenge clearer prior to signing up. But anyway, based on info received from my readers, I felt it was worth giving it a try. So here’s a bit about my experiences with the November challenge.
So What Happened?
When I decided to do the EDF Sunday Saver challenge, I was clear I wasn’t going to cause myseff a ton of hassle cutting my electricity usage to the bone (I live on my own these days, incidentally). I decided I could probably defer starting my (electric) cooking till 7 pm. That was a minor inconvenience, but so far anyway I’ve been getting around it by eating meals that are quick to cook (yesterday I had gnocchi with pesto and spinach, for example). I’ll admit I’ve had a few microwave meals as well. I did also do some healthier batch cooking on one of the Sundays to produce meals I could quickly heat up during the week.
Shifting my main cooking time has undoubtedly done more than anything to reduce my peak-time energy use. Apart from that I have done little. I wouldn’t normally be hoovering or using the washing machine at peak times anyway. I have made a point of turning off my desktop computer by 4 pm (something I should probably have been doing anyway). I’ve also been a bit more careful about switching off lights when I don’t need them. And obviously I don’t use any electric heating during peak hours (thankfully I have gas central heating and a separate gas fire in the lounge). And that’s it really. For the first three weeks of the November challenge I achieved my targets fairly easily, earning the maximum 16 hours for two of them and 12 hours for the other.
I saved all my hoovering and clothes washing for Sundays to make use of the free electricity. In addition, as mentioned above, I set my home battery to charge from the grid that day. Unfortunately because I hadn’t done this before – and the software isn’t as intuitive as it should be – the first time it didn’t work at all. The following Sunday I got it working but somehow must have set it to charge every day in the evening. So on the Monday the battery started charging at the maximum rate (6 kw/h) at 5 pm. Unfortunately I didn’t notice this until around 6 pm, so that drove a coach and horses through my weekly energy-saving target. At the time of writing, my weekly dashboard shows that I am currently using 97.5% of my electricity during peak hours and – unsurprisingly – am ‘not on target’ to achieve the 14.9% set for me. Obviously, then, I will have to write off this week. I just hope that my poor performance will encourage EDF to set me generous targets in December!
Closing Thoughts
Overall, my experiences have been positive enough to want to continue the Sunday Saver challenge. I will have saved some money by doing it, which will be credited to my account in December.
It will be interesting to see what usage targets EDF set me next month, especially after I messed up the final week of the challenge. But in any event, EDF have also let me know that anyone signing up for the December challenge will get an automatic eight hours of free electricity on Christmas Day regardless of any energy savings they make. So that is another incentive to sign up for December (which I have already done),.
So those were my experiences with the EDF Sunday Saver challenge in November. I’d be interested to hear how you got on if you did it too, and whether you will be continuing the challenge. Also, if you are on a similar scheme with another energy company, I’d love to hear how that’s going for you. Please post any comments below as usual, not forgetting to allow me a few hours to approve them.
- As I have said before on PAS, I can offer anyone switching to EDF £50 off their bills if they use my refer-a-friend link at https://edfenergy.com/quote/refer-a-friend/sunny-koala-9462 when applying. I will also get £50 off my bill if you do this (£75 till 12 December 2024), which is duly appreciated
November 29, 2024 @ 6:21 pm
I wish you luck with your endeavour, Nick. In my case, the targets were surprisingly easy to achieve at the start, but became progressively tougher later on. I think my main problem is that my overall use of electricity is fairly low, as heating and cooking are by gas and dishwashing and clothes washing are usually outside the 4-7 pm slot anyway, so it only leaves lighting to “shift” away. Not really practical with lighting up time now about 4pm. I only signed up for December to get the automatic Xmas Day offer, even though I can’t see me making use of it.
BTW, EDF’s Black Friday offer is £75 for a successful referral.
November 30, 2024 @ 9:02 am
Thanks, Harry. Fair enough. I have an electric cooker, so that does make cutting peak time usage easier for me. This week, as predicted, I failed to cut my weekly usage sufficiently to earn any free electricity, but maybe that will help ensure EDF don’t reduce my targets too much in December. In any event I will soon find out.
