Octopus Agile

la531983

Pat38493 said:

la531983 said:

Peak pricing tomorrow likely to be a significant jump up for Agile customers if the Nordpool day ahead hourly pricing (used to calculate Tracker pricing) is anything to go by, so just a heads up.

Still a significant lack of wind power in the system.

Is that the main cause or is there also some more politics going on or strikes in Australia threatened or whatever?

Rest of the day is similar to today, it's peak where the prices seem to have jumped a lot.

The Aussie strikes didn't impact gas too much on Friday in the end and didn't impact electric spot pricing this weekend. 

[Deleted User]

Pat38493 said:

la531983 said:

Peak pricing tomorrow likely to be a significant jump up for Agile customers if the Nordpool day ahead hourly pricing (used to calculate Tracker pricing) is anything to go by, so just a heads up.

Still a significant lack of wind power in the system.

Is that the main cause or is there also some more politics going on or strikes in Australia threatened or whatever?

The price of oil has risen by 30% since Jun………….

Chrysalis

Scot_39 said:

Chrysalis 

The EPG only affected the cap on Agile.  So in all the instances when it was below the cap there was actually no EPG intervention which ended up being for most of the winter period.  It was summer and early autumn that was pegged at the cap for long periods (ironically before the EPG period started).

Can you explain your version of EPG interaction - as it wasn't how I understood that it worked at all.

Unfortunately Octopus have revised their agile price guide and no longer refer to epg at all.

Does anyone have the old version ?

I was led to believe EPG discounting - from posts here and elsewhere - at least after a short period - operated essentially as a max discount system on each and every half hourly slot price.

A bit like it applied to fixes - cheaper than epg price no help, above epg discounted to epg floor, but only up to max discount.  So could pay more if prices high.

But I got abit lost as there were a couple of changes last autumn to rules, and more than willing to be corrected.

So if the actual wholesale rate linked price went over the regional EPG adjusted price, it was capped at the EPG price until it reached say for electric c50p= c33p epg avg +17p discount, or 66p = c33p+c33p Jan-Mar depending on level of max EPG discount at time.

Then for every penny above Ofgem cap would increase a penny

So 51p-17p or 67p-33p = 34p charged etc

until hit Octopus 100p cap itself - so with EPG discount - paid c83p, c67p, c83p as EPG discount 18p, 33p, 17p etc.

Or in tabular form for the 33p 17p nominal period Apr to Jun.

Raw/Adjusted

10/10
20/20
30/30
33/33
34/33
50/33
51/34
60/43
100/83
101+/83 (via Octopus 100p)

It actually hit the 83p as in Dec22 when the wholsale rate reached c£400/MWh - before Octopus retail multipliers - current web help example 2.2 and fixed cost components added if 4-7pm.

And if look at the minimum 1/2 hourly prices, in Dec spike, also potentially see the same EPG style floor level pricing as seen on the max for vast majority of days Feb to June.

That would seem a better fit to explain the remarkable flat lining seen for most of period before Jul under EPG apart from a few days and the real large wholesale glitches like the Dec 22 spike to c£400/MWh

See max, ave and min daily pricing chart at say

https://energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-east-midlands/

The big spike section pre EPG was Octopus's own 78p cap - on of their steps in its transition from 35p to a £1.

Until that is July 1st - when the max daily price is far more noisy.

Sure.

The EPG was to discount what the retailer charges if its above the cap, I hope this bit is easy to understand, so on fixed deals, if their price was above the cap they got subsidised (but never to below the EPG level, and also never more than the size of the subsidy on SVR).  If the fixed was below cap it got no subsidy as the retailer was already offering a cost deemed reasonable by the government.

On agile the retail charges a different amount every 30 minutes, and this has a maximum cap.  If we assume, the customer is on the 35p capped agile (as I was last summer) and the EPG cap is 33.02p (as it was for my region).  Then the effect was to simply change the Agile cap from 35p to 33.02p.

