Octopus Agile

Argyle-mikey

MikeyPGT said:

northernstar007 said:

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

That's why I would't consider a shift while my SC is 52p - if you shift and come back you go onto the current SC which is higher ...

Mine was 45p ! You’d think that a cooling off period would allow you to go back to where you were - but clearly not. 

But it’s not exactly the end of the world. 

Bendo

bob2302 said:

EssexHebridean said:

bob2302 said:

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. 

Underfloor heating in the kitchen and (tiny) bathroom. And as said, the use of those overnight saved us circa 17kWh of gas this morning. It matters not a jot whether anyone thinks my figure on electric is “suspect” either - it tells me what I need to know, which is what counts! 

It tells you what you want to hear, not what you need to know. Once you start using significant amount of gratuitous electricity or extra electric heating to bring  down the cost, the figure from Octopus Compare is no longer a useful figure for comparison. When I corrected my figures manually, it added about 4p/kWh, but you simply don't know.

I don't really care what you do, but those misleading figures from Compare are probably keeping people on Agile that should have left. They can come out so low that there doesn't seem much point in making detailed comparisons with other tariffs.

Except as he stated, it saved him the cost of gas so it wasn't extra for the sake of it.

I've a thermal store that is usually heated by gas boiler, but it has 2 3 kWh immersions, therefore when its cheaper to heat it that way, I'll heat it that way. If the price is negative I'll also have all the rads come on to use as much power as possible,  if I'm being paid for it I might as well.

Obviously heating by electric skews things somewhat when doing a comparison as less gas used but more electric.

Personally I try to look at days where I didn't use electric for heating and in those cases, Agile still works out cheaper than SVT or any other available tariff.

Tomato prime would work out cheaper, but that's not available to me with SMETS 1 meters due to their incompetence.  It's pretty clear that's going to be a car crash and those who they can't bill currently will end up being billee by whoever gets appointed as the administrator when they inevitably go belly up in 6 month's time...

masonic

bob2302 said:

EssexHebridean said:

bob2302 said:

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. 

Underfloor heating in the kitchen and (tiny) bathroom. And as said, the use of those overnight saved us circa 17kWh of gas this morning. It matters not a jot whether anyone thinks my figure on electric is “suspect” either - it tells me what I need to know, which is what counts! 

It tells you what you want to hear, not what you need to know. Once you start using significant amount of gratuitous electricity or extra electric heating to bring  down the cost, the figure from Octopus Compare is no longer a useful figure for comparison. When I corrected my figures manually, it added about 4p/kWh, but you simply don't know.

I don't really care what you do, but those misleading figures from Compare are probably keeping people on Agile that should have left. They can come out so low that there doesn't seem much point in making detailed comparisons with other tariffs.

That's why its useful to hear the story from those who aren't currently on Agile, not load-shifting away from the peak, and yet are only currently making savings by virtue of being on legacy versions of an alternative tariff. My average unit rate over the past month (so including the recent price spike) is just under 20p on Tracker Dec 23 and less than a penny more on Agile. Currently saving 6p/day on standing charges by being on Tracker and my average daily consumption is 7 kWh. When I'm kicked off in Feb, I'm favouring Agile as my next tariff and could improve the cost by avoiding the peak.

Spoonie_Turtle

masonic said:

bob2302 said:

EssexHebridean said:

bob2302 said:

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. 

Underfloor heating in the kitchen and (tiny) bathroom. And as said, the use of those overnight saved us circa 17kWh of gas this morning. It matters not a jot whether anyone thinks my figure on electric is “suspect” either - it tells me what I need to know, which is what counts! 

It tells you what you want to hear, not what you need to know. Once you start using significant amount of gratuitous electricity or extra electric heating to bring  down the cost, the figure from Octopus Compare is no longer a useful figure for comparison. When I corrected my figures manually, it added about 4p/kWh, but you simply don't know.

I don't really care what you do, but those misleading figures from Compare are probably keeping people on Agile that should have left. They can come out so low that there doesn't seem much point in making detailed comparisons with other tariffs.

That's why its useful to hear the story from those who aren't currently on Agile, not load-shifting away from the peak, and yet are only currently making savings by virtue of being on legacy versions of an alternative tariff. My average unit rate over the past month (so including the recent price spike) is just under 20p on Tracker Dec 23 and less than a penny more on Agile. Currently saving 6p/day on standing charges by being on Tracker and my average daily consumption is 7 kWh. When I'm kicked off in Feb, I'm favouring Agile as my next tariff and could improve the cost by avoiding the peak.

