Electric meter faulty - energy supplier wants to fit smart meters

Telegraph_Sam

Sounds like a bit of a gamble to me. If I was to switch to the fixed rate tariff today the cost would be 15.72/kwh + 23.39/day. No reason to assume that my consumption phasing would deviate from the average so I could well end up in 35p territory. Agile might be designed to appeal to a particular type of consumer with a specific consumption pattern only.

Telegraph_Sam

I was trying to get further details for my area (North East) from the Energy-Stats UK website but with limited success.  Not having an EV, the 5.5p / kwh would (I suspect) be of only theoretical benefit to me,  whilst 14.63 is 10% more than what I am paying at present. It is however cheaper than the 15.72 p that would apply if I was to switch now prematurely to Octopus' fixed rate tariff.
I see that there is in addition a 25 p /day standing charge. My main reservation is that the benefits for a non-EV person are likely to be marginal coupled with the fact that you have to be very canny with stats to figure out just what the costs are likely to be. I'm guessing that one cannot simply ask Octopus for a quote for Agile, Go etc in the usual way?? These tariffs don't pop up for me when I go to the Octopus quotes page. AND I would have to put up with a smart meter to boot which in conjunction with these clever tariffs would inevitably lead to giving up on manual monitoring and leaving all the number crunching to the Black  Box.

I would not totally rule out "Going Faster" if it is still around in early April and I could convince myself otherwise.

[Deleted User]

Octopus Go and Go Faster tariffs are the equivalent of Economy 7 but with Offpeak comprising 4 to 5 hours. No supplier can give you an accurate annual estimate for an E7 tariff unless you provide the peak:Offpeak ratio. Octopus cannot quote for a ToU tariff (such as Agile) as it is based on changing daily wholesale prices and individual customer usage patterns. Last year, we got very little EV use. My records show that on Agile we paid an average of 8.49p/kWh in February; 8.04p/kWh in Jun, rising to 10.16p/kWh in August. To achieve these unit prices, there has to be family buy in. Agile will not suit everybody but, as this site is about money saving, ToU tariffs do offer savings even with 35p/kWh prices for engaged consumers.

Telegraph_Sam

Makes sense. You have to be an "engaged" customer with high off peak consumption otherwise it is a leap in the dark! "Average" is always a dangerous word. I think that for me the deciding factor would be the peak time unit rates and how these "average out" in comparison with the fixed rate tariffs. To that extent the rates you quote are interesting if they could be interpreted as mainly peak time based.  There have of course been price rises since last summer.

Gerry1

At 35p/kWh I'd be an "enraged" consumer.

Telegraph_Sam

Is it possible for me to see the GO FASTER tariffs, or the range of, for my region / postcode just as with fixed tariffs? I'm going round in circles on the energy-stats Uk website that Google refers me to

[Deleted User]

Telegraph_Sam said:

Is it possible for me to see the GO FASTER tariffs, or the range of, for my region / postcode just as with fixed tariffs? I'm going round in circles on the energy-stats Uk website that Google refers me to

You can see the prices by region on this website:

https://www.guylipman.com/octopus/formulas.html

Telegraph_Sam

Thanks, very informative. Worth considering ... Has any  other reader used GO FASTER?

mac.d

Telegraph_Sam said:

"...if working to purpose, billing problems are far less likely with a smart meter..."    These are the operative words. 

wild666 said:

IMHO, Smart meters should not have been rolled out until every supplier could read the meters if the original supplier was changed. My SMETS 1 meter stopped working with other suppliers when I left BG and until Sept. 2019 it displayed the daily rate of 26.1p but now it's 0.00p.
It has been claimed that SMETS 1 meters would be able to be read by all suppliers by early 2020 it's now Feb 2021 and they still cannot be read by anyone but the original supplying company.

I know someone who has BG SMETS 1 meters, and foolishly thought that upon switching back to BG after a year with a different supplier, the smart meter would work again. It required a visit from an engineer to allow the meter to communicate with BG again, but crazily, they only get the gas meter readings and not the electric. For billing purposes they only take gas readings periodically, so despite them submitting monthly electric readings online, it won't let them submit any gas readings, therefore their bills are a mess. By the time anyone realised, coronavirus was here and so the problem has never been fixed.  

Telegraph_Sam

[Deleted User] said:
You can see the prices by region on this website:

https://www.guylipman.com/octopus/formulas.html

Did I read somewhere that with these tariffs there is a (universal) daily charge of 25 p not shown on the rates table?