And yes, you’re right about the temporary uplift in refer-a-friend bonuses (which ends 12 December). To be clear, this only applies to the referrer (me, in this case). The bonus received by new customers remains at £50.
December 2, 2024 @ 11:06 am
Wow. EDF have reduced my target from 14.9% in November to just 10.6% in December. Doubt if I’ll achieve that with the days still growing shorter. Can’t see myself getting the full 16 hours of free electricity any week this month. Maybe 4 hours if I’m lucky.
December 3, 2024 @ 8:49 pm
Yes that sounds like the familiar diminishing returns trip that Harry & I seem to have experienced. I can report however that after signing up for November but in the end not bothering to engage in my usual peak time reduction routines because of this problem, my first day of the December challenge saw my challenge range bounce all the way up to 11.0%-6.6% (whereas for November after two months of engagement with the scheme my challenge range had fallen in November to 5.5%-3.3% which meant I effectively got nothing so I didn’t bother after week one). So after just one day of the December challenge and returning to my usual peak time reduction routines the Energy Hub app. reports at close of play on the first Monday (much quicker processing time than before I have to say) I am already ‘On Track’ for potentially the full 16 hours freebie with a score of 3.8% which is the lowest percentage I have scored in any month to date. So it does look as though their algorithm does indeed base some of it’s values on the previous month’s peak time values which in my case (as I didn’t try to reduce at all in peak times past week one) I in effect have more to ‘shift’ (as Harry rightly predicted) and that should I think enable me to achieve the full 16 hours every week for the rest of the December challenge period. We’ll see anyway. But so far so good. 🙂 … the dropout and bounce back approach does seem to work.
December 4, 2024 @ 6:58 am
Thanks, Ken. That’s good to hear. Though it does seem perverse that the algorithm is effectively incentivizing people to use more energy at peak times so that they will then be set less demanding targets the following month. I suspect that EDF will have to review how the scheme works at some point.
December 4, 2024 @ 12:25 pm
Well people learn of course … so we game the system as we are prone to do. But these days so do Large Language Model ‘AI’ constructs like ChatGPT and the like. I suspect that EDF have deployed LLM tech as part of this initiative so no doubt it/they will assess results and adjust accordingly going forward. We don’t know of course all of the business case drivers for the scheme in it’s current form, so who knows, if new customers are tempted into the EDF fold because they read blogs like this and discover they can game the system by ‘dropout & bounce back’ once their savings and rewards bottom out maybe that’s all part of the plan. I guess it’s all about market share in the end really isn’t it.
December 21, 2024 @ 5:06 pm
Just a quick update (honest 🙂 ) on my progress to date for the December challenge. With my target range set for the month @ 11.0%-6.6% for the last three weeks (doing nothing different than I had done in September & October) I have consistently achieved < 3.0% each time and have now received confirmation of my third consecutive 16 hour (45kWh) freebie slot and expect that to be the same for the rest of December (plus of course the 8 hours additional on 25th. Dec.) Dunno what that achievement will mean for January if they run the same scheme but I'll take what I can get now and worry about that later. If the targets are too tight to bother with I'll just sign up but then not actually participate again like I did for November then see what effect that has again for any following months. Happy Xmas to all 🙂
December 21, 2024 @ 6:02 pm
Thanks, Ken. You’re doing well! A very happy Christmas to you too.
December 25, 2024 @ 7:54 am
Just a thought … can’t see it mentioned specifically anywhere but I assume that the free Xmas Day 8 hours is still subject to their fair usage cap of 22.5kWh and that the Sunday Saver Challenge count is still running on that day as usual from 4pm to 7pm? You can see some people getting caught out on their next billing day and at the end of the week when their peak hours target stats are published.
December 25, 2024 @ 8:48 am
Thanks, Ken, and merry Christmas to you and yours. Yes, I assume the standard limits for 8 hours still apply. At 4 pm we will all need to switch from using lots of electricity to as little as possible!
December 25, 2024 @ 10:32 am
Although to be fair the extra electricity we are using from 8 am to 4 pm should make it easier to achieve peak-time savings this week. That aside, I will be using the free electricity today to fully charge my home battery, so this evening and overnight (and probably much of tomorrow as well) I will be powering my house entirely from the battery anyway!
