Octopus Tracker

SJMALBA

BTW, does anyone know when Tracker v2 was introduced?

bristolleedsfan

SJMALBA said:

BTW, does anyone know when Tracker v2 was introduced?

9th April

SJMALBA

bristolleedsfan said:

SJMALBA said:

BTW, does anyone know when Tracker v2 was introduced?

9th April

Thanks – wow! I had a feeling that it wasn't available for long, but didn't realise it was that short!

Perhaps there might not be that many customers on v2, relatively speaking, given the small window (v3 was introduced 26th April, AFAIK?)?

JohnPo

tlcgrantham said:

Tracker can and does vary considerably from day to day. Therefore it’s unlikely to remain at or above the cap. So if for example the actual wholesale price for gas is 5pkw/h one day and 15pkw/h the next the the billing average would be 8pkw/h not 10pkw/h. This is what makes Tracker tariffs so attractive to me.

Exactly, it only takes few days in any month for the tracker price to be below the cap to bring average price paid to below the cap for the month. As the cap is around the expected October SVT then it should be cheaper than the SVT.  If they change the terms etc. you can switch without penalty to any other tariff e.g. the SVT or leave to another supplier.

Also Martin has pointed although perhaps less understood other the engaged members on a forum like this, that the recently introduced market adjustment mechanism which penalizes any supplier when wholesale prices falls from offering cheap deals and attracting new customers, means that if prices were to fall by some miracle there would no good deals to switch to any time soon. In such a scenario most people would be on the SVT waiting for price cap to go down or having to take customer only deals from their existing supplier as there would nothing in market to switch too, the tracker would however give immediate benefit.

QrizB

masonic said:

QrizB said:

Spies said:

I can't seem to find a page with the gas prices on Marex, at least not on my phone. 

Marex don't publish it, unlike Nordpool for electric. I'm sure they'd be happy to sell you a subscription but I think it's quite expensive ...

Is it not here? https://www.marex.com/services/data-advisory/market-data/market-data-indices/
Sorry, don't have gas so not familiar with exactly which value is used, but under natural gas it is showing an all weekend index value, and already has a day ahead value for Monday.

Thank you, I've looked for that data several times but somehow never found that page!

Guy Lipman's price of 2.387p/kWh for this weekend is about 70p/therm which is the "high" price listed by Marex for the NBP All Day W/end.

Marex have NBP All Day D/A (ie. Day/Ahead) "high" on 13/06 as 87p/therm. If that't the correct data, Monday's wholesale price for gas will be about 2.969p/kWh.

Need to check back tomorrow to see if this is right

k_man

SJMALBA said:

k_man said:

SJMALBA said:

k_man said:

JohnPo said:

Don't think you will need to as the 11p Kwh gas cap and the 40p Kwh elec cap will probably be lower than the SVT for both Oct and Jan next year, but if the deal all falls apart then at no notice you can switch without penalty to the SVT.

So heads you win and tails you also win.

The potential lose, is if Octopus raise/remove the cap, or force a change of Tracker version (not that they have yet) any fixes at around the current cap are no longer available.

Not an expert in these things, but as far as I can see, Octopus don't seem to have been very interested in offering any fixes worth considering (IMO) in recent months, with the April fix around the currently projected October 'cap' (I think?), so you'd be paying more over the summer for little/no benefit over the winter (even with higher use over winter), when you could, if Tracker changes 'demanded it', switch to SVT?

I wasn't thinking just about Octopus' fixes. 

More just highlighting that the Tracker is good right now, but may mean missing out on some of the other fixes currently available, for what may be a only a few months of saving (and during lower use period).
Only time will tell of course, and isn't much different to the do I fix now vs SVT question.

So Tracker vs SVT? Can't see a downside of Tracker.

Tracker Vs current fixes (if including other providers)? 
Will tell you in year or so!

I was under the (mistaken?) impression that any ‘good’ fixes weren't available on the open market, only to existing customers?

Indeed, but existing customers with access to those good fixes, could chose to forgoe those, and instead move to Octopus and the Tracker tariff.

Just pointing out that Tracker is not guaranteed to the be the best deal longer term.

Another consideration is if prices rise above current SVT, and Tracker v4 is released (with higher cap or SC) how to decide whether to stay on current Tracker, and pay more, or move to SVT and miss out on the future safety cap of the older Tracker.