This means that whenever Octopus would have charged me anywhere between 33.03p per unit and 35p per unit, then the government would subsidise it down to 33.02p, so a maximum of 1.98p per unit subsidy, anything above 35p retail the subsidy would remain at a fixed 1.98p per unit and Octopus would eat up the cost above 35p the same as if there was no subsidy..  If Octopus charged me 33.02p or less (which was the case for most of my 30 min slots in the winter), then the rate didnt meet EPG eligibility criteria, the same as cheap fixed rate deals.  This may seem harsh on Octopus but the EPG was designed with an assumption any deals that had been agreed already were considered viable to the suppliers, it wasnt designed to increase the profitability of those deals..  This is why subsidising Agile was good value for EPG, as the alternative would be customers moving back to SVR to get EPG rates and the government would have been applying a much larger subsidy.

For those on a higher capped Agile e.g. 50p.  Then the potential EPG subsidy amount for those customers was higher as 50p is much higher vs 33.02. compared to 35p.  But as it turns out that higher cap most of the time during the EPG period was not an issue, there was a short period early December where costs went high and the government was subsidising Agile.

I hope this explains it better.

Scot_39

Some gas prices did jump again when the Australian strikes started - but that's likely to be month+ ahead pricing (think how long it takes a boat to travel from Aus to Europe etc).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66749700

And it's not immediately visible in the domestic Tracker gas rates e.g.

https://energy-stats.uk/octopus-tracker-east-midlands/

But like anything - it's generally not just one thing - but a mix.

There's certainly been some quite high 6pm peak rates c48.7p on Thurs? for instance on Agile - almost certainly due to lack of wind in mix.  

But the time averaged figures still well below SVT c8-10p last week - as was Tracker.

But it does again show Tracker is the simpler bet for those unable to avoid agile's peak periods and high rates for a lot of their daily consumption.

Scot_39

Chrysalis said:

Scot_39 said:

Chrysalis 

The EPG only affected the cap on Agile.  So in all the instances when it was below the cap there was actually no EPG intervention which ended up being for most of the winter period.  It was summer and early autumn that was pegged at the cap for long periods (ironically before the EPG period started).

Can you explain your version of EPG interaction - as it wasn't how I understood that it worked at all.

Unfortunately Octopus have revised their agile price guide and no longer refer to epg at all.

Does anyone have the old version ?

I was led to believe EPG discounting - from posts here and elsewhere - at least after a short period - operated essentially as a max discount system on each and every half hourly slot price.

A bit like it applied to fixes - cheaper than epg price no help, above epg discounted to epg floor, but only up to max discount.  So could pay more if prices high.

But I got abit lost as there were a couple of changes last autumn to rules, and more than willing to be corrected.

So if the actual wholesale rate linked price went over the regional EPG adjusted price, it was capped at the EPG price until it reached say for electric c50p= c33p epg avg +17p discount, or 66p = c33p+c33p Jan-Mar depending on level of max EPG discount at time.

Then for every penny above Ofgem cap would increase a penny

So 51p-17p or 67p-33p = 34p charged etc

until hit Octopus 100p cap itself - so with EPG discount - paid c83p, c67p, c83p as EPG discount 18p, 33p, 17p etc.

Or in tabular form for the 33p 17p nominal period Apr to Jun.

Raw/Adjusted

10/10
20/20
30/30
33/33
34/33
50/33
51/34
60/43
100/83
101+/83 (via Octopus 100p)

It actually hit the 83p as in Dec22 when the wholsale rate reached c£400/MWh - before Octopus retail multipliers - current web help example 2.2 and fixed cost components added if 4-7pm.

And if look at the minimum 1/2 hourly prices, in Dec spike, also potentially see the same EPG style floor level pricing as seen on the max for vast majority of days Feb to June.

That would seem a better fit to explain the remarkable flat lining seen for most of period before Jul under EPG apart from a few days and the real large wholesale glitches like the Dec 22 spike to c£400/MWh

See max, ave and min daily pricing chart at say

https://energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-east-midlands/

The big spike section pre EPG was Octopus's own 78p cap - on of their steps in its transition from 35p to a £1.

Until that is July 1st - when the max daily price is far more noisy.

Sure.

The EPG was to discount what the retailer charges if its above the cap, I hope this bit is easy to understand, so on fixed deals, if their price was above the cap they got subsidised (but never to below the EPG level, and also never more than the size of the subsidy on SVR).  If the fixed was below cap it got no subsidy as the retailer was already offering a cost deemed reasonable by the government.