December 26, 2024 @ 9:13 am
Yes I have several Anker Powerstations as well as some large 280ah Eco Worthy LifePO4 batteries as well now as I expand my domestic DC ‘off grid’ system. At weekday 4pm shutdown time now I also make extensive use of ‘smart’ plugs to turn stuff off and then back on again at 7pm to save me the effort or running round the house shutting stuff down (and usually missing 1-2 in the process). I use various makes these days as I’ve tried to embrace ‘home automation’ with degrees of some success and a lot of unfulfilled promise. One of the issues I was faced with when trying to introduce the weekday shutdown 4pm-7pm was how to enforce that for an appliance that was already plugged into a ‘smart’ plug like my electric oil filled radiator which already turns itself on and off according to ambient heat sensors in the room (which are more sensitive and controllable than it’s in-built analogue thermostat). So I found of course that just programming an additional stop-start period didn’t really work because during the ‘off’ period if the heat sensor detected a temperature drop below it’s minimum threshold it would just turn the heater back on and defeat the peak hours reduction regime for the EDF scheme. In the end I solved the issue by plugging the existing ‘smart’ plug programmed for temperature management into a second ‘smart’ plug whose sole function was to enforce the Mon-Fri 4pm-7pm shutdown for that appliance. Problem solved! 🙂 … so my heater continues to function in concert with my room sensors as before except during the weekly shutdown when the second ‘smart’ plug (nearest the actual power socket) denies it power for 3 hours. These things don’t actually use much power themselves (they are essentially wi-fi enabled switches) and assuming you’re already using a ‘smart’ plug that’s fit for the purpose you’re using it for (e.g. 3kW heater plugged into a 13A rated ‘smart’ plug … check that because they are not all the same) and your second one is also up to that spec to pass the power through to the first one and on to the heater itself you should have no problems. One for wider discussion group maybe … anyway just thought I’d pass on a bit of useful info. for anyone interested. All my stuff now just automatically shuts down at 4pm Mon-Fri and comes back online @ 7pm without me having to get out of armchair. And anything that needs to powered up during that period (e.g. broadband router, laptop & monitor) is plugged into a powerbank that kicks into UPS mode when it’s mains power is cut off (again by a ‘smart’ plug ‘kill switch’ on it’s power supply brick). Then back to charge up & mains pass through @ 7pm.
December 26, 2024 @ 9:37 am
Thanks, Ken. You are an inspiration!
December 26, 2024 @ 11:23 am
🙂 … Just to expand on that a little bit more. The use of WiFi enabled ‘Smart’ plugs also allows me to automate to some degree my use of the free energy on Sundays. So my powerbanks running as UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) for my computer setup and another powering a ventilation fan 24/7 are now also programmed to drop their connection to the mains supply at midnight on Saturday. This forces them into UPS mode and they continue to power the devices plugged into them from their inbuilt battery storage. Their ‘smart’ plug ‘killswitch’ that their own power brick is plugged into is then programmed to restore mains power at the start of the 8am freebie slot on the Sunday morning effectively charging the powerbank back up to full capacity for free. And once at 100% full charge it then just continues to supply mains power to the appliances connected to it in direct pass through from the mains as before. That way I always have some space in the powerbanks to make use of during the free Sunday free period plus I don’t have to remember to do the charge up. And if I need to get any more nerdy some of the ‘smart’ plugs are also power monitors as well so I can see the pattern of energy usage that passes through them and use that to further optimise my usage and charge up routines.
December 2, 2024 @ 12:39 pm
Looks like you’re also on the path of diminishing returns, Nick.
December 2, 2024 @ 2:38 pm
Yep. At least I have the free 8 hours on Christmas Day to look forward to, along with my £10 Christmas Dinner bonus from the government 😅
December 2, 2024 @ 10:41 pm
I shall be cancelling my switch to EDF within the cooling off period. I joined because of the Sunday free electricity and free electricity on Christmas Day and the tariff was competitive.
