Octopus Tracker

niktheguru

Telegraph_Sam said:

For me it is a trade-off between doing Octopus' home work from ground zero with all the time and effort required to obtain and process the source data. And at the other extreme trusting completely that the system is infallible, and just paying the bills blindly. Not a million miles away from your second para once I had finally persuaded them to quote my meter readings in the invoices. Which removed much of the guesswork.
That said, I am not aware of any real mistakes in my invoices based on the spreadsheet checks that I do. No hassle with refunds. Once the formulas have been set up in the spreadsheet it is not too onerous to keep going. Though it wouldn't surprise me if this is upset with the introduction of the Dec 23 tariff.
[case in point: I take the kWh "industry" conversion formula used in the gas invoices as an external given since I wouldn't know how to check it. If I did it would probably no longer be a hobby

I think with the more traditional tariffs this is fine, as one can compare manual meter readings with ones quoted on bills and work out costs accordingly.

It is with the smarter tariffs like tracker and agile where I think the "manual checks" are less useful. But I guess it depends how you check it. If you are taking manual daily readings from your meter at the same time then calculating the costs from the tariff for each day then you'll get a good test, but most people don't have the motivation nor time to do this. This gets even more complicated when you have 30min readings on agile.
Then, if you're using the API to get all the readings surely that's just replicating exactly what octopus are doing (using the exact data they are using), so you're just using the same data to make a calculation.....and I'd be surprised at the worth of checking if the "calculations" are being done correctly.

Where it may be useful is making comparisons between tariffs, but there are so many tools now where this is done for you without much hassle, so I'm interested to hear if I'm missing something as to the benefits of doing all this manually (or automated through code) ourselves?

Telegraph_Sam

In my case (Tracker) it's much simpler and less time consuming. It is a matter of ensuring that the opening and closing meter readings at the start / end of each monthly billing period are clearly stated on each monthly invoice. As a simple time saving cross check this is to me a real no-brainer. It is of course possible to drill down and analyse in greater detail (each half hour period in Agile for example) but for most people I suspect the time and hassle would not be worth it.
I don't know if Octopus Compare would help in the above despite its other virtues.

Spoonie_Turtle

For Tracker I just scan down the page to see if the kWh variance of the days looks about right.  But in the T&Cs they say they probably can't rebill if that happens; I'm not sure I'd bother pursuing it if they did average it out unless there were some very wild pricing swings that we accounted for in our usage. 
It's just checking so I know either way, and if they were averaging out it would likely indicate a problem with the data which I'd want to try and get sorted if it kept happening.

Slinky

niktheguru said:

I'd like to know, for all those checking their invoices with spreadsheets and coding, how many times have you detected significant errors in octopus' billing for your account and have you had any refunds/reimbursements?

I check mine, and there's a recent chunk of days billing missed from my electricity bill! I will see whether they notice and change the bill at some point. There's a gap between the closing reading on one bill and the opening reading on the next bill.  Talking about £8 of electric so nobody is going to get rich from this.

masonic

niktheguru said:

Telegraph_Sam said:

For me it is a trade-off between doing Octopus' home work from ground zero with all the time and effort required to obtain and process the source data. And at the other extreme trusting completely that the system is infallible, and just paying the bills blindly. Not a million miles away from your second para once I had finally persuaded them to quote my meter readings in the invoices. Which removed much of the guesswork.
That said, I am not aware of any real mistakes in my invoices based on the spreadsheet checks that I do. No hassle with refunds. Once the formulas have been set up in the spreadsheet it is not too onerous to keep going. Though it wouldn't surprise me if this is upset with the introduction of the Dec 23 tariff.
[case in point: I take the kWh "industry" conversion formula used in the gas invoices as an external given since I wouldn't know how to check it. If I did it would probably no longer be a hobby

I think with the more traditional tariffs this is fine, as one can compare manual meter readings with ones quoted on bills and work out costs accordingly.

It is with the smarter tariffs like tracker and agile where I think the "manual checks" are less useful. But I guess it depends how you check it. If you are taking manual daily readings from your meter at the same time then calculating the costs from the tariff for each day then you'll get a good test, but most people don't have the motivation nor time to do this. This gets even more complicated when you have 30min readings on agile.
Then, if you're using the API to get all the readings surely that's just replicating exactly what octopus are doing (using the exact data they are using), so you're just using the same data to make a calculation.....and I'd be surprised at the worth of checking if the "calculations" are being done correctly.

Where it may be useful is making comparisons between tariffs, but there are so many tools now where this is done for you without much hassle, so I'm interested to hear if I'm missing something as to the benefits of doing all this manually (or automated through code) ourselves?

