Octopus Tracker

Griffindog

double_dutchy said:

I have tracker 3 for gas and electric, ending on 26 June. I received my renewal email yesterday - I replied to affirm that I wanted to stay with tracker. Octopus confirmed extension today but I see that caps have increased to 100/30 rather than my current 39.99/10.99.

At the current rates I'm still expecting tracker to be the best bet. I'm going to save approx, £500 for the year compared with SVR.

Where did you find your caps? My App and website account show no information about which version I’m on and are still showing the decreasing number of days remaining, even though the lady on the phone said it had been renewed last week when I called.

double_dutchy

The info about caps was only in the email, as below:

Griffindog

double_dutchy said:

The info about caps was only in the email, as below:

I haven’t actually had an email to confirm that I have renewed so I’m a bit dubious that it actually happened. I shall tackle them again when my smart meter has been fitted next week.

MWT

Griffindog said:

I haven’t actually had an email to confirm that I have renewed so I’m a bit dubious that it actually happened. I shall tackle them again when my smart meter has been fitted next week.

Just take a look at the tariff shown on your account online...

If it is the new one with the higher caps it will look something like this...

Xbigman

My Agile tariff that runs until the 23rd of May currently shows the old rates. I'd not expect it to show the new rates until the 24th.


Darren

Griffindog

MWT said:

Griffindog said:

I haven’t actually had an email to confirm that I have renewed so I’m a bit dubious that it actually happened. I shall tackle them again when my smart meter has been fitted next week.

Just take a look at the tariff shown on your account online...

If it is the new one with the higher caps it will look something like this...

It’s still showing V3 at the moment.

julianv

In principle tracker should be great, in practice far from it.

1. standing charge is way too high on all of Octopus’ tariffs. Especially if you can use the export to max advantage. It’s about twice what it needs to be.

2. Wholesale prices are daily spot prices, the highest price and not the futures energy market where energy is hedged.

The latter point is more pertinent but requires explanation. The Tracker tariff is actually hedged (fixed) and therefore energy is bought on a futures fix, not bought daily. Yet Octopus charge us for the spot price. If we wanted a true tracker and true transparency we should be able to buy our energy on futures prices and lock in our anticipated energy use.

For example my electricity is pretty flat save for when I use the oven to cook. But it’s all very predictable and I can safely buy 3600kW distributed across the year at a specific point in summer and then use that pre-bought energy to power my home over the year, selling back unused energy at spot price and buying overage at spot price. Octopus can just make £ on an annual 1% charge for facilitating the trade like any financial institution would. In this sense this is what people do with oil boilers so on a net basis they’re always laughing.

That gas also doesn’t have the granularity of leccy is also a bit laughable. 

So yeah, anything different is a bit pointless. 

Qyburn

That would means Octopus potentially entering into tens of thousands of individual contracts each for (by wholesale standards) really tiny amounts of energy. At a guess that would put the unit price up, but would certainly massively increase Octopus's admin costs.

Griffindog

Apparently the standing charges are so high because we’re paying for the mess-ups of all the companies that went bust. 

Tracker still works for me, whether JulianV thinks it is correct or not. My gas is 3.99p today. What’s not to like about that? Any saving is a good saving, whether it is accurate or not against wholesale prices.

Spoonie_Turtle

julianv said:

1. standing charge is way too high on all of Octopus’ tariffs. Especially if you can use the export to max advantage. It’s about twice what it needs to be.

It's still the same or lower than most other companies are charging; other than a tariff where the SC is front-loaded into the first units (if any are still offered) I don't think you're going to realistically find anything any cheaper.