Octopus Tracker

QrizB

Griffindog said:

Are these cheap days based on genuine figures or are they just dangling a carrot to keep us on Tracker?

Electricity Tracker follows the day-ahead prices at Nordpool.

Gas Tracker also seems to follow the national index.

Spoonie_Turtle

You can see the wholesale prices they use in the last column on these pages:
https://energy.guylipman.com/sm/electracker
https://energy.guylipman.com/sm/gastracker

The day electricity dropped to 34p I got a bit confused and did wonder, but checking that site I saw that was the actual price, not Octopus bringing it down for us!

They'll contact us soon, just hold on a few more days before making a decision.  You can take some comfort knowing you've been protected by the 40p cap, some of us have been paying up to 55p joining after the July change. 
[We had our lowest usage last month ever, yet still our highest actual bill ever ]

Chrysalis

Been another cheaper weekend, timing my hot water usage for these drops now as they starting to happen at least once a week.

savers_united

It's going to be a difficult sell to try and get some Gov't support with tracker tariffs when they are currently tracking below the Oct EPG (at least for Gas), a mild winter with plenty of sunshine and wind and tracker could end up as one of the cheapest tariffs especially if capped at the EPG rates. 

Chrysalis

savers_united said:

It's going to be a difficult sell to try and get some Gov't support with tracker tariffs when they are currently tracking below the Oct EPG (at least for Gas), a mild winter with plenty of sunshine and wind and tracker could end up as one of the cheapest tariffs especially if capped at the EPG rates. 

Why would that make it a harder sell? the cap would be lowered, but the days where it tracks below there would be no subsidy.

MWT

Chrysalis said:

savers_united said:

It's going to be a difficult sell to try and get some Gov't support with tracker tariffs when they are currently tracking below the Oct EPG (at least for Gas), a mild winter with plenty of sunshine and wind and tracker could end up as one of the cheapest tariffs especially if capped at the EPG rates. 

Why would that make it a harder sell? the cap would be lowered, but the days where it tracks below there would be no subsidy.

I very much doubt there is going to be much appetite for having to calculate the subsidy reclaim on a daily basis for each customers consumption...

Possible to automate obviously, but is is a customer solution for a niche tariff at that point and just may not be worth doing even if the government would agree to include that tariff type in the subsidy which also has to be questionable...

Chrysalis

MWT said:

Chrysalis said:

savers_united said:

It's going to be a difficult sell to try and get some Gov't support with tracker tariffs when they are currently tracking below the Oct EPG (at least for Gas), a mild winter with plenty of sunshine and wind and tracker could end up as one of the cheapest tariffs especially if capped at the EPG rates. 

Why would that make it a harder sell? the cap would be lowered, but the days where it tracks below there would be no subsidy.

I very much doubt there is going to be much appetite for having to calculate the subsidy reclaim on a daily basis for each customers consumption...

Possible to automate obviously, but is is a customer solution for a niche tariff at that point and just may not be worth doing even if the government would agree to include that tariff type in the subsidy which also has to be questionable...

That would be an argument against for Octopus not the government.  The supplier does the maths and the government just pay whats requested.

But given Octopus already recalculate charges on a daily level, any competent IT bod would be able to handle this without much trouble.  Its not complex at all, actually pretty trivial.

If the trackers are excluded though, there is no reason for Octopus to keep dithering.  Just inform everyone and this discussion ends, everyone knows where they stand.  They going to look incompetent if they delay contacting tracker customers only to tell them they need to move to SVR to get the EPG.

Personally I am not bothered either way since my tracker is basically at the cap, its less than a penny off (have already decided to keep both my gas/electric tariffs), but just thinking out aloud here on whats logical, and what reduces taxpayer burden.

macman

Given that they will surely want to give a week's notice, I'd be very surprised if Octopus don't announce their Tracker rates by Friday 23/9. But of course they have lost a further day due to the bank holiday yesterday.

Spies

After the first couple of weeks I don't even bother checking the GAS tracker price anymore, it's much harder to load shift anyway, if you need a shower, you need a shower.

Same with heating...

It's freezing
Yes love but tomorrow gas is 2p a unit cheaper
But tomorrow its forecasting 15c
....

MWT

Chrysalis said:

But given Octopus already recalculate charges on a daily level, any competent IT bod would be able to handle this without much trouble.  Its not complex at all, actually pretty trivial.

I didn't say it was complex, I said there wouldn't be much appetite for it... I have been in your words 'an IT bod' and still am a manager of many of them .. the issue is not the complexity of the solution it is the changing of existing systems or the layering of additional levels of analysis on top of existing systems and diverting the resources to perform the task, test and release all in a short space of time, hence, not much appetite for it when there is already going to be a lot of work to support the needs of the other tariffs types which will most likely be able to be covered by a single solution.

Chrysalis said:

If the trackers are excluded though, there is no reason for Octopus to keep dithering.  Just inform everyone and this discussion ends, everyone knows where they stand.  They going to look incompetent if they delay contacting tracker customers only to tell them they need to move to SVR to get the EPG.

 I don't think there is much 'dithering' going on, they are dealing with the various groups of tariffs in a sensible order while chasing for clarification on the tricky bits...

They've got the 'Flexi..' tariff information out there now, the fixed tariffs are coming next and then hopefully before the end of the week they will have clarity on the tariffs that are not clearly and unambiguously covered by the government scheme. 

It is really just Agile and the Trackers that are potential issues both for Octopus and the government scheme and will take a little longer to clarify I suspect.