However, on checking my account, I have not been enrolled in the December challenge therefore making me ineligible for the Christmas Day deal as well.
There is no upfront information about how the deal works, I know that I signed up for it when I switched so it is false advertising undertaken by EDF at the end of November. So if you have done the same, I suggest checking your account. If it says that the December challenge is underway then I would phone up and cancel, as I will do tomorrow as you aren’t going to get a penny out of this underhand attempt to sign customers up with a false offer.
December 4, 2024 @ 6:52 am
Well that’s not ideal obviously Craig. I was already an EDF customer so I have no experience of the Sunday Saver Challenge in the context of someone who has ‘switched’. I would however note that not being initially able to discern that you are part of the challenge from your online account portal doesn’t necessarily mean that you aren’t. Their web portal is a travesty of user interface design that as far as I can discern has a a habit of popping up default screens when it is unable to access in real time the background user data required. So for example I was initially dismayed to find that I was apparently not signed up for the November challenge despite definitely having opted in and receiving an on screen confirmation of success. But initially when I went to the portal on day one to see what my targets were the system just told me that the scheme had already begun, that it was not possible for me to now join and that one of the possible reasons for this was that my smart meter was not able to provide 30 minute interval readings. All poppycock of course because I had already participated in and gained from previous challenges. So I began my usual daily peak time reduction routines as normal anyway and lo and behold by the close of play Wednesday of that first week my portal was populated with the data from Monday & Tuesday giving me my target and progress to date. That two day lag persisted for the rest of the month i.e. giving me updates no more timely than at least 48 hours old. I note on day one of the December challenge that the Monday data was available in the portal within 24 hours which is maybe an indicator that they have debugged some of the back end processing and data gathering … who knows. I won’t hold my breath. In a way it’s a similar quandary to my November challenge when after my initial target was confirmed I realised that after two months of target setting I could no longer make any meaningful reductions to get any freebie Sunday energy. But I stayed signed up for the rest of the challenge for November (but did not actually engage in any meaningful peak time reductions) and then made sure I was signed up for December … and amazingly my targets were reset and I’m back in the game now with a chance of getting 16 hours free energy a week again. So my point is in this respect we do not actually know if signing up for a challenge but then not participating has the same effect as just not signing up i.e. does your smart meter still send 30 minute readings if you are not signed up which is presumably what their system uses to set your targets for the next month. Personally I intend to continue to sign up no matter what the targets are and, as for November, if they’re unrealistic I just won’t do anything different. Point being the system is still acquiring and analysing my usage data in the background. We just do not know enough yet to be able to know if being in the game but not playing has the same effect as not signing up for the game. Anyway I bet on the former … sign up for November but not play the game … and that dropout strategy has paid back for December and my target values have ‘bounced back’. Anyway just a brain dump folks … who thought smart meters could be such fun (NOT) 🙂 KenM
December 5, 2024 @ 12:32 pm
I’ve just had my November bill, which records a £5 discount for SS. Not much for the effort involved, but I will continue to sign up to see what happens to the currently unachievable targets. I don’t plan to make any special efforts to reduce my peak time usage any further.
December 8, 2024 @ 10:34 am
Got the free Sunday in November and twice in December but now the next target set is impossible to achieve. I have batteries so have used those during peak time and got down to 0.2% with the latest target for this week set at 0.1%, so no chance! Still got the 8hr Xmas day though.
December 8, 2024 @ 10:44 am
Thanks, Stuart. It’s mad, isn’t it? As you can see from other comments here, you’re not the only one in this position. Personally I think EDF should scrap whatever algorithm they are using and instead reward people who have low peak-tims usage compared with other customers for the same period. We shall see, though.
December 21, 2024 @ 10:47 am
I have signed up for this and on a Sunday I am usually home all day and now put on electric heaters which no way would I be able to afford ordinarily. Do they discount you bill every month?
December 21, 2024 @ 11:20 am
Hi Michelle. EDF set you savings targets for reducing peak-time usage during the week, and if you achieve these you get between 4 and 16 hours free on Sundays. The free hours occur a week after the end of the qualifying week. So in the week from Monday 16 to Friday 20 December (for example) any free hours you qualified for would apply on Sunday 29 December. You get refunded for energy used during the free Sunday hours. This is paid as a single credit to your energy account the following month.
