Octopus Energy reviews: Give your feedback

Chrysalis

MWT said:

Chrysalis said:

The best way to make people shift their energy usage is to pay them to do it, so its a bit baffling, which is why i said it must be subsidised, both the gov and car manufacturers want people buying these new vehicles.

Ultimately it is about having a large, relatively predictable load that can be remotely scheduled to turn on/off each half-hour according to the needs of the grid and the associated rewards.

What you see with Go/Go Faster is the early beta versions of the tariff left open for customers while they get the more refined version 'Intelligent Octopus' working on a wider range of vehicles.

You can't give them what they need for the experiment without having an EV, not even a home battery is big enough to make a difference.

But whats the end game of this experiment, I remember talking to my dad about it, and his reponse is far worse than mine, for him it was plain discrimination and even more so as in his opinion its effectively giving wealthier people cheaper electric.  My view isnt as strong as that, but it is still the case, either Octopus are been paid by the gov or manufacturers for this, or there is some weird favouritism going on.  Octopus are also only a reseller so they wont be controlling the power output of power plants.  Are they using excess spare energy as was said before or are they adjusting supply like you said? It is one or the other.

If this carries on and Electric remains expensive eventually it wont be me but the press and people like Martin Lewis asking these questions which they will likely find awkward to answer.

Thinking about your reply a little more, it makes sense if you think EV owners if they charged at peak could overload the grid? So give them a big incentive to charge off peak right?  That does make sense, but again though you could allow anyone to take the tariff even if you promoting as primarily EV use.

masonic

The difference is that the batteries of EVs can be drawn on to meet peaks in demand as well as having them charge during troughs. They also need to target their incentives as they are making a loss on these tariffs for the benefit of having these customers available for future load-balancing endeavours.

[Deleted User]

Chrysalis said:

MWT said:

Chrysalis said:

The best way to make people shift their energy usage is to pay them to do it, so its a bit baffling, which is why i said it must be subsidised, both the gov and car manufacturers want people buying these new vehicles.

Ultimately it is about having a large, relatively predictable load that can be remotely scheduled to turn on/off each half-hour according to the needs of the grid and the associated rewards.

What you see with Go/Go Faster is the early beta versions of the tariff left open for customers while they get the more refined version 'Intelligent Octopus' working on a wider range of vehicles.

You can't give them what they need for the experiment without having an EV, not even a home battery is big enough to make a difference.

But whats the end game of this experiment, I remember talking to my dad about it, and his reponse is far worse than mine, for him it was plain discrimination and even more so as in his opinion its effectively giving wealthier people cheaper electric.  My view isnt as strong as that, but it is still the case, either Octopus are been paid by the gov or manufacturers for this, or there is some weird favouritism going on.  Octopus are also only a reseller so they wont be controlling the power output of power plants.  Are they using excess spare energy as was said before or are they adjusting supply like you said? It is one or the other.

If this carries on and Electric remains expensive eventually it wont be me but the press and people like Martin Lewis asking these questions which they will likely find awkward to answer.

Thinking about your reply a little more, it makes sense if you think EV owners if they charged at peak could overload the grid? So give them a big incentive to charge off peak right?  That does make sense, but again though you could allow anyone to take the tariff even if you promoting as primarily EV use.

There is no conspiracy going on here. The dynamics of the Grid have changed dramatically in the past 15 years.  No longer do we just have fixed power stations which can be turned off and on as required: we now have a Grid that is made up of fixed and renewable sources. The latter are subject to the vagaries of the weather. Octopus is taking the lead on time-of-use tariffs to encourage consumers to load shift their usage. There is no discrimination going on here: just an innovative supplier which describes itself as a sector disruptor. It costs less to sell cheap overnight energy to high energy users than pay wind turbine operators to feather the blades on their turbines. For EV owners, Go and Go Faster are a first step. Octopus is now moving quickly towards intelligently starting and stopping EV charging over a longer night period depending on the 30 minute wholesale price of electricity. 

https://octopus.energy/intelligent-octopus/

Johndonuts

masonic said:

That may be due to an dispute with the change of supplier reading. Billing would be halted until resolved.

