Octopus Agile

EssexHebridean

teaselMay said:

A 40 degree shortened cotton wash (takes 1 hr 15 and primarily reduces how long it rocks back and forwards for) uses roughly 1.3kWh in mine. As you'd expect reducing it to 30 degrees uses noticeably less but I'm not yet confident it cleans so well. I only use the drier from wet if the power is cheap/negative but looking at last night that adds another 2 kWh

For routine loads I tend to use 20 degrees these days - with bedding and towels still going through on a 40 as a rule. MrEH's rugby kit we usually compromise on 30 as that definitely requires "a little more"! 

I generally take the view that for a straight wash its not that the machine uses "that much" energy, but what it does use may as well be at as cheap a rate as possible! 

greenbee

I do a 'hygiene' 60C wash every couple of weeks with the cleaning cloths/mops etc in it, so that definitely goes on as cheaply as possible. Cold/20/30C washes can generally run from the battery so don't matter. Dog towels go on hot washes. And I try to time the pet bedding/towels so I can run a drum clean soon after to clear out the dog and cat hair properly. Plus at this time of year the towels really need to go in the dryer. So it takes a bit of planning to optimise it. The heat pump TD runs well off the solar, but will drain the battery if it's on for too long. 

Like @EssexHebridean, it's more a question of if I need to use energy, I might as well run these things when it's as cheap as possible. Sometimes that doesn't work out, but mostly it's easy enough to organise. 

Newbie_John

TE Agile Smile, there's finally been (on FB group) description how the prices are calculated 

1. You won't know in advance as it's based on actual prices, not predicted like Agile.
2. It has two components - static and dynamic.
3. Static is a bit complicated but roughly it is 10p outside of 16-19 and 24p at 16-19 added.
4. Dynamic as listed here: https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/system-prices

So how does this compare to Agile? 

Let's look at the last 24h:
10am 5/1/2025 - 10am 6/1/2025
Agile MIN/MAX 2p and 40p
Smile MIN/MAX 12p and 40p

Edge cases:
1) 12th December - Agile had 95p at 15:30, 72p at 12:30
12th December - Smile would have about 24p at 15:30, 23p at 12:30 but.. the max price was 77p at 16:30 (£1 on Agile)

2) 1st January - Agile a lot of negative prices over night the lowest -1.4p at 3.30 and +4p at 7:30
1st January - Smile no negative (they're very unlikely) - +10p at 3:30 and +3p at 7:30

Key take aways:
- extremely unlikely negatives, prices most of the time +10p/kWh
- no insights to future rates, just the basic idea if it's a good or bad day based on winds..
- avoiding peaks you balance between 18-25p per kWh on average
- at peaks it's kind of always around 30-40p per kWh 

Slinky

I put a wash on this morning with water heated by the immersion in the two cheap half hour slots at 1.8p and 3.7p. I fill the machine through the powder drawer via a watering can. I've checked this on the Tapo in the past, it uses about .3 kWh for a 1.03 hour wash on the 30 degree setting with this method. Even without using preheated water it only uses about 0.5-0.6 kWh.

EssexHebridean

That's a good comparison @Newbie_John - thank you. I wasn't tempted anyway (had my fill of small uncertain suppliers and then getting SOLR'd to someone entirely hopeless and having to extricate myself again!) but it's nice to see a confirmation that realistically it probably wouldn't be right for us anyway. 

Newbie_John

EssexHebridean said:

That's a good comparison @Newbie_John - thank you. I wasn't tempted anyway (had my fill of small uncertain suppliers and then getting SOLR'd to someone entirely hopeless and having to extricate myself again!) but it's nice to see a confirmation that realistically it probably wouldn't be right for us anyway. 

Yeah, I can't see any Agiler to swap - it's a worse "Agile" product.
But if I was on Tracker - then that would be worth considering - 21/24h a day the price is cheaper than SVR and then about 50% more expensive at 16-19 but overall it could work better than Tracker. Peaks aren't that scary either.

bob2302

Newbie_John said:

But if I was on Tracker - then that would be worth considering - 21/24h a day the price is cheaper than SVR and then about 50% more expensive at 16-19 but overall it could work better than Tracker. Peaks aren't that scary either.

One of the Lifestyle version would probably make more sense in that case.

EssexHebridean

Well, the predictor was a bit askew for tonight into tomorrow wasn't it! 

teaselMay

The agile predict site has been very poor lately, and seems to obscure how poor their prediction was if you ask it to show the prediction overlayed actual. 

NedS

Newbie_John said:

TE Agile Smile, there's finally been (on FB group) description how the prices are calculated 

1. You won't know in advance as it's based on actual prices, not predicted like Agile.
2. It has two components - static and dynamic.
3. Static is a bit complicated but roughly it is 10p outside of 16-19 and 24p at 16-19 added.
4. Dynamic as listed here: https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/system-prices

So how does this compare to Agile? 

Let's look at the last 24h:
10am 5/1/2025 - 10am 6/1/2025
Agile MIN/MAX 2p and 40p
Smile MIN/MAX 12p and 40p

Edge cases:
1) 12th December - Agile had 95p at 15:30, 72p at 12:30
12th December - Smile would have about 24p at 15:30, 23p at 12:30 but.. the max price was 77p at 16:30 (£1 on Agile)

2) 1st January - Agile a lot of negative prices over night the lowest -1.4p at 3.30 and +4p at 7:30
1st January - Smile no negative (they're very unlikely) - +10p at 3:30 and +3p at 7:30

Key take aways:
- extremely unlikely negatives, prices most of the time +10p/kWh
- no insights to future rates, just the basic idea if it's a good or bad day based on winds..
- avoiding peaks you balance between 18-25p per kWh on average
- at peaks it's kind of always around 30-40p per kWh 

Do they publish prices in advance like Agile does, or are the prices all calculated after the fact, so at the time you don't know the exact cost, just a general idea if the day will be cheap or expensive.

The whole point of Agile is you can (hopefully) plan usage to the half hour to maximise cost savings.