Octopus Agile

Pat38493

Telegraph_Sam said:

If Compare would show me the total costs for me (over the various time periods) under the two tariffs there wouldn't be a problem.  I got the impression from posts that there was a problem with Compare accommodating negative pricing which puts the system in question.

I am not aware of any issue with accounting for negative costs in the Octopus Compare app - I use it all the time andit works very well.  It doesnloads your daily usage from the Octopus API, and then tells you what it would have costs, under whichever tariffs you select.

I think you can only see 1 week of history unless you subscribe for about £1.50 a month.

The default is that it compares your actual usage between the tariffs.  There is also the option (if subscribed), to apply a shifting calculation to shift peaks above a certain level that you can tweak, into the cheapest slots, so you can assess whether you would save after load shifting.

You can see up to one year of past history in there.  However if one of your selected tariffs only started more recently, you will only see the history from when that tariff began.  e.g. if you sslect Tracker October 2024, you will only see comparison data since October, even if the other tariff has a much earlier date.

KevinG

Pat38493 said:

Telegraph_Sam said:

If Compare would show me the total costs for me (over the various time periods) under the two tariffs there wouldn't be a problem.  I got the impression from posts that there was a problem with Compare accommodating negative pricing which puts the system in question.

I am not aware of any issue with accounting for negative costs in the Octopus Compare app

Never had any trouble at all with it, works perfectly.

Telegraph_Sam

I do subscribe the monthly 50 p but I have never used the "shift" facility. On the surface it does what it says on the tin. Except that somewhere in one of these threads someone knowledgeable pointed out that Compare couldn't handle negative and plunge pricing and such tricks, and that therefore the results were not reliable.  I think it was skewed in favour of Agile but I cannot be sure. There was one bug which they have yet to correct: On the year view the graphs for Agile and Tracker were juxtaposed compared with the values. They told me that the values were correct.

teaselMay

I've just looked at Octopus compare for 24th November which had a lot of slightly negative periods. It agrees exactly with the Octopus website on how much I used and how much it cost

Pat38493

Telegraph_Sam said:

I do subscribe the monthly 50 p but I have never used the "shift" facility. On the surface it does what it says on the tin. Except that somewhere in one of these threads someone knowledgeable pointed out that Compare couldn't handle negative and plunge pricing and such tricks, and that therefore the results were not reliable.  I think it was skewed in favour of Agile but I cannot be sure. There was one bug which they have yet to correct: On the year view the graphs for Agile and Tracker were juxtaposed compared with the values. They told me that the values were correct.

It could be that certain graphs don't fully work if there is negative pricing - I don't really pay much attention to the graphs as I am more interested in the actual values, total values, and average costs.

masonic

It really depends on how you would change your behaviour in response to plunge pricing. Obviously if your usage pattern would be completely different on those days to the load-shifting you specify in the app, then that would make any forecast less accurate. Likewise for Saving Sessions and free electricity events run by Octopus. I don't know exactly how Compare works as I am too stingy to pay for the advanced features, but I think there is a lot to be said for experimenting by pretending to be on Agile for a few days and see how that impacts your price comparisons.

Telegraph_Sam

I think my point of departure is to see how the two tariffs (with different version nos) compare, as is, without any major additional load shifting, I ignore the savings sessions, free electricity, wheels of fortune and such tricks which really only amount to peanuts. The tail wagging the dog / lifestyle scenario. And once the basics have been established only then start some clever experimenting to see what changes might realistically amount to. From what I can tell Compare, if it works, should be the ideal (and only?) tool to do this.

Bendo

Compare works perfectly fine. Just compare your tarrifs. If Agile works out cheaper as is then you can probably make it even cheaper if you were to load shift a little. For the best part of a year I did no load shifting whatsoever perhaps just avoided doing jacket potatoes when the peaks were stupidly high but otherwise life as normal cooking at 5ish. Agile was still about £150 cheaper for me than tracker.

Telegraph_Sam

I'll bear this in mind as 15th Feb 25 approaches!

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

I think my point of departure is to see how the two tariffs (with different version nos) compare, as is, without any major additional load shifting, I ignore the savings sessions, free electricity, wheels of fortune and such tricks which really only amount to peanuts. The tail wagging the dog / lifestyle scenario. And once the basics have been established only then start some clever experimenting to see what changes might realistically amount to. From what I can tell Compare, if it works, should be the ideal (and only?) tool to do this.

Sam, if you don't intend to change your behaviour, then the previous comments you mentioned don't apply to you. The simple week/month/year comparisons on Compare will be a good guide.  From what I recall of our previous comparisons, Agile worked better for you than it did for me, and for me it will be at least 10% cheaper when I have to bid farewell to the Dec 23 tariff. That's assuming the pricing remains about where it is now when they launch the next version.