Thank you for your reply.

I wish it was that, but this has happened after everything had transferred over and was all going alright, then we mentioned moving home. They have simply ignored three months of meter readings and estimated bills instead.They even sent a letter to the new occupier, even though we haven't moved out yet.

Telegraph_Sam

Dolor said:

Chrysalis said:

Thinking about your reply a little more, it makes sense if you think EV owners if they charged at peak could overload the grid? So give them a big incentive to charge off peak right?  That does make sense, but again though you could allow anyone to take the tariff even if you promoting as primarily EV use.

There is no conspiracy going on here. The dynamics of the Grid have changed dramatically in the past 15 years.  No longer do we just have fixed power stations which can be turned off and on as required: we now have a Grid that is made up of fixed and renewable sources. The latter are subject to the vagaries of the weather. Octopus is taking the lead on time-of-use tariffs to encourage consumers to load shift their usage. There is no discrimination going on here: just an innovative supplier which describes itself as a sector disruptor. It costs less to sell cheap overnight energy to high energy users than pay wind turbine operators to feather the blades on their turbines. For EV owners, Go and Go Faster are a first step. Octopus is now moving quickly towards intelligently starting and stopping EV charging over a longer night period depending on the 30 minute wholesale price of electricity. 

https://octopus.energy/intelligent-octopus/

I may have commented previously that I (still) don't follow the logic in segmenting out EV owners (let alone VW ones) if the end object is to load shift (total load I assume) into the off peak hours.. Or is there a pecking order of worthyness within those who make up the load? Unless as someone said it is a crude but simple commercially driven tactic to encourage sales of EV products from suppliers with whom Octopus is associated.

BargainBear

Telegraph_Sam said:

Dolor said:

Chrysalis said:

Thinking about your reply a little more, it makes sense if you think EV owners if they charged at peak could overload the grid? So give them a big incentive to charge off peak right?  That does make sense, but again though you could allow anyone to take the tariff even if you promoting as primarily EV use.

There is no conspiracy going on here. The dynamics of the Grid have changed dramatically in the past 15 years.  No longer do we just have fixed power stations which can be turned off and on as required: we now have a Grid that is made up of fixed and renewable sources. The latter are subject to the vagaries of the weather. Octopus is taking the lead on time-of-use tariffs to encourage consumers to load shift their usage. There is no discrimination going on here: just an innovative supplier which describes itself as a sector disruptor. It costs less to sell cheap overnight energy to high energy users than pay wind turbine operators to feather the blades on their turbines. For EV owners, Go and Go Faster are a first step. Octopus is now moving quickly towards intelligently starting and stopping EV charging over a longer night period depending on the 30 minute wholesale price of electricity. 

https://octopus.energy/intelligent-octopus/

I may have commented previously that I (still) don't follow the logic in segmenting out EV owners (let alone VW ones) if the end object is to load shift (total load I assume) into the off peak hours.. Or is there a pecking order of worthyness within those who make up the load? Unless as someone said it is a crude but simple commercially driven tactic to encourage sales of EV products from suppliers with whom Octopus is associated.

I wouldn't discount any of what you've said as potentially plausible justification for the decisions made when offering certain tariffs. But the main driver I feel is the government and their plan to ban the manufacture of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2032, although this goal date keeps creeping ever closer. Companies will always rely on key selling points and data is always driven by different markers, it just so happens to be EV's are the new hot topic.

You'd be surprised how unprepared DNO's are for this influx of EV users, and how many fires we're seeing as a result of people having EV chargers installed and not thinking about their increased load on the infrastructure, including but not limited to their cutout fuse. This isn't limited to the consumers ignorance either, a lot of installers aren't even paying it any thought.

