What should the unit prices be to cover wholesale prices?

Xbigman

Chrysalis said:

Interesting, are these been honoured by Octopus Agile tariff?

I'm not sure Agile follows these prices exactly but I've had my eye on Agile for the last month and the rates are coming down nicely. But they should do in summer anyway. 


Darren

Sea_Shell

I predict @QrizB 's spreadsheet may implode or we'll just see a gif of a white flag being waved!! 😉

QrizB

Chrysalis said:

QrizB said:

We're half-way through May, month four of six for the October cap pricing period, and how do prices for the month look? "Optimistic" is the word I'd choose (although it may turn out that "deceptive" would have been better).

So far the average wholesale prices for the month are:

• May to date - gas 2.53p/kWh, electricity 12.2p/kWh

Now before anyone gets too excited these could be a temporary blip and they could shoot back up again at any time, but at least we've had two weeks (from the past fifteen) with more normal prices and that's brought the period average down a little bit.

Currently my model is predicting an October cap of £1353 £2266, an increase of £295 or 15%.

My next scheduled update is at the end of this month.

Interesting, are these been honoured by Octopus Agile tariff?

There is no Agile for gas, and the effective tariff for Agile electricity depends on when during the day you use the power.

Tracker, however, follows those rates very closely.

• My electricity data comes from Nordpool; Tracker's underlying wholesale price matches Nordpool day-ahead to within 0.1p/kWh.
• My gas data is derived from Tracker, so (obviously) it matches.

Chrysalis

QrizB said:

Chrysalis said:

QrizB said:

We're half-way through May, month four of six for the October cap pricing period, and how do prices for the month look? "Optimistic" is the word I'd choose (although it may turn out that "deceptive" would have been better).

So far the average wholesale prices for the month are:

• May to date - gas 2.53p/kWh, electricity 12.2p/kWh

Now before anyone gets too excited these could be a temporary blip and they could shoot back up again at any time, but at least we've had two weeks (from the past fifteen) with more normal prices and that's brought the period average down a little bit.

Currently my model is predicting an October cap of £1353 £2266, an increase of £295 or 15%.

My next scheduled update is at the end of this month.

Interesting, are these been honoured by Octopus Agile tariff?

There is no Agile for gas, and the effective tariff for Agile electricity depends on when during the day you use the power.

Tracker, however, follows those rates very closely.

• My electricity data comes from Nordpool; Tracker's underlying wholesale price matches Nordpool day-ahead to within 0.1p/kWh.
• My gas data is derived from Tracker, so (obviously) it matches.

Do you have more details about the time of day aspect on Agile?

I dont have them because I cannot access the agile tariff as an option (presumably because I am only managed by octopus instead of been their customer directly) so dont know the full details of how it works.

I am not planning to change as I think costs are way too volatile now, but its a curiosity question.

Alnat1

 Have a look at www.energy-stats.uk

Lots of info about Octopus and links to daily and historic agile tariffs

QrizB

Chrysalis said:

QrizB said:

There is no Agile for gas, and the effective tariff for Agile electricity depends on when during the day you use the power.

Tracker, however, follows those rates very closely.

• My electricity data comes from Nordpool; Tracker's underlying wholesale price matches Nordpool day-ahead to within 0.1p/kWh.
• My gas data is derived from Tracker, so (obviously) it matches.

Do you have more details about the time of day aspect on Agile?

As alnat1 says:

Alnat1 said:

 Have a look at www.energy-stats.uk

You'll find the current Agile prices here (this is my region, you can pick yours from the menu):

https://www.energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-southern-england/

There is also https://agileprices.co.uk/?region=H that presents the same info in a slightly different way.

Chrysalis

Thank you thats a very nice site, I notice a week ago the prices were very nice, time of day adjustments seem fairly consistent in upward downward movements.

I also notice it seems to flat line at a maximum 35p unit, is this some kind of upper limit cap on the tariff? or is it maybe just a graphing limit?

QrizB

Chrysalis said:

I also notice it seems to flat line at a maximum 35p unit, is this some kind of upper limit cap on the tariff? or is it maybe just a graphing limit?

Octopus have set a 35p/kWh cap on Agile, in the same way they set (different) caps on Tracker.

https://octopus.energy/agile/ has full details.

Chrysalis

Awesome, didnt know it had a cap so the risk is actually quite low, especially as you can jump off it immediately if it starts trending to a 35p flatline.

QrizB

I'm continuing with my monthly forecasts. Please note that Ofgem themselves are anticipating an October cap of £2800 which is completely at odds with my forecast. One of us is wrong and, given that the head of Ofgem earns around £300k pa and is backed by a multi-million-pound quango while I don't pay or get paid anything for this, it's likely to be me.

------

I'm sure everyone's very excited to know that we're at the end of another month. We've now got four months of the current six-month pricing period under our belt and the scope for the cap to soar or slump is restricted further.

Compared to april, prices were fairly stable during May - although "stable" is a relative term. Wholesale gas ranged from 1.02p to 5.15p/kWh, electricity from 6.3p/kWh to 18.0p/kWh.

I'm contiinuing to use day-ahead electricity prices are from Nordpool and gas prices are from Guy Lipman. Last pricing period I came up with 6.5p/kWh for gas and 17.4p/kWh for electricity; Ofgem used 4.9p/kWh for gas and 16.6p/kWh for electricity when deriving the April cap.

Average prices for May are lower, again, compared to March.

• February - gas 6.33p/kWh, electricity 16.2p/kWh
• March - gas 10.34p/kWh, electricity 25.0p/kWh
• April - gas 5.66p/kWh, electricity 17.7p/kWh
• May - gas 3.13p/kWh, electricity 12.5p/kWh
  

This gives us an average wholesale price for the period to date of 6.37p/kWh for gas and 17.9p/kWh for electricity, which in turn suggests that the retail price of gas will stay the same at 7.4p/kWh, and electricity increase by around 0.5p/kWh, to 28.8p/kWh, leading to a headline Ofgem cap of around £2190, an increase of £220 or 11%.

That's somewhat more reasonable than it was looking at the end of March, and quite a lot lower than the fixed-rate tariffs currently being offered.

And we're now two-thirds of the way through the period, so the range of possible outcomes is getting quite restricted. My bounding cases are:

• Lower estimate - no change, £1971 cap.
• Mid estimate - as the text above, 7.5p/kWh for gas, 28.8p/kWh for elec, £2190 cap, 11% increase.
• Uper estimate - 9p/kWh for gas, 32p/kWh for elec, £2490 cap, 26% increase.

I realise that even my upper estimate (which assumes June and July are as expensive as March was) is well below Ofgem's £2800 figure, and remain unable to explain the difference. Ofgem's number is equivalent to retail prices of about 11p/kWh for gas and 40p/kWh for electricity, plus the current standing charges.