For me the purpose is not to check the accuracy of the data or my bills, it is to predict what my bills are going to look like in advance, compare other tariffs, and gather data on my usage patterns to help me understand this better and identify ways of cutting down my consumption. I don't know about the paid tools, but the main free ones do not give me the sort of flexibility I have to, for example, run hypothetical scenarios based on new tariff formulae and historic wholesale pricing data, project forward based on recent trends, or identify all of the days that are outliers in terms of my usual consumption. There is just so many more questions you can ask and answer when you have full control over the data analysis.

But to answer the thrust of your post, I do not think the majority of people are sufficiently engaged to care about this minutia, nor is it worth their effort to dig this deep themselves if they don't get excited by crunching data.

PennineAcute

niktheguru said:

I'd like to know, for all those checking their invoices with spreadsheets and coding, how many times have you detected significant errors in octopus' billing for your account and have you had any refunds/reimbursements?

I ask as I'm intrigued if it's worth it. I normally keep very stringent tracks like the rest of you in terms of finances etc. I used to keep a track of energy usage, but as the energy usage and billing has become more complex I have let it go and relied upon octopus and their billing to get it right. Of course I check my consumption and billing regularly but it always looks right.

The only problem I've had with octopus in the past is when they occasionally randomly have moved me off tracker onto flexible without warning and by mistake. But this is something that's easily visible and reversible just by looking at billing.

Interested to hear other people's experiences and whether the data logging is merely just a hobby or whether it has a purpose with some tangible outcomes!

For me, it is knowing that my DD is keeping up with my billed usage and my forecast usage.  I aim for a zero balance at the end of my tariff and my spreadsheet allows me to do this.  When bills come in, these are entered into the spreadsheet which evens out any discrepancies with my gas, as I cannot find anywhere which will give me the calorific values to any degree of accuracy.  It also enables me to play what if with my estimates. 

It also always me to adjust so, if I want a little bit extra at the end of the tariff (in case of an increase) I can do so. 

It has also allowed me to zone in on my spreadsheet skills, which has made work so much easier for me. 

It has grown from a small 1 sheet spreadsheet, back in 2017, to something which has quite a few pages and often tinkered with when I want something new. 

Telegraph_Sam

masonic said:

niktheguru said:

I'd like to know, for all those checking their invoices with spreadsheets and coding, how many times have you detected significant errors in octopus' billing for your account and have you had any refunds/reimbursements?

For me the purpose is not to check the accuracy of the data or my bills, it is to predict what my bills are going to look like in advance, compare other tariffs, and gather data on my usage patterns to help me understand this better and identify ways of cutting down my consumption. I don't know about the paid tools, but the main free ones do not give me the sort of flexibility I have to, for example, run hypothetical scenarios based on new tariff formulae and historic wholesale pricing data, project forward based on recent trends, or identify all of the days that are outliers in terms of my usual consumption. There is just so many more questions you can ask and answer when you have full control over the data analysis.

But to answer the thrust of your post, I do not think the majority of people are sufficiently engaged to care about this minutia, nor is it worth their effort to dig this deep themselves if they don't get excited by crunching data.

I reckon that in terms of sophistication of the processing that you describe you are laps ahead of the majority of us mere mortals. In such circs I think niktheguru's original question is all the more relevant :  If the answer is no (nothing found) then the answer / justification must be in terms of a hobby (yours) that gets excited by crunching data!

niktheguru

Its interesting to see everyones use cases for this. Thanks for the replies! I used to tabulate everything back when there was competition between the suppliers with tariff rates, and the good old days with the cowboy billing system with symbio energy. However now having been on the smarter octopus tariffs for a good few years i'm happy with being able to look at bills, the up to date energy usage on the app, and now octopus compare. Provides enough detail for my own use case and comparisons.
If i had the aptitude for coding like masonic I may have been interested enough to go down that route. But work and young children don't allow me that time!!   

Slinky

Just for info, not bashing Tracker at all as we're on it for gas and may go back to electric in the winter.

We've been on Agile for a week now. We have 4.1kw of panels and 9.6kwh batteries. We're low users, 6-9kwh typically before the panels went in.  After 1 week, Tracker would be 32% more expensive and Flexible would be 78% more expensive.  We've had some sun, and even on overcast days are getting some charge now the days longer and the sun is higher. I'm very much cherry picking each day the cheapest half hour slots to do a little topping up of the battery. Our inverter settings cater for 3 different time slots per day, I'm getting about 1.2-1.4kwh of charge in a half hour. I've set my phone alarm early afternoon to check that there's enough charge to get us past 4-7pm, if not I'll do a quick afternoon topup if we're going to be using the oven.

This would be a lot of mucking about for most people, but I have the time to do it, and the inclination for now.

alanwsg

Just had an Email saying I'm getting an Octopus home mini.
Can't remember why I wanted one now!

Guess it's a new gadget to play with,
Anyone know if you can get an MQTT feed out of it?