You can track your progress via the Energy Hub section of the EDF website when logged in (though oddly not the EDF app). You should also get updates via text message (I do at any rate!).
Good luck. Just be aware that based on my and other people’s experiences, the weekly targets become increasingly challenging to achieve – so make the most of the scheme initially.
Finally, the scheme renews monthly and you have to sign up again each month to continue. I should also add that if you are already enrolled in the December scheme, you will automatically get 8 hours of free electricity on Christmas Day.
December 24, 2024 @ 8:54 am
We had our first free energy on Sunday, between 8am – 4pm. We have an electric car so I put that on to charge, but it kept tripping the charger. Surprise, surprise Monday morning the charger worked fine.
December 25, 2024 @ 8:47 am
Ooh that does sound like some covert current capping going on there Margaret doesn’t it. We’re aware of course of the EDF fair usage caps for each ‘free’ period but that is defined in terms of the kWh units of capacity that we all get billed for. I see nothing anywhere about restrictions in terms of current effectively limiting rate of charge. I hit the system pretty hard on a Sunday morning recharging a number of Anker Powerstations and standalone LifePO4 batteries that see me through the weekday 4pm-7pm peak hour reductions and I don’t hit any problems … but then I am charging each of my storage units from standard separate 13A three pin sockets throughout the house. Are you using a dedicated EV charge point? What rate were you attempting to charge your EV at on the Sunday when it failed (7kW?) Did you try to reduce your charge rate? It would be interesting on the forum to see other EV users experiences of charging up during the Sunday freebie times. I am positive that with our failing energy grid we will all eventually be subject to capacity quotas, current caps along with both scheduled rota downtimes as well as ad hoc outages. All of these peak time reduction schemes by energy suppliers I’m sure are in part an attempt to try and prepare us for that eventuality. Thanks KenM
December 28, 2024 @ 11:21 am
I wonder if your EV charger issue was in any way exacerbated by a voltage drop incident as identified by Harry below? Mmmmmm … curiouser and curiouser.
December 26, 2024 @ 2:14 pm
I managed to successfully use 12.5 kW hrs on 25th, mainly for my PHEV battery.
However, I did notice that at 10am, the supply voltage had dropped from its usual 245V down to 233V. Doesn’t seem a lot, but as power is proportional to voltage squared, this resulted in a 10% loss of available power and a corresponding increase in charging time. It’s a pity that voltage and current are not available on my smartmeter display. For this information I needed to use an inexpensive monitor purchased from a popular high street hardware store. This monitor also measures volts, amps, watts and power factor separately. For a DC supply, V x A = W, but this isn’t necessarily true for AC as V and A may not be in phase and W could be less than V x A. Why is this important? Because we are charged for V x A, not W. Probably not important for most users, unless they use high-powered devices with an inductive load, such as motors and maybe battery chargers. I used my monitor to check my EV charger and was able to confirm that W/(V x A) = 1. This ratio is known as “power factor”.
Also, at 10am, I thought I would check where the power was coming from:
https://energynumbers.info/gbgrid
Most of the electricity was coming from wind and nuclear (including France). France does seem to supply us with about 3.5GW more or less constantly.
This morning, I checked to see what I had been charged for electricity yesterday: 65p!
I also discovered that I am back on track to earn free elec. next Sunday, with my current peak use 20.1% and target 14.2%. So it’s as I predicted, once your target becomes unachievable it’s possible to re-set it.
December 26, 2024 @ 2:23 pm
Many thanks, Harry. As a matter of interest, this week I am on track to earn 12 hours of free electricity on Sun 5th January, and just 0.1% from getting the full 16. Charging up my battery during the free hours yesterday has certainly helped!