On agile the retail charges a different amount every 30 minutes, and this has a maximum cap.  If we assume, the customer is on the 35p capped agile (as I was last summer) and the EPG cap is 33.02p (as it was for my region).  Then the effect was to simply change the Agile cap from 35p to 33.02p.

This means that whenever Octopus would have charged me anywhere between 33.03p per unit and 35p per unit, then the government would subsidise it down to 33.02p, so a maximum of 1.98p per unit subsidy, anything above 35p retail the subsidy would remain at a fixed 1.98p per unit and Octopus would eat up the cost above 35p the same as if there was no subsidy..  If Octopus charged me 33.02p or less (which was the case for most of my 30 min slots in the winter), then the rate didnt meet EPG eligibility criteria, the same as cheap fixed rate deals.  This may seem harsh on Octopus but the EPG was designed with an assumption any deals that had been agreed already were considered viable to the suppliers, it wasnt designed to increase the profitability of those deals..

For those on a higher capped Agile e.g. 50p.  Then the potential EPG subsidy amount for those customers was higher as 50p is much higher vs 33.02. compared to 35p.  But as it turns out that higher cap most of the time during the EPG period was not an issue, there was a short period early December where costs went high and the government was subsidising Agile.

I hope this explains it better.

Thanks

The thing that I couldn't quite grasp was what happened in Jan or Apr - when the EPG discounting near doubled then halved c 18p c33p c17p across the three qaurters etc.

I think the thing I didn't realise was that Octopus didn't change it's pricing model or really apparently it's EPG style discounting wrapper every 3 months. But stuck to the Oct-to-Dec rates e.g. 33.xp EPG rates and 17.9p discounting figure.

So that post above is wrong - as I don't think there ever really was a 33p or 17p discount period - only a 17.9p discount period - that ran until EPG discount went to zero - as Ofgem Cap dropped below EPG cap - which itself then increased to £3000.

la531983

[Deleted User] said:

Pat38493 said:

la531983 said:

Peak pricing tomorrow likely to be a significant jump up for Agile customers if the Nordpool day ahead hourly pricing (used to calculate Tracker pricing) is anything to go by, so just a heads up.

Still a significant lack of wind power in the system.

Is that the main cause or is there also some more politics going on or strikes in Australia threatened or whatever?

The price of oil has risen by 30% since Jun………….

Which has nothing to do with peak pricing tomorrow jumping significantly on today and yesterday. 

la531983

And there is is, pricing between 5.30 and 7pm tomorrow sailing over 50p. 

MultiFuelBurner

That might be worrying for anyone that doesn't understand Agile pricing (in which case they shouldn't be on that tariff) and for those that do they have their own system for keeping their average cost below 20p kWh tomorrow.

QrizB

la531983 said:

And there is is, pricing between 5.30 and 7pm tomorrow sailing over 50p. 

Hitting almost 60p/kWh at 1830 in my region. Still almost 40p at 1900, after the peak period, and doesn't fall below 30p until 2100.

MultiFuelBurner said:

That might be worrying for anyone that doesn't understand Agile pricing (in which case they shouldn't be on that tariff) and for those that do they have their own system for keeping their average cost below 20p kWh tomorrow.

Per the daily energy-stats toot, tomorrows average price is 25.1p - and, excluding the evening peak, it's still 21.3p.

MultiFuelBurner

QrizB said:

la531983 said:

And there is is, pricing between 5.30 and 7pm tomorrow sailing over 50p. 

Hitting almost 60p/kWh at 1830 in my region. Still almost 40p at 1900, after the peak period, and doesn't fall below 30p until 2100.

MultiFuelBurner said:

That might be worrying for anyone that doesn't understand Agile pricing (in which case they shouldn't be on that tariff) and for those that do they have their own system for keeping their average cost below 20p kWh tomorrow.

Per the daily energy-stats toot, tomorrows average price is 25.1p - and, excluding the evening peak, it's still 21.3p.

I was always under the impression the experienced shifters would beat the tracker price for the day.

Given that for our region that is 20.24p.I expected the experienced Agile load shifter to beat that.