Octopus Energy reviews: Give your feedback

niktheguru

Telegraph_Sam said:

Motivation is to shift consumption to 4 - 7 in order to benefit from peak solar energy while it's being generated. But any "excess" would incur peak Agile rates.  Thankfully being on Tracker I don't have this conundrum.

I dont have solar (cant justify the cost with a battery!) so correct me if i'm wrong, but if you were say on agile and had solar, wouldnt you just try and move all energy hungry appliances that you could to the cheaper hours (e.g. dishwasher, washing machine, dryer) and then continue to use your normal things during 4-7, which could use your solar power (e.g. lights, cooking, TV) so in essence you'd hardly use any grid energy during that time?

Certainly if you have a battery/powerwall you can store the energy up, and then set it up so that you exclusively use the battery during 4-7 so you can benefit from agiles low rates and your green energy when its high.

Also sam, couldn't you sign up to octopus outgoing so you can sell some of your solar energy back to the grid? Or do you already do that on a separate feeding in tariff?

In answer to your previous question, the go and go faster tariffs are NOT affected by any change in wholesale price. Those prices are locked in for the year once you move to that tariff. At the moment its a steal at 14p/kwh and 5p off peak. But you'd obviously need a smart meter which you clearly dont want! I'm waiting for my smets2 to be fitted later this month!

Telegraph_Sam

Thanks for the reasoning. I agree that last time I investigated, solar batteries were a no-no from a return on investment perspective - by quite some margin. I do however benefit from a Feed-In Tariff but not from Octopus. 
Moving energy hungry appliances around as you suggest is great in theory but regrettably less so in practice.  It is nice to have the heating on 4 - 7 in winter. It would be a matter of experimenting with a period on Agile to get at the truth but with latest developments in mind that is not an experiment that I am keen to pursue. Given a crystal ball it would have even been worth getting a smart meter in order to have signed up to Go / Go Faster when the rates were attractive.

niktheguru

Telegraph_Sam said:

Thanks for the reasoning. I agree that last time I investigated, solar batteries were a no-no from a return on investment perspective - by quite some margin. I do however benefit from a Feed-In Tariff but not from Octopus. 
Moving energy hungry appliances around as you suggest is great in theory but regrettably less so in practice.  It is nice to have the heating on 4 - 7 in winter. It would be a matter of experimenting with a period on Agile to get at the truth but with latest developments in mind that is not an experiment that I am keen to pursue. Given a crystal ball it would have even been worth getting a smart meter in order to have signed up to Go / Go Faster when the rates were attractive.

If you're a totally electric house then fair enough....however if you have gas, then you can use your heating between 4-7 without an issue.
The rates for octopus go are still 14p/5p at the moment!! I'm hoping they haven't increased them by the time i move over!

Telegraph_Sam

Electricity here has now jumped to 20.61 which is unheard of!

Inga9

I had my first flat in the UK on November 2020. Pandemic aside, Lucky me. I didn't know you already have the electricity and water on but... Anyways. I chose Octopus and everything alright. The previous was SSE and they agree with the switch. No readings because I didn't get access until March and problem started. SSE had estimated reading(76603)and from there Octopus gave me their estimate one of 77324.But when I get access on March was 80820. The cleaners wrote every reading on the entrance but it's nothing there since 2019 and I think the previous tenants didn't say anything about it because they will be charge for it and now I'm in deep s**t.From December to March I spent 720.01kwh, normal and between March and April 3712.49kwh.Octopus is trying to charge my for electricity I didn't use. I already talked to SSE to see how much I used with them(236kwh)month and to fix it because... Ah, by the way it's about 600£.

bristolleedsfan

Telegraph_Sam said:

Electricity here has now jumped to 20.61 which is unheard of!

Tracker tariff kwh rate hit 29p during January ...........

Telegraph_Sam

Statistics .... my understanding of the Tracker demo is that the average price for January was 17.57 and it dropped down from the peak quite significantly after that. Hopefully this will be repeated.

Umiamz

bristolleedsfan said:

Telegraph_Sam said:

Electricity here has now jumped to 20.61 which is unheard of!

Tracker tariff kwh rate hit 29p during January ...........

Yes, 6th January. It reached 25p in my region.

MWT

Telegraph_Sam said:

Electricity here has now jumped to 20.61 which is unheard of!

Certainly not unheard of, but not common either.

There will be good days and bad days with the sort of tariff you have picked, try not to over-react to the bad days, just track the averages.

MWT

niktheguru said:

In answer to your previous question, the go and go faster tariffs are NOT affected by any change in wholesale price.

Not yet at least, but they did just increase the prices on the Tesla Energy Plan so I wouldn't be surprised to see the Go tariffs getting an adjustment soon for new customers.