Octopus Agile

Spies

Finally, nice 4 hours of plunge pricing. 

Netexporter

Spies said:

Finally, nice  hours of plunge pricing. 

I still haven't got tomorrow's prices. Seems to be getting later and later.

Spies

Netexporter said:

Spies said:

Finally, nice  hours of plunge pricing. 

I still haven't got tomorrow's prices. Seems to be getting later and later.

From the octopus app

mmmmikey

Spies said:

Finally, nice  hours of plunge pricing. 

Yes indeed - and thanks to the good folk here (yourself included!) I am perfectly poised to take advantage, with the hot water cylinder temperature low and various heaters set up. All made possible by the advance warning. Quite decent "plunge" rates too at -6ish p/kWh. Looking forward to waking up to a nice warm house in the morning.

mmmmikey

Netexporter said:

Spies said:

Finally, nice  hours of plunge pricing. 

I still haven't got tomorrow's prices. Seems to be getting later and later.

Before the last week or so, I was relying on a notification from Octopus Watch to tell me the prices were available. But over the last few days, I've actually been seing the prices in Octopus Watch and/or the Octopus app before receiving the notification. As of now I still haven't had the OW notification but saw the prices a couple of hours ago.

Pat38493

kingwheeler said:

PennineAcute said:

Pat38493 said:

Just be aware that for most people, you need to load shift quite a lot of usage to beat the tracker tariff on a long term basis.

Yes, I moved from Agile to tracker and increased my savings (to date) by 8p a day.

Oh....ok this I was not expecting. Is it because like most of your daily usage still happens all day long? We have electric heating/water and cooking, zero gas anywhere, so if we did all our hot water, washing machines, dishwasher, and heated the house at non 4-7pm times, we'd surely be ahead, no?

The only things I can think of that are on non stop are lighting, tv/laptop, and fridge.

Not necessarily - there are a lot of slots even outside of 4-7 that are above the tracker rate on most days, and usually the average across the whole day for base load is a bit higher than tracker..  If you want to beat the tracker rate you have to target the slots that are below the tracker rate for load shifting.

You will most likely save a fair bit against Go or Flexible but tracker is harder.

example - tonight there is a lot of negative pricing, but we already had 2 lots of negative pricing only a few days ago so our car is still almost fully charged - we will run what we can overnight.  However tomorrow afternoon there are zero slots below the tracker rate. (usually most of the afternoon up to 15.30 or so is below tracker).

This is why you pretty much have to be on it every day planning what you are going to do if you want to beat the tracker price, and even then you might not manage it every day.

I suspect that when we mothball our hot tub for the winter, we will start consistently losing out to Tracker and end up switching.

Edit:  The other downside of tracker though is that if you switch away from it, you are not allowed to go back on it for 10 months (not sure how strict Octopus are with that but that's the stated rule), so we might end up sticking with Agile and go on Tracker in the spring.

Spies

Myenergi still hasn't received the prices because my scheduled charge isn't showing up, annoying. 

PennineAcute

kingwheeler said:

PennineAcute said:

Pat38493 said:

Just be aware that for most people, you need to load shift quite a lot of usage to beat the tracker tariff on a long term basis.

Yes, I moved from Agile to tracker and increased my savings (to date) by 8p a day.

Oh....ok this I was not expecting. Is it because like most of your daily usage still happens all day long? We have electric heating/water and cooking, zero gas anywhere, so if we did all our hot water, washing machines, dishwasher, and heated the house at non 4-7pm times, we'd surely be ahead, no?

The only things I can think of that are on non stop are lighting, tv/laptop, and fridge.

I moved a lot.  SHowered at the cheaper times, and also used washer, dryer and dishwasher at the cheaper times.  I have a gas cooker, so meal times were when I wanted.  Sometimes during 4 - 7, but mostly after 7pm.

Throughout the day, all I had on was my office equipment - PC, printers.  I watch TV on my PC, as it uses less electricity then the TV.  I run my own company, so do paperwork at home, but am mainly out during the day,

Fishtank is minimal.  Filter 24/7, 35 watts.  Lights were on during 4 - 7pm, using around 18watts. 

Could not really shift anything else outside of 4 - 7pm.

kingwheeler

I think we'll start off on Tracker, as hopefully we can use the smart app to record our usage? I'm expecting to be able to get a few weeks worth of data to understand just how much we're using during the day anyway, etc then can see if the switch to Agile will be worth it.

I thought I read you can't swap between them for 30days, not 10 months!

https://octopus.energy/blog/terms-conditions-agile-go/#:~:text=You can leave Agile Octopus,smart tariffs within 30 days.

Pat38493

kingwheeler said:

I think we'll start off on Tracker, as hopefully we can use the smart app to record our usage? I'm expecting to be able to get a few weeks worth of data to understand just how much we're using during the day anyway, etc then can see if the switch to Agile will be worth it.

I thought I read you can't swap between them for 30days, not 10 months!

https://octopus.energy/blog/terms-conditions-agile-go/#:~:text=You can leave Agile Octopus,smart tariffs within 30 days.

For Agile yes it’s 30 days.  It’s Tracker where they say it’s 10 months.  To be clear, what they say is that you can leave Tracker at any time, but it might take up to 2 weeks to switch you away (but in reality it’s usually done in a day or two).  However you cannot go back onto Tracker for 10 months after you left it.  That said, I don’t know whether they enforce this strictly - certainly I’ve heard of times then they haven’t enforced the 30 day rule.  I don’t know about the 10 month one on Tracker.