Octopus Agile

Slinky

We have solar and batteries, but the batteries aren't smart, so I check rates late each afternoon to pick the best options for charging overnight. I do wish the Solis had more than 3 charge and 3 discharge slots, as I'd like to be able to cherry pick more specifically.  I tend to charge for about 3 hours so the batteries are full first thing in the morning. Yesterday I had the inverter set to keep the charge at 100% through the day in case we lost power with the weather conditions. In a power cut our system allows power to a double socket in our hall, so we could manage to keep the fridge/freezer and some light powered up for some time.

wrf12345

There is another way of doing TOU tariffs, at the moment you have 2.2 times energy cost, so 10p wholesale ends up at 22p for the user. If you take that 12p difference as being at the average rate then rather than multiply by 2.2 you could add 12p to the wholesale energy cost, so when it is higher the multiplier effect is lost and it is less frightening (90p would come down to 52p) but you would lose a lot of the ultra cheap energy, something that cost a penny now would be 13p a unit. Just a thought.

masonic

wrf12345 said:

There is another way of doing TOU tariffs, at the moment you have 2.2 times energy cost, so 10p wholesale ends up at 22p for the user. If you take that 12p difference as being at the average rate then rather than multiply by 2.2 you could add 12p to the wholesale energy cost, so when it is higher the multiplier effect is lost and it is less frightening (90p would come down to 52p) but you would lose a lot of the ultra cheap energy, something that cost a penny now would be 13p a unit. Just a thought.

You are essentially describing the Tracker tariff. The multiplier there is low (about 1.2x) and they add on about 11p, based on daily average wholesale. You are right that it would be a less scary place to be when prices spike up well above £100/MWh, but that hasn't happened in recent times. There have been a couple of days this year where Tracker looked good vs Agile, but for most of the rest of the time it was swings and roundabouts or cheaper to be on Agile (peak usage dependent).

Newbie_John

wrf12345 said:

There is another way of doing TOU tariffs, at the moment you have 2.2 times energy cost, so 10p wholesale ends up at 22p for the user. If you take that 12p difference as being at the average rate then rather than multiply by 2.2 you could add 12p to the wholesale energy cost, so when it is higher the multiplier effect is lost and it is less frightening (90p would come down to 52p) but you would lose a lot of the ultra cheap energy, something that cost a penny now would be 13p a unit. Just a thought.

That's what TE Agile is (in theory).

But the reason why Octopus Agile became popular is the fact they sometimes pay you to use electricity - that one day in the month is so catchy that a lot of people make articles, videos and the product sells itself. Nobody talks about the high prices 😅

And doing 1.0* price + 10p does exactly that, if you're lucky you may "save few pence" that most people wouldn't care, but "being paid for using electricity" sounds to good to miss.

Saying all that a hybrid would make sense more that the highs are limited to 20p (min(20, whole sale price) + wholesale price) so if whole sale price is:
10p + 10p = 20p
20p + 20p = 40p
20p + 30p = 50p (instead of 60p)
20p + 40p = 60p (instead of 80p)
Or similar, but one could argue that it makes a complicated product even more complicated 😄

Telegraph_Sam

I'd go along with that - with the rider that I may be obliged to switch to Agile if Tracker dies. It looks like swings & roundabouts with more airtime being  devoted to the swings. And if I loose a few pence (from taking my eye off the ball during a spike on the roundabouts) then that qualifies less for headline news. If you convert that into actual savings over 3 - 6 months, that puts things into proper perspective.
I'd opt for a managed hybrid Agile myself without the bells & whistles (which is not a mill miles from son of Tracker ..)

Slinky

Some fairly grim rates for tomorrow.

northernstar007

Slinky said:

Some fairly grim rates for tomorrow.

going to get worse as the week goes on

Slinky

northernstar007 said:

Slinky said:

Some fairly grim rates for tomorrow.

going to get worse as the week goes on

oh thanks for that

pete-20-11

Yes, not much solar or wind for a while. 

Bendo

Not helped by quite a few nuclear reactors currently offline. Next week should hopefully be better https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/power-station/daily-statuses