Octopus Energy reviews: Give your feedback

silvercar

Having just bought a Tesla and had a podpoint charger fitted, I’m thinking of moving first to octopus and then to the octopus go tariff. Currently with ovo who fitted a SMET2 meter.

can anyone see any flaw with this plan?

QrizB

silvercar said:

Having just bought a Tesla and had a podpoint charger fitted, I’m thinking of moving first to octopus and then to the octopus go tariff. Currently with ovo who fitted a SMET2 meter.

can anyone see any flaw with this plan?

No, seems a sound plan to me.

Telegraph_Sam

Petriix said:

Anecdotally I think you're wrong. Although I am always astounded by how people will stubbornly stick to expensive habits, many of us are happy to adjust our usage. With a combination of solar panels and Octopus Go Faster, nearly 80% of my grid usage is in the 4h off peak window.

It's no hardship to set the timer on the washing machine and dishwasher or to run the tumble dryer overnight etc. We can usually save the hoovering until a sunny day and we'll even adapt what we eat: if there's surplus solar then we're more likely to use the oven and grill.

While it was sunny last week we only had a couple of spikes of grid usage. The car was largely charged from solar with one overnight top up. Only around 8kWh was drawn from the grid in peak times out of total usage of over 100kWh.

Am I being smarter in running my washing machine during the Go Faster off-peak evening rate, or at mid-day when my south facing solar panels should be at their peak output? [I have never worked out how to measure the exact output of the panels other than guesstimating from the meter readings]

MWT

silvercar said:

Having just bought a Tesla and had a podpoint charger fitted, I’m thinking of moving first to octopus and then to the octopus go tariff. Currently with ovo who fitted a SMET2 meter.

can anyone see any flaw with this plan?

No flaw, but take a look at the 'Intelligent Octopus' tariff as well, with a Tesla it is available to you and comes with longer low rate hours.

QrizB

Telegraph_Sam said:

Am I being smarter in running my washing machine during the Go Faster off-peak evening rate, or at mid-day when my south facing solar panels should be at their peak output? [I have never worked out how to measure the exact output of the panels other than guesstimating from the meter readings]

If you've got a small solar PV array (less than 2kWp) and no battery, it probably won't be able to supply all the electricity your washing machine needfs. If this is the case you'll be better off using Go Faster.

If your array is bigger than that, particularly if it's 3kW plus, or if it has a battery, before doing laundry check your weather forecast. If it's going to be a nice sunny day you can meet most or all of the demand from the mid-day* generation. Otherwise, Go Faster is the safe bet.

* My array points slightly west of south and the peak is from about 11AM to 2:30PM, GMT - so now 12 noon to 3:30PM BST. I can just about fit two wash cycles into that period, or one wash-and-dry. I did two loads today; it was partly cloudy but it only took about 0.5kWh from the grid in total for both.

Telegraph_Sam

Interesting. My 16 panel system output is 4 kWp, no battery. Orientation is similar to yours but location is a few hundred miles north (the odd sunny day is not unknown). 1 wash load takes 2 + hours. Low energy room dehumidifier provides the drying. I could next time try using the panels as source. How did you measure the 0.5 kW consumption? And can you measure the actual output of the panels?

masonic

Don't forget also to factor in the cost of running the dehumidifier. All in all this energy consumption might not be insignificant. Doing the load in the afternoon and then using the evening off-peak rate to help it dry could be the optimal way.

Telegraph_Sam

Very relevant.   255 W / 1.2 A is what it says on the label.  I reckon this is pretty low both on Go Faster off-peak [1.27 p / hour?] and at midday on the solars. 

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

Very relevant.   255 W / 1.2 A is what it says on the label.  I reckon this is pretty low both on Go Faster off-peak [1.27 p / hour?] and at midday on the solars. 

255 W will consume 1 kWh per 4 hours running time. A standard 40C washing programme will typically consume a little under 1 kWh. Washing must come before drying, so would make sense to do washing on solar and preserve off-peak for drying. Otherwise you'll be running your dehumidifier mostly at peak rate without any solar.

MWT

Telegraph_Sam said:

How did you measure the 0.5 kW consumption? And can you measure the actual output of the panels?

Most solar inverters these days have some form of management app, if you want to tell us the make and model of what you have there we can probably point you in the right direction.