Octopus Tracker

Slinky

Slinky said:

Well for what it's worth, I've asked to switch to Tracker for electric. I'd previously fixed gas, don't think it's worth switching out with the £75 exit fee.

They've already contacted me and put the electric onto Tracker. Trouble is they've charged me £75 to end the gas fix early, despite the fact the gas is still showing as fixed. I've emailed them.

Telegraph_Sam

BellaBlondykeTheThird said:

I agree with the averaging and use gastracker.uk as I am a contributor to the statistics there and can see exactly what I have saved since joining tracker I don't even have to keep my own spreadsheet.

Has anyone with more financial expertise than mine worked out how a Tracker consumer of electric and gas respectively would have fared over the past 365 days compared with a selection of the best alternative tariffs? It would be necessary to make one or two artificial assumptions re size and frequency of  consumption but that should not be impossible. Familiarity with Gastracker and smilar sources would come in handy.

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

BellaBlondykeTheThird said:

I agree with the averaging and use gastracker.uk as I am a contributor to the statistics there and can see exactly what I have saved since joining tracker I don't even have to keep my own spreadsheet.

Has anyone with more financial expertise than mine worked out how a Tracker consumer of electric and gas respectively would have fared over the past 365 days compared with a selection of the best alternative tariffs? It would be necessary to make one or two artificial assumptions re size and frequency of  consumption but that should not be impossible. Familiarity with Gastracker and smilar sources would come in handy.

I did for Agile vs Tracker while I was on Agile, and found Agile was ever so slightly cheaper due to my load-shifting, but when I joined Tracker it became about 20% cheaper because I didn't care about avoiding usage at peak times any more. Both have been significantly cheaper than SVT and significantly more expensive than the old Go Faster tariffs with load-shifting.

Telegraph_Sam

That's the obvious reservation: whether to assume load shifting or not. I had inwardly assumed no significant shifting which would favour Tracker vs Agile. I share your grief over the passing of Go Faster. What "methodology" or data source did you use for the comparison?

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

That's the obvious reservation: whether to assume load shifting or not. I had inwardly assumed no significant shifting which would favour Tracker vs Agile. I share your grief over the passing of Go Faster. What "methodology" or data source did you use for the comparison?

I wrote my own bill calculator in python using the Octopus API (essentially doing the same as Octopus Compare app as at the time it did not support Tracker). The same could be achieved manually in a spreadsheet using downloaded usage and tariff data.

Telegraph_Sam

It should be possible to summarise the past 12 months' data in an Excel as you have suggested. Once the summary is complete it will be a case of "running" an alternative(s) tariff through it for comparison. Including the SVR

Slinky

Slinky said:

Slinky said:

Well for what it's worth, I've asked to switch to Tracker for electric. I'd previously fixed gas, don't think it's worth switching out with the £75 exit fee.

They've already contacted me and put the electric onto Tracker. Trouble is they've charged me £75 to end the gas fix early, despite the fact the gas is still showing as fixed. I've emailed them.

Quick call to Octopus this morning and they've sorted their error.

I recall somebody further up the thread saying there's a waiting list to switch to Tracker. I emailed yesterday and within 3 hours they'd swapped me onto the new tariff for electric.

meinnit

Interesting article regarding record gas storage capacity heading in to the heating season which should hopefully mean low gas tracker price although any significant weather or political change could increase the price

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/europes-gas-crisis-is-over-not-painful-adjustment-kemp-2023-11-21/

MultiFuelBurner

meinnit said:

Interesting article regarding record gas storage capacity heading in to the heating season which should hopefully mean low gas tracker price although any significant weather or political change could increase the price

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/europes-gas-crisis-is-over-not-painful-adjustment-kemp-2023-11-21/

Europe has good gas storage but what does the UK have.

I seem to remember once someone said 7 days worth.

Telegraph_Sam

Is it not an international market in which the UK shares the plusses and minuses that affect our neighbours?