December 28, 2024 @ 9:23 am
Interesting observation about the voltage drop there Harry. Wish I’d had the foresight to do that … by 8am on 25/12 I had pretty much depleted two of my ECO-WORTHY 12V 280Ah (7168Wh) LiFePO4 Lithium Batteries and dutifully hooked them up to my two hi-spec Victron 30A mains chargers. Neither were fully charged within the 8 hours (which was as expected as they’ll usually take 10-11 hours from flat) but now I’m wondering if the percentage ‘State of Charge’ achieved (which I had thought at the time was a bit below what I was expecting tbh) was in fact exacerbated by voltage reduction pushing my charging window out.
Interesting … I think I’m going to have to follow your lead and buy a proper plug in power meter that tracks current and voltage. My smartypants little WiFi ‘Smart Plugs’ won’t do that, just kWh used over time for cost calculation purposes. Nice one 🙂
December 28, 2024 @ 1:42 pm
Advantages of the meter are that you can monitor an individual appliance, set a unit price and see the total kW/h and cost over a given time period. It can also measure mains frequency, but I’ve never seen it deviate from 50 Hz.
December 28, 2024 @ 10:35 pm
Indeed … if you’ve got any recommendations I’d be interested. As I say I use various Wi-Fi ‘smart plugs’ from the home automation ecosystems of TP-Link, Meross and Samsung. Some of them have power monitoring but it’s limited to current power (W), then averages for each individual socket (i.e. appliance or gang strip) but that’s it. They’re useful as on/off switches that you set multiple repeating schedules and consumption averages that you can then use to calculate (manually) costs. But that’s it … the whole home automation stuff I’ve found to be over hyped and a bit of a mish mash with interoperability between different ecosystems nowhere near properly programmable, usable or reliable yet. So I’ll definitely look at the power meter plug-ins as well I think because I am plagued by weird brown-outs where I am directly opposite a sub-station (but equally weirdly very very few actual complete power outages over the 30 years I’ve lived here even when houses all around me are out except the terrace of twelve 100+ year old houses where I am). Ideally I’d like some sort of kit that can collaborate with each other like the Victron smart solar stuff where they can be grouped using the app into appliances that communicate and monitor each other. Anyway any ideas gratefully received 🙂 p.s. I wonder how pure the 50Hz sine wave remains going forward as the mix of DC renewables into the grid increases with Ed’s Net Zero fantasy.
December 29, 2024 @ 1:36 pm
Another thought about voltage drop: if and when load shedding has to be enacted, an easy method would be just to lower voltage. I doubt whether too many users would be seriously inconvenienced, except perhaps for those with electric cookers, which may slow down a bit. I wonder if this could happen to electric trains?
December 30, 2024 @ 10:02 am
Hah! That would make for a cracking platform announcement wouldn’t it : “The 09:15 due arrive at platform 5 for London Paddington will be approximately 30 minutes late. This is due to reduced voltage on the line.” 🙂
No reason not to I suppose. Depends on how they manage priority supply I guess. When I worked on the NHS National Program as an IT consultant back in 2005 I was surprised to see just how many hi-tech pieces of equipment (e.g. respirators & incubators) there are in the average hospital that have to have their own discrete local battery back-up power supply to ensure that they continue to function uninterrupted during a power grid outage and/or a potential site back-up generator failure. Voltage drop won’t initially affect them I guess but if it then still results in grid outage anyway these things will be slower to charge back up to full capacity when power is restored if they are still on reduced voltage. Point is if the emergency plans assume a recovery time of ‘X’ for these critical pieces of kit they may take longer because of voltage reduction that is not accounted for and wasn’t announced. The ripple effect of reduced voltage in some respects could be delayed and not initially apparent until exceptional double whammy situations and then stuff starts failing when you didn’t expect it to. Mobile phone masts are the same … they have their own UPS systems. Hit those with reduced voltage as well as a succession of outages and you could get network failures you had assumed the kit was protected against because it can’t return to optimal state of charge fast enough. Voltage reduction may be their quiet and simple solution to load shedding at times but it’s not entirely without consequence I’d argue. Hard to quantify though … but a necessary part of any disaster recovery plan these days.
December 26, 2024 @ 4:02 pm
Correction: Sun 5th Jan.
December 26, 2024 @ 4:28 pm
Another correction: charge for yesterday should have been £4-43! 65p was for today.
