Octopus Tracker

Pat38493

Spoonie_Turtle said:

federer said:

i am moving to octopus this Saturday , i believe by default to their variable tariff .....

can i straight away move to their tracker tariff or is it called agile tariff

i dont have a smart meter, assume thats an issue in itself so I cant move to it straight away?

once i do have one are you accepted by Octopus on a case by case basis when they have capacity ?

As far as I know you can go onto it as soon as you have a communicating smart meter.

Definitely be certain of which tariff!  Tracker is the one where the price changes every day, Agile it changes every half an hour.  If you go onto Agile expecting Tracker that could be a very expensive mistake.

Possibly but I think for a lot of users, Agile would still be cheaper than the SVR even if they don’t do any load shifting, so long as they are not massively using most of their usage between 4pm and 7pm.

Telegraph_Sam

I was under the impression that you had to sign up to a different tariff first before moving to Tracker (Agile also if you are a high risk high reward kind of person)?

federer

Spoonie_Turtle said:

federer said:

i am moving to octopus this Saturday , i believe by default to their variable tariff .....

can i straight away move to their tracker tariff or is it called agile tariff

i dont have a smart meter, assume thats an issue in itself so I cant move to it straight away?

once i do have one are you accepted by Octopus on a case by case basis when they have capacity ?

As far as I know you can go onto it as soon as you have a communicating smart meter.

Definitely be certain of which tariff!  Tracker is the one where the price changes every day, Agile it changes every half an hour.  If you go onto Agile expecting Tracker that could be a very expensive mistake.

thats really helpful , thank you.

are there any negatives to asking octpus to installing a smart meter on the property...

is there an easy one pager explaining difference between agile v tracker

masonic

federer said:

i dont have a smart meter, assume thats an issue in itself so I cant move to it straight away?

once i do have one are you accepted by Octopus on a case by case basis when they have capacity ?

There is no wait list to join the Tracker tariff, but was in the past, so may be in the future. It will probably take a while to get a smart meter installed in any case and you will need that to happen first.

federer said:

are there any negatives to asking octpus to installing a smart meter on the property...
is there an easy one pager explaining difference between agile v tracker

It would depend on the property, but presuming there are no issues with the location of the current meter and you have good mobile network coverage, then there are unlikely to be any issues.

For info on the two tariffs, you can do worse than the pages here:

https://octopus.energy/smart/tracker/

https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/

And for pricing info:

https://mysmartenergy.uk/

https://energy-stats.uk/

Pat38493

federer said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

federer said:

i am moving to octopus this Saturday , i believe by default to their variable tariff .....

can i straight away move to their tracker tariff or is it called agile tariff

i dont have a smart meter, assume thats an issue in itself so I cant move to it straight away?

once i do have one are you accepted by Octopus on a case by case basis when they have capacity ?

As far as I know you can go onto it as soon as you have a communicating smart meter.

Definitely be certain of which tariff!  Tracker is the one where the price changes every day, Agile it changes every half an hour.  If you go onto Agile expecting Tracker that could be a very expensive mistake.

thats really helpful , thank you.

are there any negatives to asking octpus to installing a smart meter on the property...

is there an easy one pager explaining difference between agile v tracker

You can just google the tariffs and pull up the Octopus blurb about them.

Basically both tariffs have variable pricing which changes all the time based on daily spot pricing - the formula for how Octopus calculate the price is published so it’s all transparent.

Tracker - there is a different price for your electricity each day, all day.  Tracker also has a gas version as well.  Price is published around 11am the previous day for electricity and 6pm for gas.  Generally you should be billed for actual smart meter usage, but if there is any missing data they will spread across the days using an industry formula (happens more often for gas than electric).

Agile - electric only - your price changes every half hour.  Prices are published around 4pm the previous day, but you can get a reasonable idea of what they will be from looking at the tracker price and other sources.  Prices are bumped up a lot from 4pm to 7pm using a supplementary charge.  This tariff is only useful if you can shift most of your load away from 4pm to 7pm.  With this tariff, during winter the cheapest prices are usually overnight but not always at the time times.  In summer there is often also a cheap period in the afternoon as well.  Occasionally the prices goes negative for an hour or two meaning they pay you for what you use, but it’s not very often.  

Agile generally only works if you are a high usage user and you can shift a lot of your usage to the cheapest times each day - which is quite some hassle unless you enjoy that sort of thing, and you will probably not save that much anyway versus tracker.

Spoonie_Turtle

Pat38493 said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

federer said:

i am moving to octopus this Saturday , i believe by default to their variable tariff .....

can i straight away move to their tracker tariff or is it called agile tariff

i dont have a smart meter, assume thats an issue in itself so I cant move to it straight away?

once i do have one are you accepted by Octopus on a case by case basis when they have capacity ?

As far as I know you can go onto it as soon as you have a communicating smart meter.

Definitely be certain of which tariff!  Tracker is the one where the price changes every day, Agile it changes every half an hour.  If you go onto Agile expecting Tracker that could be a very expensive mistake.

Possibly but I think for a lot of users, Agile would still be cheaper than the SVR even if they don’t do any load shifting, so long as they are not massively using most of their usage between 4pm and 7pm.

That's exactly the situation where it would be a very expensive mistake.  And if they naturally use a lot during that peak, and are expecting a single price all day - yeesh.

Telegraph_Sam

I could imagine that keeping track (pun) of all the individual Agile invoices could be a hassle, if that's what turns you on. Simply on account of the numbers involved

Telegraph_Sam

Interesting discussion Tracker vs Agile. That apart,  what would be the best benchmark(s) to evaluate Tracker against?

Bendo

Pat38493 said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

federer said:

i am moving to octopus this Saturday , i believe by default to their variable tariff .....

can i straight away move to their tracker tariff or is it called agile tariff

i dont have a smart meter, assume thats an issue in itself so I cant move to it straight away?

once i do have one are you accepted by Octopus on a case by case basis when they have capacity ?

As far as I know you can go onto it as soon as you have a communicating smart meter.

Definitely be certain of which tariff!  Tracker is the one where the price changes every day, Agile it changes every half an hour.  If you go onto Agile expecting Tracker that could be a very expensive mistake.

Possibly but I think for a lot of users, Agile would still be cheaper than the SVR even if they don’t do any load shifting, so long as they are not massively using most of their usage between 4pm and 7pm.

This is true, I've just had surgery so the MIL and wife are pretty much doing everything at the moment with no regard for when things run, Agile has still worked out a couple of quid cheaper than SVR each week.

Telegraph_Sam

And/or could t be that Agile is less of a risk in periods of market stability, conversely that being on Agile a year ago would have proved to be painful, other things being equal?