Octopus Energy reviews: Give your feedback

Telegraph_Sam

This is where human ingenuity takes over.  If I have a used electric moped in my back yard - and I don't use it for whatever reason (it may not be roadworthy) - does it have to have an MOT or mere proof of ownership to qualify for GF? If it remains in the back yard it is not going to break any kwh's records.
My own view is that if you introduce silly rules this then  just leads to "silly" ways round them - but who am  I to pontificate?

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

This is where human ingenuity takes over.  If I have a used electric moped in my back yard - and I don't use it for whatever reason (it may not be roadworthy) - does it have to have an MOT or mere proof of ownership to qualify for GF? If it remains in the back yard it is not going to break any kwh's records.
My own view is that if you introduce silly rules this then  just leads to "silly" ways round them - but who am  I to pontificate?

I don't see that "battery electric vehicle" is defined any more precisely than that in the terms and conditions, and even an e-scooter would qualify as a battery electric vehicle in the broadest sense.

savers_united

Telegraph_Sam said:

This is where human ingenuity takes over.  If I have a used electric moped in my back yard - and I don't use it for whatever reason (it may not be roadworthy) - does it have to have an MOT or mere proof of ownership to qualify for GF? If it remains in the back yard it is not going to break any kwh's records.
My own view is that if you introduce silly rules this then  just leads to "silly" ways round them - but who am  I to pontificate?

I don't think it would take much for them to change the terms even further if they felt the tariff was being abused, in terms of abuse I mean load shifting falling well short of typical EV charging. 
The clear expectation is a modern EV although they don't state that (yet), where your looking at least 30kwh capacity battery, as an EV owner your going to be shifting on average I would say 50kwh a week to meet the average 8k miles per annum, some will use more some will use less but not many could run an EV with 10-20kwh of off peak charging per week. 

It would not be hard from smart meter data to determine EV charging, it's a constant minimum of 2.2kwh every hour up to 7kwh for most EV owners.

They could do this by stipulating a minimum size battery capacity or only those with dedicated 7kwh chargers.

Or they simply go down the route of keeping the peak hours always a higher rate than their typical electrical tariffs and on GF having 10.30 as the earliest slot, so those who do little off peak charging it will simply not be cost effective overall in comparison.

This would seem the best way as any genuine EV owner would still likely stick with Go / Go Faster to get the 5p off peak rate, and accept paying a couple pennys more than other Octopus tariffs for peak usage. 

Telegraph_Sam

Your first alternative is half way towards a police state.  Would Octopus really have nothing better to do than intrude into our lives with all the man hours of questions / checks / monitoring / filtering that that would involve? 
The second part of  your suggestion is more like applied common sense - decide if does indeed make economic or dogmatic sense to favour EV owners and "penalize" non EV owners - and simply skew the tariff according to consumption regardless of where it goes. Time zones as at present. Minimum of bureaucracy and red tape. And as you say the consumer does the number crunching to decide which option suits him best. He can adjust his lifestyle (load shifting) according to his circs and priorities.

savers_united

Octopus would not be the first, its been going on for years with banks and their accounts. 
Some stipulate that you must pay in x amount each month or have x number of DD per month. People tried to get around this by moving money between accounts each month, so some banks went further and stated in the terms that money could not come from another account held in the same name etc.

So businesses do monitor customer activity, in todays age its not time consuming once scripts are set up. 

Octopus would be well within their rights to ensure the tariff is serving its purpose and not being abused. 
If they want to be seen as supporting the shift to a cleaner / greener society then tariffs that support EV use are good PR. The problem for them now is that the tariff has become popular with non EV customers who over the course  of a year load shift far less but occupy one of the limited Go / Go faster time slots that could be used more effectively. 

So an opinion would be going forward they will expect those signing up to an EV tariff to own or lease an EV whereby they will be able to shift their charging to times when demand on the grid is reduced. 

