Octopus Tracker

Telegraph_Sam

I have very rarely used Twitter in the past. What is the procedure or route to messaging the Octopus team there?

northernstar007

Telegraph_Sam said:

I have very rarely used Twitter in the past. What is the procedure or route to messaging the Octopus team there?

go on there twitter page and see an envelope hit that then type in your message

Telegraph_Sam

mmmmikey said:7

In the meantime I notice that Tracker prices tomorrow have eased back a bit which is interesting given the predicted lack of wind. Only goes to show that there are many different factors effecting the price.

I have just read that fuel / petrol prices are now at a "low" (surprise?). Should this - in theory - have an effect on [Tracker] energy prices?

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

@masonic: I seem to remember that there is a box that appears with a selection of recent dates that allows you to stipulate when the billing period should end. That's my interpretation.

If you mean selecting the date for the meter reading, yes I used that. This can be quite helpful in case of missing data as you can submit a reading for several days in the past and therefore force a bill before the missing period to avoid losing the benefit of any load shifting you've been doing.

Telegraph_Sam

I think that's what I was trying to say ... So far my "formula" (selecting the previous day at sometime gone midnight on the following day) appears to work. We are however on a learning curve and a steep one at that.

Separate topic: The man from energy-stats uk tells me that he always updates his data to the most recent tariff. That means that if the latest Tracker tariff is more costly than say Nov 22 v 1, then his graph and averages will be pessimistic. What he shows will be the latest comparison with Agile. My understanding at least.

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

I think that's what I was trying to say ... So far my "formula" (selecting the previous day at sometime gone midnight on the following day) appears to work. We are however on a learning curve and a steep one at that.

Are you saying you stay up to read your meter at just after midnight? If you have your consumption that day so far from an IHD, you could simply read it whenever you liked and subtract the day's usage so far to calculate the reading at midnight.

Telegraph_Sam

Yes and yes in principle. Gut feeling is to slam the latest reading into the system as soon as possible after midnight, but in principle I could wait a few days and then still upload the readings on the specified date. If the reading was "100" at 11.59 pm on say 6th June, I believe I could wait until say 9th June and still put in the 100 reading as at 6th June (by selecting that date in the box) without the need for any addition or subtraction.

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

Yes and yes in principle. Gut feeling is to slam the latest reading into the system as soon as possible after midnight, but in principle I could wait a few days and then still upload the readings on the specified date. If the reading was "100" at 11.59 pm on say 6th June, I believe I could wait until say 9th June and still put in the 100 reading as at 6th June (by selecting that date in the box) without the need for any addition or subtraction.

For accurate billing, you'd enter the reading "100" for 7th June (midnight), otherwise it include nearly 24 hours of extra usage. If you took a reading at 9pm on 6th June and it was "98" with your IHD showing "6 kWh so far today", then you could enter "92" for the 6th June as that would have been the reading at midnight on 6th June which is what the billing system assumes.

Telegraph_Sam

If I take the reading = 98 at 11.59 pm on 6th June, and upload that against 6th June but retrospectively on say 8th June, that should represent my consumption up to end of 6th June, as intended.  I think the uncertainty comes as soon as "midnight" is quoted which can lead to misunderstandings. I think that is the same as the second half of your last sentence.

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

If I take the reading = 98 at 11.59 pm on 6th June, and upload that against 6th June but retrospectively on say 8th June, that should represent my consumption up to end of 6th June, as intended.  I think the uncertainty comes as soon as "midnight" is quoted which can lead to misunderstandings. I think that is the same as the second half of your last sentence.

In that case, replace references to "midnight" in my post above with the time 00:00:00.0001 (one millisecond past midnight). Octopus's billing system is for readings to be treated as being made at the start of the day in question, not the end. So you'd need to upload against 7th June, not 6th June. This is why my bill was inaccurate when I submitted my reading under the same assumption you've made (I was treated as using the energy up to the reading provided by the end of the previous day). I now know different.