Octopus Tracker

Telegraph_Sam

I would be interested to hear if ultimately you do plan to reach for the lifebelts.

Spoonie_Turtle

Telegraph_Sam said:

I would be interested to hear if ultimately you do plan to reach for the lifebelts.

I'll be sure to mention it!

If we end up with sustained very high prices (say, 60-70p+) I might start getting twitchy - purely objectively, by November it would take 6-8 weeks sustained at the 100p cap to wipe out savings so far.  Or 10-14 weeks at sustained 70p.
So it could be a case of, do we take the savings and run, forfeiting potential savings next year, or ride the wave, pay more than necessary for an unknown, unforeseeable length of time and maybe break even, for the opportunity of savings again next year/after the wave breaks.  And 'savings next year' assumes the price will come back down and stay below the cap for a prolonged period.
Certainly not a simple decision.  But if we were to have prolonged periods at those high prices, there would likely be other, worse, things to worry about too!

masonic

sevenhills said:

MultiFuelBurner said:

This is key information that needs caveating against all the excited fear mongering excitement when the prices rise a bit. I suspect a lot of it comes from people not on tracker wanting the prices to rise.

If inflation is 6%, that means that its worth while to fix for 12 months? In 6 months tome energy prices will be 3% higher. So if the tracker matches energy prices in 6 months it will be 3% higher.

I don't think that will be helpful, because inflation over the next 12 months will not be known until November 2024, and energy price inflation is unlikely to match general inflation.

In the hypothetical situation that we have to live with energy price inflation of 6% for the next year, it still could be a bad deal if the majority of your usage is in the winter months when you could have benefited from a lower Tracker price - assuming of course it takes 6 months to reach the current price you could fix.

What we can be fairly sure of is that Tracker will not rise or fall steadily over 12 months, as it never has in the past. Any short term rise tells us nothing about the following weeks and months.

The choice you have is between paying a price based on the market without hedging (Tracker/Agile), paying a price determined by a short term forecast with some hedging (Flexible), or paying a fixed price based on a long term forecast, hoping this has been underestimated.

Qyburn

Last November and December the were lots of 40 to 50p days, and one 80p in December. 

MultiFuelBurner

Those are the days you go and visit friends and family 😜🤣

noitsnotme

Is anyone aware of any software I could use to enter my 30 minutes energy usage data so I can compare the last couple of years.  Something that produces graphs would be nice.  Even an excel spreadsheet template would do.

I specifically want to be able to compare a day/week/month from the current year to the same from the previous year.

I am about to start setting up Home Assistant so any recommendations for anything on HA would be good.

mmmmikey

noitsnotme said:

Is anyone aware of any software I could use to enter my 30 minutes energy usage data so I can compare the last couple of years.  Something that produces graphs would be nice.  Even an excel spreadsheet template would do.

I specifically want to be able to compare a day/week/month from the current year to the same from the previous year.

I am about to start setting up Home Assistant so any recommendations for anything on HA would be good.

The HA question is a big one. I started setting it up a few months ago and it has grown and grown and grown. An amazing tool for automating various energy saving routines, and also a great way to monitor and compare tariffs. Difficult to answer your question anything other than superficially without knowing what you're planning to do, it's such a big topic. Perhaps you could start another thread outlining your aims and I'd be happy to respond with any hints and tips based on my own (limited!) experience. I believe there are also a few other HA users who post her regularly.

p.s. as I'm typing this I have one eye on my latest HA dashboard which is displaying the current Agile rate, updating on the dot of the change every 30 minutes. Been doing that for a while but the breakthrough is that I'm no longer using IFTTT - I'm now getting the data direct from Octopus using the API. I'm also using the API to compare Agile, Tracker and SVR prices based on my actual use, showing the latest day's figures as well as rolling 7 and 28 day averages. The idea is to alert me if/when my average Agile unit rate reaches Tracker and/or SVR rates. The API side is working well - the next thing is to build another HA dashboard to display the data. All good fun :-)

Telegraph_Sam

With much the same motivation in mind I developed a simple little Excel macro which processed the CSV data from the Octopus "Explore my Energy Use" link on the website. This was in the time of Go Faster, late lamented, so would not be of interest to anyone now. But it split my monthly 1/2 hour consumptions into peak rate and low rate as a check on the invoice.
I get the impression that learning and getting HA from a standing start to do the same thing with Tracker data would be a.more ambitious and b. quite a big ask.

t0rt0ise

The gastracker.uk guy has made a site that works out your savings this year and last by month, so I can see my savings this year so far are £710 on tracker compared with the SVT. Much easier than working it out myself. Doesn't quite do what those here want but is very useful. Go to gastracker.uk and hit Crowd Share. When added you can filter on your own name to get your own graph data.

noitsnotme

mmmmikey said:

noitsnotme said:

Is anyone aware of any software I could use to enter my 30 minutes energy usage data so I can compare the last couple of years.  Something that produces graphs would be nice.  Even an excel spreadsheet template would do.

I specifically want to be able to compare a day/week/month from the current year to the same from the previous year.

I am about to start setting up Home Assistant so any recommendations for anything on HA would be good.

The HA question is a big one. I started setting it up a few months ago and it has grown and grown and grown. An amazing tool for automating various energy saving routines, and also a great way to monitor and compare tariffs. Difficult to answer your question anything other than superficially without knowing what you're planning to do, it's such a big topic. Perhaps you could start another thread outlining your aims and I'd be happy to respond with any hints and tips based on my own (limited!) experience. I believe there are also a few other HA users who post her regularly.

p.s. as I'm typing this I have one eye on my latest HA dashboard which is displaying the current Agile rate, updating on the dot of the change every 30 minutes. Been doing that for a while but the breakthrough is that I'm no longer using IFTTT - I'm now getting the data direct from Octopus using the API. I'm also using the API to compare Agile, Tracker and SVR prices based on my actual use, showing the latest day's figures as well as rolling 7 and 28 day averages. The idea is to alert me if/when my average Agile unit rate reaches Tracker and/or SVR rates. The API side is working well - the next thing is to build another HA dashboard to display the data. All good fun :-)

Thanks, I’ve started a new thread as you suggested - https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6478993/using-home-assistant-to-monitor-energy-usage-and-compare-tariffs/p1?new=1

Would be good to hear what you’ve done with it so far.