As most EV owners will tell you, with built in charging programmes overnight charging is well suited to EV's so don't really see the appeal of the 8.30 & 9.30 time slots when a vehicle could still be in use and that is why a 10.30 or 11.30 earliest time slot make more sense and with a more expensive peak rate will only really suit heavy overnight users that are in most cases EV owners in a domestic setting. 

niktheguru

I agree with these hypothetical case scenarios, but why should ev users have to resort to higher peak tariffs just to ensure non ev users comply with the rules.

masonic

savers_united said:

Octopus would not be the first, its been going on for years with banks and their accounts. 
Some stipulate that you must pay in x amount each month or have x number of DD per month. People tried to get around this by moving money between accounts each month, so some banks went further and stated in the terms that money could not come from another account held in the same name etc.

niktheguru said:

I agree with these hypothetical case scenarios, but why should ev users have to resort to higher peak tariffs just to ensure non ev users comply with the rules.

The analogy with bank perks/incentives is a good one. The banks have not gone to lengths that would make it unreasonably hard for genuine customers as this would defeat their objective of encouraging those customers. Instead they have put a few barriers in place to defeat the most egregious abuse of their offers (e.g. requirements for a number of direct debits, or for money to be paid in (not including transfers from another account at the same bank - I've never heard of a bank requiring an external account to be in a different name)) and have tolerated a certain number of determined people doing the bare minimum to meet the terms as written.

Companies are of course free to set whatever criteria they wish providing the criteria comply with discrimination law, but it is a balance between deterring those seeking minimum compliance with the letter of the terms only, while not deterring those complying with the spirit of the rules.

Telegraph_Sam

If I am the Octopus Marketing Dept (which I am not) I have to start off by defining my situation and my objectives:
Is demand approaching supply capacity limitations, and if so generally or at certain times? Or is there capacity to spare and there is a "free" market? Different approaches will be appropriate rather than a one size fits all.
Likewise it needs to be defined if the objective is to encourage EV consumption at the expense of non-EV consumption for idealogical or whatever reasons. Or to encourage load shifting to the off peak hours regardless of how the energy is used. 
Again different strategies will apply.
If these basic aims are not spelled out then there is a danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Inventing hoops for (non EV) customers to jump through, like the banks with their T's & C's, risks reversing load shifting by discriminating against this category of customers who individually consume less kWh's than the average EV owner but who in total amount to a not insignificant chunk of total demand. The more hoops that are invented the more clever ways will be found to circumvent them.
When all that is required is a simple pricing strategy that aims to match demand against supply.

[Deleted User]

Telegraph_Sam said:

If I am the Octopus Marketing Dept (which I am not) I have to start off by defining my situation and my objectives:
Is demand approaching supply capacity limitations, and if so generally or at certain times? Or is there capacity to spare and there is a "free" market? Different approaches will be appropriate rather than a one size fits all.
Likewise it needs to be defined if the objective is to encourage EV consumption at the expense of non-EV consumption for idealogical or whatever reasons. Or to encourage load shifting to the off peak hours regardless of how the energy is used. 
Again different strategies will apply.
If these basic aims are not spelled out then there is a danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Inventing hoops for (non EV) customers to jump through, like the banks with their T's & C's, risks reversing load shifting by discriminating against this category of customers who individually consume less kWh's than the average EV owner but who in total amount to a not insignificant chunk of total demand. The more hoops that are invented the more clever ways will be found to circumvent them.
When all that is required is a simple pricing strategy that aims to match demand against supply.

Good Energy now has a heat pump tariff with cheaper prices in the Winter period. These ‘specialised’ tariffs are as much about ‘nudging behavioural change’ as they are about energy demand side response. The Government want people to install heat pumps and buy electric vehicles. I could argue that my tumble dryer and refrigerators are heat pumps so why would I be denied access to a tariff aimed solely at heat pump homes? There is nothing ideological about an EV tariff when a key part of Octopus’ business model is selling and leasing electric vehicles. I am sure that Octopus will apply the same logic to its tariff structure when it starts rolling out heat pumps from its factory next year.

MWT

I am still of the opinion that this is less about trying to provide a 'benefit' to one group at the expense of another than it is about quality of data.

They are gathering information about the behaviour of different groups of customers and it messes with that data if customers who do not fit the profile they are looking, at are mixed in with the target group.

Also they do refine the definition of the target market of these beta tariffs from time to time, it isn't just the 'Go' tariffs that get tightened up, the Tesla Energy Plan had new rules added earlier this year as well.