Octopus Agile

bob2302

wrf12345 said:

I have a couple of 17 inch laptops, can use on batteries, one for internet, one for TV, and will last out the extended peak, then charge on cheap rates. That saves a bit compared to using monitor and TV but would not want to do for more than a few days. No cooking and microwave reduced number of cups of coffee, again ok for limited period. No cooking so no need to open fridge and turned off for three to four hours in the evening - it is a small fridge and uses 50W when running. If you don't open it use goes right down. LED lighting everywhere, as low as 1W in places. Everything is turned off at mains when not in use except the fridge. Cold water showers brilliant way to wake up in the morning. But to get there you need to buy a power monitor thingie and go through everything to check things out, an old satellite box for instance might consume 25W in standby, which is 0.3kw a day, etc, etc. All good fun if you ain't busy earning £50-100 an hour when it probably does not really matter.

On peak rate on TE, boiling enough water in a kettle for a mug of tea costs 0.6p, even on Agile it wont be more than 2p. A short hot shower also only costs a few pence. These are small savings even for someone on basic universal credit.

Also Agile has a relatively high SC, even  if you have a 2023 tariff, if you are on a 2024 tariff it could easily wipe out all of the savings you mentioned.

steveKn

interesting to hear how people are saving energy costs with agile. ( at 3am!)
serious question… why do people without batteries use agile ? how much so they actually save over “normal” rate ? is the lifestyle disruption worth it ?

i just choose the lowest rates to charge my batteries, then carry on as before. ( although shifting (dish) washing to charging periods so as to use grid directly) 

teaselMay

bob2302 said:

Also Agile has a relatively high SC, even  if you have a 2023 tariff, if you are on a 2024 tariff it could easily wipe out all of the savings you mentioned.

My standing charge on Agile is 5p/day less than any other Octopus tariff I've seen for our region.

bob2302

steveKn said:

interesting to hear how people are saving energy costs with agile. ( at 3am!)
serious question… why do people without batteries use agile ? how much so they actually save over “normal” rate ? is the lifestyle disruption worth it ?

i just choose the lowest rates to charge my batteries, then carry on as before. ( although shifting (dish) washing to charging periods so as to use grid directly) 

In the summer it works for a lot more people because it gives about 20 hours a day of cheap electricity, with a low mean price across the day, and the cheapest slots in the afternoon.

teaselMay

steveKn said:

interesting to hear how people are saving energy costs with agile. ( at 3am!)
serious question… why do people without batteries use agile ? how much so they actually save over “normal” rate ? is the lifestyle disruption worth it ?

i just choose the lowest rates to charge my batteries, then carry on as before. ( although shifting (dish) washing to charging periods so as to use grid directly) 

No batteries or solar here, one human, 3 dogs, washing machine and tumble drier, gas hob, electric oven, some medical equipment. Home all day. Average use 3kWh/day. I consistently save £10-15 a month compared to tracker, SVR or any of the fixes I've compared to. Even when I literally changed nothing I saved £10/month with agile. I have started taking advantage of cheap spells using those for clothes washing and drying and any oven stuff if it's not a nuisance time. But really not doing anything drastic.

EssexHebridean

steveKn said:

interesting to hear how people are saving energy costs with agile. ( at 3am!)
serious question… why do people without batteries use agile ? how much so they actually save over “normal” rate ? is the lifestyle disruption worth it ?

i just choose the lowest rates to charge my batteries, then carry on as before. ( although shifting (dish) washing to charging periods so as to use grid directly) 

We only moved to our current house last year. Prior to that we were in a flat with electric heating, and were on Economy 7. Over the years we got better and better at managing things on the TOU tariff, and ended up in a scenario where somewhere around 75-80% of our use was at the off-peak rate. When we moved it was actually difficult to switch to the fact that we could just do things like washing and the dishwasher at whatever time of the day we wanted, and so I started looking at possible savings with Agile which could play to the strengths we'd learned over all those years.  

Since I switched in Mid October we've paid on average around 16.5p per kWh for electricity, and to be honest we don't really find that there is much disruption - a lot of evenings we're not home much before 7pm in any event, so avoiding the peak isn't massively challenging for the most part. I often do washing over the weekend, and it's really practical to be able to get it out on the line from first thing to maximise  drying time. Same with the DW - it runs overnight, and by the time we get up the stuff is dry and ready to put straight away at weekends. We also have a small amount of electric heating in the house which we can use overnight when rates are low enough that it's cheaper to use that than the gas central heating, so another win. 

northernstar007

same boat as me teaselMay, apart from no pets or med equp
ive came off v1 tracker (cheapest ver) end of sept and comparing it to argile with shifting to cheap slots i'm on par with original tracker hitting i think about avg 19p kwh and low user 1400kwh yr,, last night was ideal free elecky zaped up 4kwh for 10p for washing, and will bring that monthly avg down nicely 

Argyle-mikey

After just 3 days on fixed we’ve run back to Agile using the “cooling off” clause. Never again. 

Our SC has gone up from 45p to 55p for some reason, but I’ll live with that. 

Two adults, three pets, no EV’s, no solar etc. 

northernstar007

Argyle-mikey said:

After just 3 days on fixed we’ve run back to Agile using the “cooling off” clause. Never again. 

Our SC has gone up from 45p to 55p for some reason, but I’ll live with that. 

Two adults, three pets, no EV’s, no solar etc. 

why, whats happend

bob2302

EssexHebridean said:

steveKn said:

interesting to hear how people are saving energy costs with agile. ( at 3am!)
serious question… why do people without batteries use agile ? how much so they actually save over “normal” rate ? is the lifestyle disruption worth it ?

i just choose the lowest rates to charge my batteries, then carry on as before. ( although shifting (dish) washing to charging periods so as to use grid directly) 

Since I switched in Mid October we've paid on average around 16.5p per kWh for electricity,
...

We also have a small amount of electric heating in the house which we can use overnight when rates are low enough that it's cheaper to use that than the gas central heating, so another win. 

Small compared with gas consumption or small compared the electricity you would have used without the low prices.

Unless that extra electrical heating is negligible compared with ordinary electrical use that figure of 16.5p/kWh is suspect.