Octopus Agile

JohnPo

Agile rates are loaded between 4pm and 7pm - the tariff works better for those that can load shift during the day but like tracker is following the wholesale rate.

As the Ofgem price cap SVT rates fall come 1st July and neither tracker nor Agile benefit from government support on wholesale rates - what looks like a really good deal at moment will become less attractive.

For electricity I will stick with Agile (have EV and cook on gas) depending on wholesale elec. prices and gas futures will review monthly whether to stay on tracker gas and agile or whether jumping onto the standard SVT make sense.

Inigo_Montoya

linz said:

I've had the email about switching to tracker on 1 July. Cant decide whether to stick with Agile for electricity or go with Tracker for both. What would others do?

I switched from agile to tracker recently - this was more by accident than planned because I was on the tracker wait list for both gas & electric

from what I can see you can potentially save a bit more on agile but it means avoiding any high usage at peak times (morning & evening peaks) & ideally regularly checking the 1/2 hourly rates for the coming day to plan your usage to optimise the savings e.g. using https://agileprices.co.uk/?region=G

So basically its more hassle in terms of your time & effort on agile whereas the single day rate on tracker makes things a lot easier on this front & you dont have to worry about when in the day you want to use electric 

The single day rate of tracker compared to the variable agile rate compares quite well IMO e.g. recently its been about 15p or so - today its 16.40p for me in the north west & you can how the agile rates compare on the link I provided

Basically if you don't want the added hassle of agile then tracker is preferable - if you want to max out the savings & are prepared to invest some of your time to do this then stick with agile

TheElectricCow

I am curious as to what sort of high/low rates we’ll be seeing agile at this summer, particularly on the hottest days where cooling will be most in demand, and how these might compare to E7 rates from July once they’ve been published.

Agile is a rather appealing tariff I’ve kept my eye on for a while where potentially there are better savings to be made, although currently I do prefer the certainty and stability that E7 provides. 

linz

Inigo_Montoya said:

linz said:

I've had the email about switching to tracker on 1 July. Cant decide whether to stick with Agile for electricity or go with Tracker for both. What would others do?

I switched from agile to tracker recently - this was more by accident than planned because I was on the tracker wait list for both gas & electric

from what I can see you can potentially save a bit more on agile but it means avoiding any high usage at peak times (morning & evening peaks) & ideally regularly checking the 1/2 hourly rates for the coming day to plan your usage to optimise the savings e.g. using https://agileprices.co.uk/?region=G

So basically its more hassle in terms of your time & effort on agile whereas the single day rate on tracker makes things a lot easier on this front & you dont have to worry about when in the day you want to use electric 

The single day rate of tracker compared to the variable agile rate compares quite well IMO e.g. recently its been about 15p or so - today its 16.40p for me in the north west & you can how the agile rates compare on the link I provided

Basically if you don't want the added hassle of agile then tracker is preferable - if you want to max out the savings & are prepared to invest some of your time to do this then stick with agile

Excellent summary, thankyou 👌

mmmmikey

TheElectricCow said:

I am curious as to what sort of high/low rates we’ll be seeing agile at this summer, particularly on the hottest days where cooling will be most in demand, and how these might compare to E7 rates from July once they’ve been published.

Agile is a rather appealing tariff I’ve kept my eye on for a while where potentially there are better savings to be made, although currently I do prefer the certainty and stability that E7 provides. 

Yes, my thoughts too. I've jumped the gun and just switched from E7 to Agile and so far the E7 prices on Agile (i.e. overnight rates) have been consistently lower on average than E7. If you avoid the 4pm to 7pm peak the daytime rates are much lower too. Of course this could change with new E7 prices, but I wouldn't be surprised if E7 night time rates actually go up slightly for some people. We'll know soon enough. If I've made the wrong call it's very easy for me to switch back and changing now gives me the advantage of getting myself organised to used Agile in the summer when I use very little electricity so a small price to pay if it comes to it.

TheElectricCow

mmmmikey said:

TheElectricCow said:

I am curious as to what sort of high/low rates we’ll be seeing agile at this summer, particularly on the hottest days where cooling will be most in demand, and how these might compare to E7 rates from July once they’ve been published.

Agile is a rather appealing tariff I’ve kept my eye on for a while where potentially there are better savings to be made, although currently I do prefer the certainty and stability that E7 provides. 

Yes, my thoughts too. I've jumped the gun and just switched from E7 to Agile and so far the E7 prices on Agile (i.e. overnight rates) have been consistently lower on average than E7. If you avoid the 4pm to 7pm peak the daytime rates are much lower too. Of course this could change with new E7 prices, but I wouldn't be surprised if E7 night time rates actually go up slightly for some people. We'll know soon enough. If I've made the wrong call it's very easy for me to switch back and changing now gives me the advantage of getting myself organised to used Agile in the summer when I use very little electricity so a small price to pay if it comes to it.