December 28, 2024 @ 1:52 pm
You say, about charging your battery from the grid rather than from solar to store energy to use during the peak period “Unfortunately because I hadn’t done this before – and the software isn’t as intuitive as it should be – the first time it didn’t work at all. The following Sunday I got it working but somehow must have set it to charge every day in the evening. So on the Monday the battery started charging at the maximum rate (6 kw/h) at 5 pm.”.
A GivEnergy AIO system, perhaps? Sounds very, very familiar. Disabling the timed charge toggle setting doesn’t actually stop the charging. You need to also clear down the start and end times too, or it will keep charging between the set times even though the feature is “disabled”!
We decided not to bother about saving a few pennies by pre-emptively charging our battery, particularly in the winter, when the battery is cold, and the efficiency can drop to around 75% or lower. Although we’re keen to save money where possible, that just feels like too much faff for pennies.
December 28, 2024 @ 5:11 pm
Thanks for this. Yes, exactly so. It took me three goes before I finally got the settings right. I understand it now, but it really isn’t intuitive. And yes, it’s Givenergy!
December 30, 2024 @ 4:03 pm
Scheme has been suspended so it will be interesting to see how the revised scheme works.
December 30, 2024 @ 4:09 pm
My weekly text from EDF telling me what free hours I’ve earned also says they are ‘hitting pause on Sunday Saver to make it even better’ … nothing yet on the web portal with any details. So no January scheme as yet then I guess.
December 30, 2024 @ 6:51 pm
Like others, I found the incentive to reduce the 4-7 peak usage was great at first, but to achieve a monthly diminishing target was only managed by bumping up usage on the other 21 hours until inevitably it became impossible.
Friends of mine, on being told how I’d earned £25 in October and November, signed up for 1 year deals.
Sunday Saver starts to look like a clever ponzi advertising scheme using participants to spread the news.
Today they’ve announced a pause of the Sunday Saver, suggesting it maybe will return at some point.
I hope it does otherwise not only will I lose the saving, but also a number of friends locked in to EDF.
December 30, 2024 @ 8:49 pm
Just saw this on : https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6559584/edf-sunday-saver/p4
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‘But just to confuse on the GAS tab!!!!
We’re hitting pause on Sunday Saver!
Exciting changes are coming to Sunday Saver and we’re taking a short break this month to improve the challenge and reset your target.
Sunday Saver will return in February. ‘
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I don’t have gas so my portal doesn’t have the ‘Gas tab’ … but it would appear that EDF have run a parallel Sunday Saver Scheme for gas then? … which it is apparently now suspending until February.
December 31, 2024 @ 7:26 am
I have gas and am not aware of any separate Sunday Saver scheme for gas. AFAIK the scheme has always been for electricity only.
December 31, 2024 @ 1:25 pm
What’s going on? I’ve just been congratulated on earning 8 hrs free elec. on Sun, 5 Jan 2025 and I’m in the top 50% of my comparison group.
I managed to re-set my original unachievable target by using more power during peak hours, followed by a reduction.
December 31, 2024 @ 4:28 pm
Another update: I’m on track to earn another 8 hrs on Sun 12 Jan.
Also, just received the following text: “We’re hitting pause on Sunday Saver to make it even better for you.”
January 1, 2025 @ 12:25 am
We all seem to be getting the text message now advising those of us already signed up for Sunday Saver that they’re ‘hitting pause’ … although I am also seeing marketing emails sent just today encouraging people to switch to EDF and to take up their 1 & 2 year fixed price deals and pushing … yes you guessed it … Sunday Saver free electricity!
That’s either poor marketing where the left & right hands are out of synch … or new EDF customers will have their own scheme while we veterans have to take a back seat? Probably the former I suspect.
Haven’t see anything myself on the EDF site yet confirming when/if the Sunday Saver scheme is to return … just a 3rd. party mention of February. But nothing yet confirmed that I’ve personally seen anyway.
December 31, 2024 @ 7:19 pm
I think an improved Sunday Saver should be simple and easy to follow.
Maybe half price electricity from 8:00 to 2:00 with no fine print or exclusions.
Yes, there will be big users, but many more small ones. Worth a try.