Octopus Energy reviews: Give your feedback

MWT

masonic said:

Edit: Just went out and double checked it. Under 'Tariff Matrix' the only relevant sub-menu option I have is 'TOU Register', and within that I have T01 to T48 with T01 and T02 containing the 'Day' and 'Night' readings, T03-T48 are all zero.

You should have 4 registers designated with an 'R' as well, those are the ones that should be used for register based billing...

masonic

MWT said:

masonic said:

Edit: Just went out and double checked it. Under 'Tariff Matrix' the only relevant sub-menu option I have is 'TOU Register', and within that I have T01 to T48 with T01 and T02 containing the 'Day' and 'Night' readings, T03-T48 are all zero.

You should have 4 registers designated with an 'R' as well, those are the ones that should be used for register based billing...

Not that I can find, and not according to the Octopus ultimate smart meter reading guide. It directs me to the same place and says T01 corresponds to R1 and T02 to R2.

Telegraph_Sam

"The most important cross check to do is total consumption (the amount you're charged for on the bill) vs increase in monthly reading. I am sure Octopus is already doing this"

I think this is the key point. One can get involved in the idiosyncrasies of meters and registers and IHD's if one is so minded, or not, but the name of the game must be to let the average (smart meter) user see - at a glance, without having to jump through hoops - that what he is being charged by way of consumption is reflected in the readings as shown by his meter. Minor variances excepted. I regularly download the monthly Go Faster csv data which when converted largely corresponds to the invoiced kWh's. There was just the one occasion, in June, when the monthly readings appeared in my invoice, Both data sets tallied within a few pence. This is how a user-friendly system should operate and I cannot fathom why it should not be the default.

tlcgrantham

Gas can be cheaper than Electricity for some depending on their tariff. 

I did a very unscientific household experiment and heated up enough hot water by electric kettle to wash the dishes. Later repeated the procedure using the Gas central boiler. I used 0.2kw with the kettle and used the equivalent of 0.7kw with Gas. 

My wife thinks I should repeat the experiment every day if it means I wash the dishes.

masonic

tlcgrantham said:

Gas can be cheaper than Electricity for some depending on their tariff. 

I did a very unscientific household experiment and heated up enough hot water by electric kettle to wash the dishes. Later repeated the procedure using the Gas central boiler. I used 0.2kw with the kettle and used the equivalent of 0.7kw with Gas. 

My wife thinks I should repeat the experiment every day if it means I wash the dishes.

I'm surprised there is that little in it. At current capped rates 1 kWh electricity is 3.5x the price of 1 kWh gas, so the cost would be 11.0p for electricity vs 11.2p for gas. I would have thought a central boiler would have been more efficient than that. It is normally much cheaper to heat water with gas vs electricity. Perhaps the issue is the small quantity of water heated.

Telegraph_Sam

I have had very similar thoughts myself but concluded that it would be a no contest - in favour of electricity - on account of the need to heat up vastly more water from the boiler with gas in order to get to the required temperature for just a washing bowl full. The combi is normally off during the summer.  Heating up warm water could alter the economics significantly.
No excuse for ducking out of doing the washing up.
PS All the more so if I do the exercise during the Go Faster cheap period OR when the solars are producing their max at midday. How one calculates this is beyomd me however

tlcgrantham

masonic said:

tlcgrantham said:

Gas can be cheaper than Electricity for some depending on their tariff. 

I did a very unscientific household experiment and heated up enough hot water by electric kettle to wash the dishes. Later repeated the procedure using the Gas central boiler. I used 0.2kw with the kettle and used the equivalent of 0.7kw with Gas. 

My wife thinks I should repeat the experiment every day if it means I wash the dishes.

I'm surprised there is that little in it. At current capped rates 1 kWh electricity is 3.5x the price of 1 kWh gas, so the cost would be 11.0p for electricity vs 11.2p for gas. I would have thought a central boiler would have been more efficient than that. It is normally much cheaper to heat water with gas vs electricity. Perhaps the issue is the small quantity of water heated.

Agreed. No doubt wastage with hot water in the pipes from the boilers the sink. That said I’m on Tracker V2 for Gas and Go Faster for Electricity so Electricity is now cheaper per kilowatt at certain times of the day for me.

MWT

Telegraph_Sam said:

I think this is the key point. One can get involved in the idiosyncrasies of meters and registers and IHD's if one is so minded, or not, but the name of the game must be to let the average (smart meter) user see - at a glance, without having to jump through hoops - that what he is being charged by way of consumption is reflected in the readings as shown by his meter.

The bills do fully reflect the meter registers being used for your billing, it is just that on a HH tariff it is the HH registers that are being used, not the daily register totals.

I would pretty much guarantee that the total of those HH registers will not exactly match the difference between the opening and closing daily registers for the period, so there would be a need to deal with people concerned about the difference if they were stated on the bill as not everyone is willing to accept even minor differences...

Telegraph_Sam

As I said when I've done the exercise the difference was so small as not to warrant getting steamed up about. It's more a matter of "what you see is what you get" from a practical perspective.

youravinalarrrf

Is it just me?

When you look at your usage homepage on their website and look at the day usage tab their day has suddenly started showing the day starting at 1am and finishing at 1am the following day.

I'm pretty sure the times shown previously before today were midnight to midnight.

Their customer service response times to emails are also gradually getting longer and longer and have been unacceptable for some time.