Octopus Agile

Spoonie_Turtle

70sbudgie said:

One more question - do either of you use weather compensation with those patterns?

No, that's beyond me I'm afraid.

TroubledTarts

matt_drummer said:

Newbie_John said:

They definitely want everyone to have smart meter, smart meters make most with TOU tarrifs, so Agile would be a perfect tarrif to drop SC - it's a really big win for everyone. 

With a normal capped tariff when someone uses 100% of electricity between 16-19 octopus makes up loses from standing charge, but if people were taught to avoid peak times / paid extra for them - then that would work fine.

Also would bring more TOU tarrifs for average person without expensive green-tech.

No they don't.

Energy retailers pass most of the standing charge on, they are just collecting the money.

Is that true?

I thought the standing charge includes operating costs, headroom allowance, profit, smart metering rollout, payment method uplift which all stays with the energy supplier I believe and makes up more than 50% of the standing charge the supplier receives. So the energy supplier keeps that? 

wrf12345

The network takes a cut, does not matter if it comes from the s/c or unit cost, and TOU tariffs are ideal for zero s/c as the peak rates can be done to discourage expensive energy use, which saves more than they would be taking from the s/c.

WibbleBaaaaaa

Just out of curiosity have octopus released their 1st April tariffs yet, as i am curious to see if they lower their standing charges up here in Glasgow as they are charging 63p, which is now the most costly standing charge for Glasgow as Scottish gas have now dropped its sc down to 51p, so it is going to be interesting to see if the company who have been banging on about high SC being disgraceful, actually drop them down to match or beat SC now they have been given a chance to do so.

wrf12345

No, s/c is the same across the board high rate for all new tariffs, agree it will be interesting to see where they go in April - they certainly have had lots of loose cash being unloaded for the poorer customers over the last six months - s/c holidays, free electric blankets, free heat pump and solar installs. They are bringing in enough money to do something interesting.

MikeyPGT

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

Just out of curiosity have octopus released their 1st April tariffs yet, as i am curious to see if they lower their standing charges up here in Glasgow as they are charging 63p, which is now the most costly standing charge for Glasgow as Scottish gas have now dropped its sc down to 51p, so it is going to be interesting to see if the company who have been banging on about high SC being disgraceful, actually drop them down to match or beat SC now they have been given a chance to do so.

The blessed Greg seems to have gone very quiet of late - although that may be down to the fact that I have dropped Twitter and Octopus don't seem very active on Bluesky ...

QrizB

Spoonie_Turtle said:

I guess we could try bumping the temperature up a lot if we were to try that,

I have thoughts on this, but best I post them in a different thread.

TroubledTarts

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Ours runs 4?am-4pm, off for the peak, then 7-11pm.  The house is chilly by about 6.30pm so we certainly couldn't have it off all the time outside of the lower rate slots. 

I guess we could try bumping the temperature up a lot if we were to try that, but then what we'd be saving from the lower rate would be eaten into - even possibly wiped out - by the MUCH extra energy it would be using to get up into the 20s℃.  And I'm not convinced it'd work anyway, to get the house up to temperature within a 3hr slot enough to maintain comfort the rest of the time.

Edit: hot water is set for the early slot, and allowed a boost in the afternoon slot if it needs it.

One comment is why run it 7-11pm when you have a third cosy slot 10pm til midnight?
.
Due to the efficiency of the house we are able to turn ours off 4pm-10pm.

We run it 8oC over the weather compensation curve 10pm-midnight then it is off again midnight til 4am. Then run it 8oC above the weather compensation curve 4am-7am then run it at 0oc above weather compensation curve til 1pm, then you guessed it 8oC above weather compensation curve 1pm-4pm.

The only slight issue when we hit those -5oC to -6oC patches overnight was a cold vaulted kitchen diner and we just put a fan heater in there for an hour on the early cosy period.

We are using more energy this year compared to last but then again winter has been a lot colder this year and many before that.

Average over winter so far is 17.5p kWh on Cosy (not including the days we switched to Agile when it was cheaper to be on Agile)

I am hatching a plan for 32kwh of battery storage installed and MCS certified for about £5-6k and that would mean an average price of approx 7p kWh based on tariffs available today from companies I think might survive. However we may be moving in 16 months time so might have to save that for the new property.

northernstar007

decent day ahead tomorrow not ultra low but worth catching up on washing etc 

Bendo

Looking at my data from the past week Agile would have been marginally cheaper for me. But nowhere near enough to ditch the 16 month fix.