Octopus Agile

Pat38493

QrizB said:

dawnybabes said:

Ooh I like that graph ! Where can I find them - looked on FB and can’t see them ?

cancel that, I’ve found them on Twitter / X - I can see my new obsession ……

I follow them on Mastodon, but it's the same info as Twitter / X.

Yes - tracker price tomorrow lowest since mid July. from what I can see.

Netexporter

la531983 said:

A heads up that the early hourly auction pricing shows an absolute glut of minus pricing between midnight and 6am, and noon and 3pm tomorrow

Fill your boots tomorrow if that remains the same in the afternoon half hourly auction.

Perfectly timed for me. Got home from a 160ish mile round trip, this afternoon, with 2% left in the car. Caught a couple of hours at an average of about 0p. I'll plug it back in at bedtime and I should have a nearly full battery by 4pm for less than a quid.

mmmmikey

Perfect for me too - got home to a cold house after a few days away in the caravan. Now have a tank of hot water and a lovely warm house having been paid to do it. And plenty of cheap electricity overnight and tomorrow to catch up with the laundry. Long may it last!

At the risk of being a doom and gloom merchant though I fear our celebrations may be short lived as the temperatures drop, the wind eases and increased gas prices start to filter through. All the more reason to make the most of it now :-)

Pat38493

As a kind of rough rule, if the price per KWH of electric is lower than my current gas price, is that where it makes sense to use the electric water heater instead of gas or is it not that simple?  (obviously at times the price is zero or negative it makes sense, just not sure when it's just a little bit below the gas price).

QrizB

Pat38493 said:

As a kind of rough rule, if the price per KWH of electric is lower than my current gas price, is that where it makes sense to use the electric water heater instead of gas or is it not that simple?  (obviously at times the price is zero or negative it makes sense, just not sure when it's just a little bit below the gas price).

If electricity is at all cheaper than gas, electric water heating (with an immersion heater, for example) is definitely cheaper.

Depending on your boiler and how it's installed & operated, electric water heating could still work out cheaper even if it's 10-30% more expensive per kWh than gas.

Bendo

mmmmikey said:

Bendo said:

mmmmikey said:

Bendo said:

We have a boilermate that can run the heating off electric if the boiler fails. That's a good 3KW load, but having never used it in the 10 years we have been here, I'm loath to try it and risk something going bang for the sake of gaining a couple of quid.

Not heard of boilermate before will have to Google it. Sounds like a day time test would be worthwhile as it could be a useful source of cheap heating during future events. Maybe a good candidate for a smart switch that could be automated to activate when electricity prices are less than gas?

It's basically a thermal store.  They were popular with house builders in the naughties as they were simple and quick to install, although less popular with Home owners that don't really understand them I find it works well enough.

Easy enough to setup to run on electric automatically as the heating / hot water is already on Hive and therefore home assistant.  Would just need a switchbot or whatever to flip the switch to run it off electric when the unit rate drops below 0. Just worried that having never ran it off electric in the time I've been here, it may not appreciate it and the small savings could easily be wiped out by having to replace an obsolete system..

Thanks, presumably the electric bit is just an immersion heater? If that's the case I would imagine the worst thing that would happen is that it just won't work so probably nothing to lose by trying. But like you it's not something I'd do overnight, maybe just wait for a cheap daytime slot when you're in and give it a try.

On a related note, I have an electric only thermal store with two immersion heaters, which is perfect for using with Agile. Living on my own I rarely use more than 3kWh per day heating water and if I turn both heaters on I can do that in a single 30 minute slot. Which means my water is always heated at the cheapest Agile rate. Because water heating is about half my daily consumption I have a really low Agile average unit cost.

Gave it a test run today. Turns out the electric back up is actually 6KW not 3 so that's a bonus.

Managed to use almost 14KW of elec so gat today versus what would typically be about 6-7 for the full day.

Going to skew my long term average elec usage stats but who am I to complain when I'm being paid to heat the house.

Spies

Bought another 2.5kw oil filled radiator due to all the lovely cheap leccy, long may it continue...

MultiFuelBurner

Spies said:

Bought another 2.5kw oil filled radiator due to all the lovely cheap leccy, long may it continue...

I am sure that will pay for itself in no time 😜

mmmmikey

Spies said:

Bought another 2.5kw oil filled radiator due to all the lovely cheap leccy, long may it continue...

Oh no - you've jinxed it for all of us :-) :-) :-) Whenever I buy something like it suddenly gets mild and the wind stops.....

Spies

Yep, jinxed it...