Similar viee to us although I don't know our average rate / kWh, I just do the comparions on Octopus Compare.  As long as it's consistently under the SVT or alternatives I'm considering (such as Cosy) for the medium term, I'm happy.

Agile is the front runner for us too once our term on Dec 23 ends, even without any conscious load shifting, although Cosy is in the mix in case of having an extended expensive period such as the recent one.

Telegraph_Sam

I thought I had sussed this out (by using Compare) but now it looks like I'm way back to square 1.   
I think we are in very similar situations. I'm tempted to take the "easy" way out and go simply by comparing the SC's. What comparisons do you make as far as available versions (Tracker and Agile) are concerned?

Edit: No hope there. It  seems that the SC is 70 p / day on all tariffs 

Newbie_John

One to argue really, yes when prices are negative the consumption is higher than would have been on SVR, but then the same happens when prices are high - the consumption is lower than it would have been on SVR.
It goes both ways really.

So yeah, the Compare value "saved £500 vs SVR" should be read more like "saved up to £500". But impossible to say how much really.

On this website:
https://energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-eastern-england/

if you scroll to the chart called "

Average unit price for each 30 minute slot for the last 365 days"

you can see the average prices are significantly lower than SVR, averaging to 15p off peak - so the savings are real, fully depending on shifting away from the peak period 16-19.

Telegraph_Sam

Newbie_John said:

Telegraph_Sam said:

I have a Meaco "Low Energy" dehumidifier. I confess I haven't bothered to work out what the cost per hour (when used for clothes drying) comes to. Ditto when I leave the computers on sleep and hibernation respectively when not in use. If it's pennies then I'll donate them to the Octopus good causes box.

160W, so 4p/1h on 25p SVR. 

Drying mode is literally full power dehumidifying with no preset humidity level when to stop and it runs for 6h - so it will use 1kWh.

Says on the label 255 W for the 20L model. AND I was told that it was smart enough to know when to turn the actual dehumidifier bit (as opposed to the fan) off by itself. I place my faith in using it without having too much worry about the kWh consumption

northernstar007

decent night for any midweek usage 
sat night/sun morning is looking again like its going to be in negative

Pat38493

Newbie_John said:

One to argue really, yes when prices are negative the consumption is higher than would have been on SVR, but then the same happens when prices are high - the consumption is lower than it would have been on SVR.
It goes both ways really.

So yeah, the Compare value "saved £500 vs SVR" should be read more like "saved up to £500". But impossible to say how much really.

On this website:
https://energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-eastern-england/

if you scroll to the chart called "

Average unit price for each 30 minute slot for the last 365 days"

you can see the average prices are significantly lower than SVR, averaging to 15p off peak - so the savings are real, fully depending on shifting away from the peak period 16-19.

When I said that I saved £500, I rarely am using more than I would have used anyway - I have rarely used electric heaters, and even then only if the price was so low that I would have cost more to use the gas heater.  

In fact the bigger error would probably be the times when I might have charged the EV to 100% on negative pricing, when if I was on Go, I would have charged it less and recharged more often, so this could cause some overestimation, of the savings, as compare will not shift usage across days, even in the advanced options.  

However I feel pretty comfortable that I made significant savings across the entire year, although I admit the £500 might be a slight overestimate, I don’t think it’s much less than that.

EssexHebridean

bob2302 said:

EssexHebridean said:

bob2302 said:

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. 

Underfloor heating in the kitchen and (tiny) bathroom. And as said, the use of those overnight saved us circa 17kWh of gas this morning. It matters not a jot whether anyone thinks my figure on electric is “suspect” either - it tells me what I need to know, which is what counts! 

It tells you what you want to hear, not what you need to know. Once you start using significant amount of gratuitous electricity or extra electric heating to bring  down the cost, the figure from Octopus Compare is no longer a useful figure for comparison. When I corrected my figures manually, it added about 4p/kWh, but you simply don't know.

I don't really care what you do, but those misleading figures from Compare are probably keeping people on Agile that should have left. They can come out so low that there doesn't seem much point in making detailed comparisons with other tariffs.

I’m making savings though, without impeding on my lifestyle particularly, and in fact am making MORE savings than the comparison actually shows - due to that replacing of gas for heating on occasion. When there is a good run of negatives through the night we also put the heating on in the garden office overnight - it’s a building that isn’t used much at the moment, so does it good to be heated from time to time, and if we can be paid to do so then all the better.  Yes, on the face of it we’re using more electricity than we otherwise would be, but we’re making good savings by doing so, and ultimately, in my world (and bank account!) that’s all that matters - and indeed all I need to know. Trust me Bob, if we should no longer be on Agile then I will know about it, and act on it. 😉