Octopus Agile

Telegraph_Sam

We are at one on that. If I come to no other conclusion than "Agile's no worse" as is then that will be motivation to move to Agile come the end of Dec 23 Tracker. Tks

greenbee

I was worried about how complicated Agile might be before I signed up, but knew that I don't do much at normal peak rate as I'm working then. Compare suggested that it would be cheaper (for import) than Flux (which I was on at the time). It doesn't compare export, but at this time my export is limited to a little solar and whatever unused import I dump when the price is low before topping up again. 

It turns out that (as, I think @Netexporter said, it just takes a few minutes after the rates are announced to work out what you might put off (if rates are high) or do early (if low). 

If tonight's prices were high, I might have put off the laundry to another day. As they are low I've decided to slow cook both Christmas gammon overnight and roast them on tomorrow morning's low prices as they'll last, but also be out of the way. The dishwasher is empty, so I decided to wash the over racks (I'll do the mince pies before the gammon so they get the clean oven!). All stuff that needs doing, and which it'll be good to get out of the way. 

If I have to get up with the dog during the night I might get more laundry done overnight rather than tomorrow.

As I have oil heating, and a very small oil tank relative to the size of the house, it's also very useful to be able to heat the house and hot water with cheap electricity as it saves a few litres of oil and means I can put the refills off. I only do this when it makes financial sense, but have automations set up to make it easier (I programme the times in once and apply them to all electric heating). Like @EssexHebridean it actually suits me to get a lot of stuff done overnight - what could be more efficient that getting work done while you sleep?!

I'm saving a significant amount - Compare isn't quite accurate as it compares the electricity I use for heating against electricity prices rather than oil. But I can see the difference between last year's bills and this year's. They're big enough not to be explained away by weather/solar panels etc. They'd potentially be a bit less without the load shifting, but I can see the impact on both the electricity and oil bills (and my stress levels about the oil tank!). 

Just out of interest, I've compared with tracker for the 3 months I've been on Agile (I paid £4.99 for an annual subscription) , and it suggests a 43% saving against Tracker (this month it's 55%). I'm a low user of electricity - made even lower by the fact that I have solar and batteries. 

Telegraph_Sam

That is all very interesting and relevant - to me and I suspect a number of Dec 23 Trackers faced with the imminent future.
It's horses for courses.  Barring not baking the tatties (m'wave) before 7 pm I can't see me making many further great lifestyle adjustments. Rather I can see us - wrongly - adopting the Tracker plug-and-play approach:  Keeping an eye via gastracker notices of significant up's and down's but otherwise letting the system take care of itself. Which I suspect the Agile system, designed as it for dedicated people like yourself, is not intended to do.
In order to micro-manage use of the Agile system do you have to pay regular visits to Nordpool in order to see what's coming? And if so does it give you advance notification of every half hour slot's price for the following 24 hours? And considering how the prices yo-yo around the place for every 1/2 h slot, it strikes me as a lot of work to digest and translate them into action at the coal face.
I've got a feeling that most people would transfer to Agile and once the novelty had passed, cross their fingers and hope for the best.
PS I note the fact that you are a solar and batteries (and EV?) person. I suspect that that makes a difference.

Bendo

Oh typical. I should check my emails more. My agile term ended yesterday so I've been just been switched to flexible. And the switch to agile page isn't working.

Do I override my automations in the hope they will agree to put me back on from today or not risk it....

Edit, never mind. Went in the email history section of my account and it showed an email prompting to accept the terms.  Went into that and accepted and back on Agile. No sign of the actual email or confirmation of tariff changen in my actual gmail account but my account now shows as agile again so at least I can go to sleep now.

greenbee

@Telegraph_Sam - the solar and batteries (no EV) make a small difference. The solar makes very little at this time of year, but the battery does allow me to top up with cheap electricity and use it at peak times to cover base load. I don’t use nordpool, or anything else to look beyond the next day. I look at the prices when they are published at 4pm (or when I finish work that day) which gives me 8 hours to decide whether it is worth making changes from what I’d planned anyway. Some days there may be cheap pricing that I don’t take advantage of because I don’t need to use it, other days (e.g. when the animals were all puking recently) I may have laundry that needs doing regardless of cost. I’m still saving. 