QrizB

SJMALBA said:

I was under the (mistaken?) impression that any ‘good’ fixes weren't available on the open market, only to existing customers?

According to MSE the best open-market fox is "OVO Better Smart" wwehich offers me gas at 11.35p/kWh and electricity at 37.84p/kWh.

JohnPo said:

tlcgrantham said:

Tracker can and does vary considerably from day to day. Therefore it’s unlikely to remain at or above the cap. So if for example the actual wholesale price for gas is 5pkw/h one day and 15pkw/h the next the the billing average would be 8pkw/h not 10pkw/h. This is what makes Tracker tariffs so attractive to me.

Exactly, it only takes few days in any month for the tracker price to be below the cap to bring average price paid to below the cap for the month. As the cap is around the expected October SVT then it should be cheaper than the SVT.  If they change the terms etc. you can switch without penalty to any other tariff e.g. the SVT or leave to another supplier.

The main risk, at least in the short term, is that Tracker V2 or V3 rises to exceed the current ~7.5p/kWh capped rate. That could see us paying over the odds for gas during the summer. (For me, at least, it's a fairly small risk; we're using less than 10kWh/day of gas at present, so the potential loss is less than 35p/day.)

k_man

QrizB said:

masonic said:

QrizB said:

Spies said:

I can't seem to find a page with the gas prices on Marex, at least not on my phone. 

Marex don't publish it, unlike Nordpool for electric. I'm sure they'd be happy to sell you a subscription but I think it's quite expensive ...

Is it not here? https://www.marex.com/services/data-advisory/market-data/market-data-indices/
Sorry, don't have gas so not familiar with exactly which value is used, but under natural gas it is showing an all weekend index value, and already has a day ahead value for Monday.

Thank you, I've looked for that data several times but somehow never found that page!

Guy Lipman's price of 2.387p/kWh for this weekend is about 70p/therm which is the "high" price listed by Marex for the NBP All Day W/end.

Marex have NBP All Day D/A (ie. Day/Ahead) "high" on 13/06 as 87p/therm. If that't the correct data, Monday's wholesale price for gas will be about 2.969p/kWh.

Need to check back tomorrow to see if this is right

If you are right, we have a daily task for you 😋

SJMALBA

k_man said:

SJMALBA said:

k_man said:

SJMALBA said:

k_man said:

JohnPo said:

Don't think you will need to as the 11p Kwh gas cap and the 40p Kwh elec cap will probably be lower than the SVT for both Oct and Jan next year, but if the deal all falls apart then at no notice you can switch without penalty to the SVT.

So heads you win and tails you also win.

The potential lose, is if Octopus raise/remove the cap, or force a change of Tracker version (not that they have yet) any fixes at around the current cap are no longer available.

Not an expert in these things, but as far as I can see, Octopus don't seem to have been very interested in offering any fixes worth considering (IMO) in recent months, with the April fix around the currently projected October 'cap' (I think?), so you'd be paying more over the summer for little/no benefit over the winter (even with higher use over winter), when you could, if Tracker changes 'demanded it', switch to SVT?

I wasn't thinking just about Octopus' fixes. 

More just highlighting that the Tracker is good right now, but may mean missing out on some of the other fixes currently available, for what may be a only a few months of saving (and during lower use period).
Only time will tell of course, and isn't much different to the do I fix now vs SVT question.

So Tracker vs SVT? Can't see a downside of Tracker.

Tracker Vs current fixes (if including other providers)? 
Will tell you in year or so!

I was under the (mistaken?) impression that any ‘good’ fixes weren't available on the open market, only to existing customers?

Indeed, but existing customers with access to those good fixes, could chose to forgoe those, and instead move to Octopus and the Tracker tariff.

Just pointing out that Tracker is not guaranteed to the be the best deal longer term.

Another consideration is if prices rise above current SVT, and Tracker v4 is released (with higher cap or SC) how to decide whether to stay on current Tracker, and pay more, or move to SVT and miss out on the future safety cap of the older Tracker.

Sorry, @k_man, I was coming at the question from the point of view of existing Octopus customers, and forgot that others could still opt to join Octopus on Tracker!

SJMALBA

I don't (yet) have a smart meter, but when I log into my account, there's a daily cost showing for electricity & gas under the heading of ‘Today's Octopus Tracker costs’ - is this based upon Octopus' guess as to what my daily usage might be on that day?