Octopus Agile

Telegraph_Sam

I still think (speaking for myself) that the least worst available option is to use Compare to evaluate Tracker Oct 24 against Agile Oct 24, and ignore the daily reads in favour of the week's and month's readings. 

I agree with your observations on batteries, costs of. I investigated these when I got my solars and worked out that I would be amortising the outlay from savings for many a long year thereafter. As you say it is convenient to ignore the calculations.

bob2302

Telegraph_Sam said:

bob2302 said:

Do bear in mind that if you used extra energy  for heating etc when the unit rate was very low, that figure from Compare is no longer meaningful. 

Why not? I thought that this was precisely what Compare could pick up.

Ultimately what matters is what you pay, and the only meaningful unit rate for comparison purposes comes from dividing what you payed by how much energy you needed - this rate can be used directly in comparisons with single rate tariffs.

If you used unnecessary energy or displaced gas or oil heating, Compare produces a lower figure that can make Agile look much better than it really is. This figure has no meaningful use. 

I don't have the Pro version of Hugo, but they claim it can check all tariffs to find the cheapest. Similar caveats apply though, once you have optimized your use around any TOU tariff, it will look unduly good compared with others 
 

Pat38493

bob2302 said:

Telegraph_Sam said:

bob2302 said:

Do bear in mind that if you used extra energy  for heating etc when the unit rate was very low, that figure from Compare is no longer meaningful. 

Why not? I thought that this was precisely what Compare could pick up.

Ultimately what matters is what you pay, and the only meaningful unit rate for comparison purposes comes from dividing what you payed by how much energy you needed - this rate can be used directly in comparisons with single rate tariffs.

If you used unnecessary energy or displaced gas or oil heating, Compare produces a lower figure that can make Agile look much better than it really is. This figure has no meaningful use. 

I don't have the Pro version of Hugo, but they claim it can check all tariffs to find the cheapest. Similar caveats apply though, once you have optimized your use around any TOU tariff, it will look unduly good compared with others 
 

Interesting point, but at least for my use case at least, I think that this is a pretty negligable aspect compared to the two EVs which we must charge anyway.  I have occasionally used the immersion heater instead of gas if it was plunge pricing, but I doubt this had much effect compared to the amount used by the EV.  If we had Agile pricing below the price of gas much more regularly it would be a bigger issue.

Telegraph_Sam

The derived unit rate must be an average in the case of TOU tariffs with all the drawbacks of averaging. Which is why I would prefer an actual spend corresponding to a defined consumption profile. From this can be derived a unit rate as you have said for comparison with single rate tariffs.
For me Agile appeared worse than I would have expected in the Compare comparison
I would leave gas and oil and offset considerations aside for the sake of keeping the whole topic tolerably digestible ..

greenbee

But the money-saving side of things doesn't work if you ignore the gas and oil. If I use electric heating instead of oil when the price of electricity drops below 6p/kWh then that's an important part of my savings. No, the apps can't take that into account, but it both saves me money and stops the level of oil in the tank dropping quite so fast - so from my point of view I need to include those calculations. I am only using electric heating to replace what I would have used oil for - I'm not using electricity for the sake of it - it's all about load shifting, whether use of electricity or overall use of energy. 

Telegraph_Sam

I think that Compare can only tell you which is the best electricity tariff for a given profile and the cost. You have to make the decision over how you apportion your consumption between electricity, oil, gas, wind, solar, tidal, nuclear ..

teaselMay

I don't tend to pay much attention to the average unit price achieved on agile. I have a quick look most days at cost for the day compared to latest fix and tracker, from memory there have been two days, both last month, when agile came out a couple of pence higher than either, usually it saves us a fair bit. My electricity consumption this year is 18% lower than last year so I don't think I've used excessive amounts during the cheap spells although i have taken advantage for cooking and heat

bob2302

greenbee said:

But the money-saving side of things doesn't work if you ignore the gas and oil. If I use electric heating instead of oil when the price of electricity drops below 6p/kWh then that's an important part of my savings. No, the apps can't take that into account, but it both saves me money and stops the level of oil in the tank dropping quite so fast - so from my point of view I need to include those calculations. I am only using electric heating to replace what I would have used oil for - I'm not using electricity for the sake of it - it's all about load shifting, whether use of electricity or overall use of energy. 

Obviously I'm not saying that you should stop. What I am saying is that once you do that, the raw figure from compare is misleading and unsuitable for comparison with other tariffs. 

Telegraph_Sam

As I understand it Compare provides data from 2 or more comparable elec tariffs (raw ?) if these are included in its database. It can't claim to do the same for other non-electric fuels.

debitcardmayhem

@Telegraph_Sam
It’s a tool, a blunt one at that, as are most apps . As an example the Sunday 2 hrs free
used 22.18 cost 4.71 ave 21.2p
repaid.        amt 2.38
net cost.             2.33 ave 10.5p
Then I exported 80p worth before the event so a theoretical ave net 6.9p.
Too many variables for any app to take into account based on meter readings.