The only thing I’ve done differently this weekend is an extra load of laundry and shifting the heating to electric. I’ve also let the pricing decide when my Christmas baking is done (which is one decision I don’t have to make myself!).

I spent about a week thinking it through and then decided it was worth a try. It turned out to be a lot easier than I’d expected. I think you’re probably putting more effort into worrying about the difficulties than those of us on Agile put into managing it. My suggestion would be that rather than getting into a state of analysis paralysis, you try it for a month and see how you get on.

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

In order to micro-manage use of the Agile system do you have to pay regular visits to Nordpool in order to see what's coming? And if so does it give you advance notification of every half hour slot's price for the following 24 hours? And considering how the prices yo-yo around the place for every 1/2 h slot, it strikes me as a lot of work to digest and translate them into action at the coal face.

You can get prices from the Compare app or direct from Octopus from 4pm the day before. Nordpool gives a useful early look for those who don't want to wait.

Given that over about a year, not doing any planning around Agile pricing has still resulted in it comparing favourably to the newer Trackers, you would not need to do any work if you didn't want to and should still realise a saving.

RavingMad

Woke up to 35kwh used at a cost of -20p and a home at 22⁰ again.

Going to be a shock to the system when I only have the house warmed to 19⁰ going forward and the palaver of lighting the stove 

This month has been so mild that I think I've only lit the fire a few times in the evening 

EssexHebridean

An amateurish (in comparison!) 16kWh here so far - but a warm house, towels washed and just finishing their dry, and the DW ran through overnight so the air fryer inserts are ready to go again for cooking later which is useful! 10p in the “bank” to offset against some cooking on the slightly more expensive slots this morning, too. For that reason we will also be doing some cooking in the peak slots later so that will offset the good stuff overnight to a degree. 

Plan is to leave the underfloor on until 0930, switch it off for half an hour, then back on again until prices go back above gas at 2pm. We have my Mum round this afternoon so the house being slightly warmer than usual is a good thing as she feels the cold more than we do. I will probably try and time getting the oven on for the first batch of cooking for 10am I think.

@Telegraph_Sam You’re overthinking this. While yes, it’s perfectly possible to micro-manage things on Agile if you really want to, for many of us it’s a simple matter of just keeping a gentle eye on the predictions for the following few days (and in the simplest terms that can even be roughly done by “is it going to be windy, particularly up north?”) and deciding off the back of that when it might be a good time to aim to do washing/run the dishwasher. I choose to go a little further as I have the ability to switch some of our heating from gas to electric - the ONLY time the electric heating gets used is when the electric price via Agile is cheaper than the gas, so for periods of time when clearly that’s not going to happen due to weather conditions, there’s no headspace required - it’s just a case of leaving the GCH to do it’s thing as normal. Currently I’m giving things a little more thought as with it being the time of year it is I’m doing rather more cooking than usual, so again it’s worth the effort to time things like heating the oven up during the cheaper times - but frankly, if that’s not practical, then it’s not the end of the world. We will NOT be telling mother she has to wait until after 7pm for her tea tonight, we’re using the Christmas lights as we usually would, and I wouldn’t generally run the WM or DW during the 1600-1900 times anyway! It doesn’t have as much spot an impact on lifestyle for most of us as you seem to think - in part because we have chosen the tariff because it suits our lifestyles, as greenbee said previously. 

Bendo

RavingMad said:

Woke up to 35kwh used at a cost of -20p and a home at 22⁰ again.

Going to be a shock to the system when I only have the house warmed to 19⁰ going forward and the palaver of lighting the stove 

This month has been so mild that I think I've only lit the fire a few times in the evening 

Similar here. Made it to 31, would have been more had it not been for my slow start. Used 7 kWh of gas yesterday, expect similar today versus a usual 50 kWh ish.

We are away next week, hopefully be some negative pricing then for the cats / cat feeder to enjoy... if not they can stay cold.

pete-20-11

Only 9.5kWh here, for -8p