I’ve noticed this too, the average agile rates at present seem to be a little better across the board. I would be slightly concerned about the potential for the average rates to rise above SVT tariffs once we head towards next winter but as you say it’s easy enough to switch away again.

I am expecting generally we might see more E7 night rates rising slightly but that’s entirely speculation on my part at the moment, will be interesting to see who comes out with what over the coming weeks. Potentially that could work in my favour as my summer usage patterns leave slightly less room for mid-day load shifting, although evening peak is easily enough avoided so agile may well be the way to go.

I do hope in future Octopus, or even another supplier, comes out with some more TOU tariffs as there’s a lot of potential in with what we’re starting to see now. I can see something E10-esque being an interesting option with various blocks of peak/off-peak times throughout the day. Now I think about it though that’s essentially just Cosy Octopus without a heat pump requirement, but in any case I’d love to see that become an open to all tariff.

mmmmikey

Sounds like we're on the same wavelength. I'd place a small bet on seing a number of lifestyle smart tariffs becoming available over the next year or so. For example, maybe someone will do a "daytimer" tariff aimed at people who are home during the day and encouraging them to use electricity in the 10:00 to 16:00 time frame and avoid the evening peak. Or how about a "late worker" tariff that encourages evening use for those that get home after 19:00?

As far as the here and now is concerned, I'm planning the use Agile as a sort of "E10 on steroids" tariff where I use it to provide background heat overnight and with an afternoon boost for a few hours. Even without trying to optimise it and just using a simple time schedule I'm expecting to save a fair bit and get a much more even background heating pattern. Getting things set up now so I'm ready for the autumn. Also, I'm currently playing with IFTTT to optimise my water heating which is proving surprisingly easy. I'll start another thread on that when I'm a bit more advanced. I suspect a lot of Agile customers have dismissed IFTTT as a "techie thing" and not realised it's very straightforward and even mortals can use it

TheElectricCow

Now that’s an interesting idea, hopefully once we’ve got more than one supplier capable of offering TOU we’ll start seeing more “lifestyle” based tariffs rather than ones based on owning particular, expensive appliances.

I can see various reasons why from Octopus’ perspective they might want limit Cosy to heat pump owners, but there’s nothing specific about the tariff itself that makes it more applicable to heat pump owners than anyone else willing to load shift to the same times, and hopefully some competition might dislodge that current position.

One of my reservations about Agile would be that I may well get too sucked in to optimising my energy use, because knowing me I’ll end up spending an hour in the airing cupboard each week fiddling with the immersion timer or letting the laundry pile up while I wait for a nice cheap night to put it on. I’m not one to pass up a few pence savings when they’re right in front of me like that

I’ve not looked into IFTTT before though, perhaps that could prove a suitable solution.

Inigo_Montoya

linz said:

Inigo_Montoya said:

linz said:

I've had the email about switching to tracker on 1 July. Cant decide whether to stick with Agile for electricity or go with Tracker for both. What would others do?

I switched from agile to tracker recently - this was more by accident than planned because I was on the tracker wait list for both gas & electric

from what I can see you can potentially save a bit more on agile but it means avoiding any high usage at peak times (morning & evening peaks) & ideally regularly checking the 1/2 hourly rates for the coming day to plan your usage to optimise the savings e.g. using https://agileprices.co.uk/?region=G

So basically its more hassle in terms of your time & effort on agile whereas the single day rate on tracker makes things a lot easier on this front & you dont have to worry about when in the day you want to use electric 

The single day rate of tracker compared to the variable agile rate compares quite well IMO e.g. recently its been about 15p or so - today its 16.40p for me in the north west & you can how the agile rates compare on the link I provided

Basically if you don't want the added hassle of agile then tracker is preferable - if you want to max out the savings & are prepared to invest some of your time to do this then stick with agile

Excellent summary, thankyou 👌

the other thing that has just occured to me is agile could in theory be the better option if prices were to spike really high for a period  for a couple of reasons

1) apparently you have to wait a couple of weeks to come off tracker (& cannot rejoin for 9 months) whereas with agile you might be able to come off it straight away ??? (& can rejoin after 30 days)

2) when the price of energy is spiking the peaks & troughs during the day on agile could well be more pronounced so ithe savings compared to the daily tracker rate are likelu to be higher (as long as you can shift your usage to the troughs)

scobie

This notion that both Agile and Tracker could spike due to tensions in Russia don’t seem to be bearing out in reality. Just a day or two after drone strikes in Moscow, uk gas whole sale have plummeted 14% today.  Hardly the sign of a worried market.  It seems the west has successfully weaned itself off the need for Russian gas. 

I’m not saying there won’t be spikes but I don’t think we will see anything like the last 12 months again, not caused by Russia anyway.