Is it worth getting a Smart Meter? Octopus customer

cr1mson

I have been offered to have these installed with an incentive of a monthly draw to win discounts off bill.

Also would allow me to switch to their Agile tariff?

Is this worth doing? Any thoughts?

Alnat1

What doubts do you have?

You've probably heard that there are sometimes problems with companies connecting to smart meters to get the readings. This does happen to a few people but at the worst that means that you would need to give manual reading as you do now.

cr1mson

Just the hassle factor of having it installed trying to work out if is worth it!

[Deleted User]

You can spin the wheel with an analogue meter. Four years on: I have never won a bean.

Octopus has one of the best smart teams in the sector but they struggle with a less than mature smart meter system. Agile is a dynamic time-of use tariff which requires 30 minute usage recording. Monthly billing is based on this usage not meter index readings. The loss of one of the 48 usage figures each day stops automatic billing. This is why Octopus deems Agile to be a beta tariff. Yes, for the moment, Octopus has set a 35p maximum unit price but this is within Octopus' gift to change.

I have two sets of Octopus smart meters in the past three years. I have no regrets but I am fully alive to what can go wrong on Octopus' time-of-use' tariffs and I know who to contact to get them to do manual data pulls.

FWiW, I doubt that the 35p Cap on Agile will remain in place for much longer given the recent trend in electricity prices.Octopus will just issue a new tariff version with a higher maximum unit price.

[Deleted User]

Alnat1 said:

What doubts do you have?

You've probably heard that there are sometimes problems with companies connecting to smart meters to get the readings. This does happen to a few people but at the worst that means that you would need to give manual reading as you do now.

Octopus Agile tariff doesn't use any meter index readings: it is based on 30 minute usage segments which are used for billing. Octopus' fallback position, in the tc and cs, is that any loss of data may result in the consumer being billed at its flexible tariff rate. If this happens then Octopus might ask for manual meter readings.

Also, the IHD cost information for Agile is always incorrect as Octopus sends an average unit price to the meter for a tariff where the unit cost changes every 30 minutes.

pearl123

One thing that has surprised me about Octopus Agile is how little the energy prices has dropped in the last month. I'm in the southern region. I was expecting a fairly regular reduced tariff at off peak times. 

https://agileprices.co.uk/?region=H

k_man

You aren't seeing the difference between peak and off peak, because for the last few weeks it has been mostly above the CAP.
Off peak would have been a bit above, peak, well above.

That website doesn't have good colour choice either, 25p to 35p is all red.
So on the days it was lower than the cap, at first glance you can't easily see

pearl123

k_man said:

You aren't seeing the difference between peak and off peak, because for the last few weeks it has been mostly above the CAP.
Off peak would have been a bit above, peak, well above.

That website doesn't have good colour choice either, 25p to 35p is all red.
So on the days it was lower than the cap, at first glance you can't easily see

Is there a site, which shows the figures in a better way? If so, could you kindly post a link. 

k_man

pearl123 said:

k_man said:

You aren't seeing the difference between peak and off peak, because for the last few weeks it has been mostly above the CAP.
Off peak would have been a bit above, peak, well above.

That website doesn't have good colour choice either, 25p to 35p is all red.
So on the days it was lower than the cap, at first glance you can't easily see

Is there a site, which shows the figures in a better way? If so, could you kindly post a link. 

This one, which is configurable

https://dashboards.energy-stats.uk/

Or the Twitter feed for daily graphs

(the red ones are the ones that matter)

Jun 11, 18, 25 show good periods of cheaper electricity

https://mobile.twitter.com/energystatsuk

[Deleted User]

Or this if it is still available for download (Octopus Watchdog):

gsmh

I'm with Octopus and they tell me they're not currently installing smart meters in my area - south Leicestershire. I thought there was a major campaign to get us to have smart meters installed...