In a previous post I talked about querying data from The Owl SQLite database, and here I will advance on that a little.
I’ve also recently made some changes to my home network after upgrading to Virgin’s Superhub and 60Mb Broadband service. I replaced my 16 port 10/100 switch with a new 8 port Gigabit switch, I got rid of my old P4 media server and have a more efficient dual core box, I’ve got rid of my wireless access points and am now using the one in the Superhub. I got rid of my M0n0wall firewall which used to allow me to have a Guest WiFi network that I could then separate from my network, but I can do this all in the Superhub (I can’t traffic shape, but with 60Mb I don’t really need to) and no need for all the extra equipment to use up expensive power. The only thing I don’t have is the IPSEC VPN option, but I’ve got a workaround using Routing and Remote Access on my server 2k8 R2 box.
Anyway, my house is now more power efficient so that made me question whether or not the Economy 7 tariff that I’m on was still the best option, so here’s what I did.
As I mentioned here, I’m on the Scottish Power Online Fixed Energy January 2013 tariff which has various rates depending on season and time of day. The full Tariff can be found here.
The including VAT column is quite interesting, because it didn’t look to be 20%, or even 17.5%, that’s because it’s 5%, this is reduced rate VAT, see here.
I wrote some SQL to export the data that I wanted from the Owl database that I have gathered so far:
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 |
select sum(kW) as 'kW', year, month, day, tod from ( select year, month, day, 'Night' as 'tod' ,sum(ch1_kw_avg/600) as 'kW' from energy_history where month in (4,5,6,7,8,9) and hour in (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) group by year, month, day union select year, month, day, 'Day' as 'tod', sum(ch1_kw_avg/600) as 'kW' from energy_history where month in (4,5,6,7,8,9) and hour in (0,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23) group by year, month, day union select year, month, day, 'Night' as 'tod', sum(ch1_kw_avg/600) as 'kW' from energy_history where month in (1,2,3,10,11,12) and hour in (0,1,2,3,4,5,6) group by year, month, day union select year, month, day, 'Day' as 'tod', sum(ch1_kw_avg/600) as 'kW' from energy_history where month in (1,2,3,10,11,12) and hour in (7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23) group by year, month, day ) group by year, month, day, tod |
‘Tod’ is Time of Day in case you didn’t guess!
I will use this code later on to generate my costs tables on the fly using the soon to be written ‘Mega Owl App‘ that’s just started development.
I then popped this information into a spreadsheet to quickly work out the best value, which it seems for me right now is still on the Economy 7 tariff due to the fact that everyday was cheaper under it!
There were a few bank holiday and weekends in there which are always more power intensive when the washing machine and tumble dryers are going for hours on end, also with Euro 2012 on right now the TV is taking quite a power beating!
Anyway, this might come in helpful if you are trying to get the best value from your electric, everyone’s situation is different so use this as a guide only.