CO2 Intensity values on slots

KristianS

One of my personal driving factors, apart from purely financial benefits, of getting a BESS [Battery Energy Storage System] was to be able to 'load shift'. This is driven from a desire to reduce, as much as I feasibly can, my families impact on our global environment. Slot selection, is primarily based on price, of course and that I do not want to change, but the abilty to pick two very similar priced slots based up on the CO2 intensity of those slots would be 'useful' in my decision making process.
Would it therefore be possible to gather and present those values in the current Agile Octopus slot selection feature with these values added also?
Thanks WW

adam

Is the carbon intensity known ahead of time?

KristianS

adam Yes, I also use OctopusWatch, and they present both sets of figures for each half hour slot

admin

KristianS Is this data available publicly? Or is this effectively a calculation in-house at Octopus based on estimates/predictions?

KristianS

admin As OctopusWatch is nothing to do with Octopus directly, I suspect the data is sourced via a public interface, but let me do some digging and find out... Lots of websites use this data - NG ESO / National Grid Live etc etc, but the source of which, I am not 100% sure - I will investigate and come back to you

admin

KristianS Ah OK, thanks.

Yeah, did notice this: https://www.nationalgrideso.com/future-energy/our-progress-towards-net-zero/carbon-intensity-dashboard - but no feed or breakdown for a whole day in 30 min slots though.

KristianS

From the ESO website https://www.nationalgrideso.com/data-portal/country-carbon-intensity-forecast
It appears that they get their data from here: https://carbonintensity.org.uk/
which suggests that it has an API you can query. Hopefully this is useful. Even if it is limited to two hourly slots, which appears to be the website view. Whether the API gives it more granuarly than that.....

KristianS

Carbon Intensity API Great Britain

Introduction
This is the Official Carbon Intensity API for Great Britain developed by National Grid. You can find out more about carbon intensity at carbonintensity.org.uk.

Summary
National Grid’s Carbon Intensity API provides an indicative trend of regional carbon intensity of the electricity system in Great Britain (GB) up to 2 days ahead of real-time. It provides programmatic and timely access to both forecast and estimated carbon intensity data. The Carbon Intensity forecast includes CO2 emissions related to electricity generation only. The includes emissions from all large metered power stations, interconnector imports, transmission and distribution losses, and accounts for national electricity demand, embedded wind and solar generation.

https://carbon-intensity.github.io/api-definitions/#carbon-intensity-api-v2-0-0

admin

KristianS Nice, thank you!

I guess price really is a good proxy indicator for it. Unsure how different the CO2 intensity indicator would be for same priced slots?

KristianS

This appears to be the methodology document for Regional Carbon Intensity numbers;
https://github.com/carbon-intensity/methodology/raw/master/Regional%20Carbon%20Intensity%20Forecast%20Methodology.pdf

KristianS

admin
Price is the main factor, I agree, but sometimes CO2 intensity is quite different from slots of the same price because they are linked but not necessarily subject to the same forces.
It was only a thought...

admin

KristianS Fair enough bud, and thanks for the details. Definitely something to keep in mind. Keep the ideas coming! ☺️

KristianS

@admin - just bumping this into the queue once more 😉😉