Octopus Agile

teaselMay

that's what i was wondering too, Agile only publish at 4pm day before, so only 8 hours notice of overnight price but that means any low pricing can be utilised if you choose to. If you've no idea of the price you can't load shift appropriately it'd all be a gamble

crumpet_man

Maybe that's why they named the tariff Smile?  Because you have to grin and bear it.

zxzxzx

NedS said:

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.

And if you do plan and maximise you get…..

Agile actual p per kWh paid by me

Dec 11p
Nov 15p
Oct 11p
Sep 9p

(The 99.9p odd half hours in December did not concern me because I did not use any electric for those few hours ymmv!)

TheElectricCow

Well looks like we’re hitting the cap again tomorrow! Have to say that one caught me off guard as the prices haven’t been too awful lately 

northernstar007

seems like there trying to kick us off agile now 

GingerTim

Very cold, no wind, not a surprise.

KevinG

northernstar007 said:

seems like there trying to kick us off agile now 

That makes no sense, they're just applying the usual formula and sometimes this is what happens. I'm sticking with it, I've saved lots. 

EssexHebridean

Damn - wasn't expecting it to be quite that grim. 

Best rearrange the meal plan for minimal cooking and remind MrEH to fill a flask first thing!

teaselMay

Doldrums again isn't it, with extra demand because it's cold

Slinky

I topped the batteries up overnight as I'm always doing at the moment, only to be exporting today at a lower rate when the sun came out. We've got some sun forecast tomorrow, but I can't risk relying on it fill the batteries tomorrow when there are such expensive rates if we haven't got enough stored.