Octopus Tracker

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

I'd appreciate it if you and other "Trackers" who take the trouble to analyse their savings (or losses!) in a variety of situations, would report on these in this forum!

Well I use about 3000 kWh per year, 2/3 of that is between Nov-Mar and 1/3 between Apr-Sep (elec only, essentially 1/3 heating, which I intend to cut down this year). Since joining Tracker in July, my average unit price has been 16p, so about 40% less than the current SVR rate and an even bigger saving vs pre-October SVR. I expect to see that saving eroded somewhat over winter, but hopefully I'll still be in profit by next July.

MultiFuelBurner

Tracker has made us a little less money saving if I am totally honest.

Last year we cut back massively and had a comfortable but not overly warm winter house with lots of things turned off and not in standby.

With an average of 16.56p kwh since joining start of July it's been good so far saving £30-40 a month 

We estimate we will us 7000kwh this year (El.nino.vold.year after all) on our all electric house with ASHP no solar no batteries no EV. Mid October-Mid April using the majority of that 5000kwh.

We have our tracker spreadsheet recording prices, kWh used, weather and any changes to our ASHP. I am in spreadsheet heaven and everyone else is looking forward to a warm winter.

Xbigman

Strange. Since July I've averaged 17.36p a kwh on Tracker (Midlands). Have you remembered to add VAT to the average price that shows on your bill?


Darren

MultiFuelBurner

Xbigman said:

Strange. Since July I've averaged 17.36p a kwh on Tracker (Midlands). Have you remembered to add VAT to the average price that shows on your bill?


Darren

Daily spreadsheet and we shift tumble dryer/washing machine/hot water and legionella burn to the cheaper days where possible. Delay dishwasher. Batch cook on a cheaper day then use microwave to heat up etc. 

So as an example August if you were to use the same amount of kWh for electricity every day the average price would have been 18.08p kWh Inc vat  but by shifting to cheaper days we averaged 17.45p

Also look at the price at 11am and then decide what you do today and what you do tomorrow.

I thought everyone knew this and did the same. As an example yesterday was 21.62p kwh but today is 15.62p kWh so we didn't put washing or tumble dryer on yesterday or heat the hot water or use the oven and we delayed the dishwasher til this morning. It really does bring your average down. For October we are averaging as of yesterday 16.76p kwh

Pat38493

MultiFuelBurner said:

Xbigman said:

Strange. Since July I've averaged 17.36p a kwh on Tracker (Midlands). Have you remembered to add VAT to the average price that shows on your bill?


Darren

Daily spreadsheet and we shift tumble dryer/washing machine/hot water and legionella burn to the cheaper days where possible. Delay dishwasher. Batch cook on a cheaper day then use microwave to heat up etc. 

So as an example August if you were to use the same amount of kWh for electricity every day the average price would have been 18.08p kWh Inc vat  but by shifting to cheaper days we averaged 17.45p

Also look at the price at 11am and then decide what you do today and what you do tomorrow.

I thought everyone knew this and did the same. As an example yesterday was 21.62p kwh but today is 15.62p kWh so we didn't put washing or tumble dryer on yesterday or heat the hot water or use the oven and we delayed the dishwasher til this morning. It really does bring your average down

As discussed upthread, to do this you need to make sure that Octopus are billing you based on your actual daily reading and not their formula.

Robgmun

MultiFuelBurner said:

How much electricity/gas do you use a year in kWh?

I lost the data for the whole year because we joined Octopus in Match I believe. I didn't keep track of what our usage was when we were with EDF

MultiFuelBurner

Pat38493 said:

MultiFuelBurner said:

Xbigman said:

Strange. Since July I've averaged 17.36p a kwh on Tracker (Midlands). Have you remembered to add VAT to the average price that shows on your bill?


Darren

Daily spreadsheet and we shift tumble dryer/washing machine/hot water and legionella burn to the cheaper days where possible. Delay dishwasher. Batch cook on a cheaper day then use microwave to heat up etc. 

So as an example August if you were to use the same amount of kWh for electricity every day the average price would have been 18.08p kWh Inc vat  but by shifting to cheaper days we averaged 17.45p

Also look at the price at 11am and then decide what you do today and what you do tomorrow.

I thought everyone knew this and did the same. As an example yesterday was 21.62p kwh but today is 15.62p kWh so we didn't put washing or tumble dryer on yesterday or heat the hot water or use the oven and we delayed the dishwasher til this morning. It really does bring your average down

As discussed upthread, to do this you need to make sure that Octopus are billing you based on your actual daily reading and not their formula.

Well aware of this thanks which is why I keep my own spreadsheet.

They have once average us out over an 8 day period and I queried this we were down £0.89p so sent them a slow email expecting them to just take that off the bill as sent them my spreadsheet. They added £25 goodwill gesture to my account and all future bills from our new smets2 meter have been accurate to the penny and daily usage.

If it deviates I will query it again and see what they offer next time.

dharm999

Been on the tracker since start of July, 16 weeks so far, so early days yet, but the savings are working out to around £750 (around 34%) on an annual basis, we are high users, annual usage of c7,500kwh electricity and 12,300 kwh gas.  Been tracking it weekly, and expect the saving to reduce over the next few months.  We are part of Ripple, so expecting to see some chunky credits next April, when the wind farm savings kick in. 

Telegraph_Sam

Re billing formula: I thought the whole process was automatic. That the system averages the recorded daily consumption over the past month, and multiplies this by the no of days to produce the monthly total. Then if there was any slight deviation this would be covered in a swings & roundabouts fashion such that the overall monthly total tallies.
If we want to check the daily recorded figures this strikes me as a lot of work for a possible small gain. Unless there have been large movements in price between one day and the next. I suppose one could do this on a "sample" basis to cut down on the workload.
Heavy stuff for the average user! Please point out any errors in the above.

Spoonie_Turtle

Telegraph_Sam said:

Re billing formula: I thought the whole process was automatic. That the system averages the recorded daily consumption over the past month, and multiplies this by the no of days to produce the monthly total. Then if there was any slight deviation this would be covered in a swings & roundabouts fashion such that the overall monthly total tallies.
If we want to check the daily recorded figures this strikes me as a lot of work for a possible small gain. Unless there have been large movements in price between one day and the next. I suppose one could do this on a "sample" basis to cut down on the workload.
Heavy stuff for the average user! Please point out any errors in the above.

It is automatic, it's supposed to bill every day's actual usage, otherwise what's the point of having daily prices to encourage load shifting?  The 'averaging' only happens for the bill summary at the top of the page.

(But if they lose some data then they may average it all out over the billing period, which is why people are checking their bills just to make sure.)

Checking the bill is quite straightforward.  If you've load shifted you'll know that some days are higher usage than others, and all you need to check for absolute certain are knowing that one day was high usage of X amount and one was low, of Y amount, and check the details match on the page with the daily price and usage. 

For us it's easy because some days have showers (electric) and extra cooking, so I can just glance to see if the pattern matches, accounting for any particular load shifting we did.

If you're not load shifting and all your usage is roughly the same each day, then it won't really matter and you probably don't need to check anyway.