Even when I was in the underwriting world, insurers are playing constant catch-up with EV's. You'd be surprised at how heavily certain manufacturers are pushing their vehicles with little to no thought of repairability and longevity, Mercedes being a big one with a particularly poor design of fuse on their batteries rendering them one hit wonders. Yet still demanding they receive preferential treatment when pricing and grouping them.

At the end of the day money makes the world go round, and as we're seeing in the current affairs it's those with the most power controlling life. Suppliers are just trying their best to be innovative and stay ahead of the game as best they can. Luckily Octopus are one of the betters ones at it and seem to have some very smart cookies on board.

Chrysalis

Am surprised at the support of the market segmentation.

Non EV owners who have been told via marketing, leaflets through the door etc. that smart meters will allow cheaper tariffs off peak will be thinking when is that coming then.

Just a matter of time, the media are always slow to latch on, but they will eventually.

If they making a loss on these tariffs its even worse, as that means someone somewhere else is paying for those losses.

If Octopus are innovative, then are they planning a off peak tariff for non EV owners with comparable pricing?  Please dont say E7. .

Telegraph_Sam

Yes I can appreciate that it is (very) PC to go EV just at present, until and unless as you say the pitfalls become apparent. But for Octopus with their positive and  innovative reputation to jump on the same bandwagon with their crude and I would say artificial pricing policy doesn't earn them many brownie points in my book. I agree with your hope that in due course a tariff will come on stream to encourage non EV owners to load switch who for whatever reason don't want to vehicle switch.

MWT

Telegraph_Sam said:

I agree with your hope that in due course a tariff will come on stream to encourage non EV owners to load switch who for whatever reason don't want to vehicle switch.

That tariff was launched some time ago, it is 'Agile'...

Right now though the spot market going crazy has made that less appealing, but it is still there and will undoubtedly get attractive again in the future.

The attraction of EV tariffs for them is certainly related to some of the points raised here regarding the impact they are going to have on the grid infrastructure over the next few years, as well as the potential to benefit from having a large load under remote control as well as a large distributed power bank as V2G and V2H grows in availability.

They are determined to be in the forefront of developing the tools needed to manage that, so they need to attract and retain a good number of people with the expensive assets (cars) that they need to test and shape the technology.

They are attracting very large investors willing to sink funds into that type of develoment hence the focus on those tariffs.

Chrysalis said:

If Octopus are innovative, then are they planning a off peak tariff for non EV owners with comparable pricing?  Please dont say E7. .

Agile was the first, and that was launched 4 years ago.

I'd guess that a revamp of Agile to produce something more accessible to those less willing to engage with half-hour variable tariffs would probably be a three tier tariff with a peak rate between 16:00-19:00 or a little later, a cheap rate from say 00:30- 06:00 and a standard rate the rest of the time.

The problem for most who have not already moved to something like an EV is that they have few loads that make much of a difference that they are willing to shift to the cheaper hours of the day, and for many, avoiding the peak 16:00-19:00 period just isn't practical, which is why it is the peak.

So it is possible to think of a tariff like this, but will people be willing to change their habits to make the tariff cheaper for them than the ones they have now as without changes in use pattern it will be more expensive... 

BargainBear

To be honest I don't think these shift loading tariffs will make the long term changes suppliers hope they will. As you say, the peak period is peak for a reason, and it's been that way for centuries because of life. Companies open and close at set times (Predominately 9-
17:00), schools open and close at set times (9-15:30), people need to eat, do chores (Washing/Drying etc.) in order to be in bed by certain times. Seasons and daylight saving time also play a big part too.

The only way they'll have the massive impact and stick around would be for life as we know it to massively change, and we know how reluctant the old dinosaurs of industry leading companies are to do this. People working from home isn't helping it at all, although a 4 day work week might help shake things up, especially if companies stagger departments 4 day week.

The biggest game changer for prices in the energy sector will be large batteries becoming more readily available and cheaper, and technology advancing for longevity and efficiency. Then there won't be such a reliance on shifting as green energy will be able to be stored for longer periods and utilised whenever is required instead of being lost/wasted.