Octopus Agile

linz

It's been a while  but some nice low and negative rates tomorrow afternoon .

OhhLongJohnson

Sunday 16th July looks very nice for Agile customers...

From midnight till maybe 4pm it's negative prices!

mmmmikey

OhhLongJohnson said:

Sunday 16th July looks very nice for Agile customers...

From midnight till maybe 4pm it's negative prices!

It's been much cooler here in the stormy weather so I think I may try and recreate the feeling of summer by turning on the heating and halogen spotlights...

Pat38493

When I look at the average price of Agile from 00.30 to 04.30 every day for the last year, it's over 20p.  I understood that this tariff is linked to wholesale rates in a transparent and published way?

Should I conclude from this that Octopus are selling energy to Go customers at a loss during the non peak period, when charging 9.4p?

tlcgrantham

Pat38493 said:

When I look at the average price of Agile from 00.30 to 04.30 every day for the last year, it's over 20p.  I understood that this tariff is linked to wholesale rates in a transparent and published way?

Should I conclude from this that Octopus are selling energy to Go customers at a loss during the non peak period, when charging 9.4p?

Agile is linked to daily published wholesale rates but I don’t think Go is.

[Deleted User]

I understood that this tariff is linked to wholesale rates in a transparent and published way?

https://octopus.energy/blog/agile-pricing-explained/

mmmmikey

Pat38493 said:

When I look at the average price of Agile from 00.30 to 04.30 every day for the last year, it's over 20p.  I understood that this tariff is linked to wholesale rates in a transparent and published way?

Should I conclude from this that Octopus are selling energy to Go customers at a loss during the non peak period, when charging 9.4p?

Last year has been bizarre to put it mildly so I'm not spending too much time trying to analyse it. I certainly not going to use it as a basis for making any kind of future predictions. In my mind, I'm treating all the various smart tariffs as new and without any history.

So in answer to your question I personally wouldn't draw any conclusions from relative Agile and Go prices.

Out of interest, what's driving the question?

Pat38493

mmmmikey said:

Pat38493 said:

When I look at the average price of Agile from 00.30 to 04.30 every day for the last year, it's over 20p.  I understood that this tariff is linked to wholesale rates in a transparent and published way?

Should I conclude from this that Octopus are selling energy to Go customers at a loss during the non peak period, when charging 9.4p?

Last year has been bizarre to put it mildly so I'm not spending too much time trying to analyse it. I certainly not going to use it as a basis for making any kind of future predictions. In my mind, I'm treating all the various smart tariffs as new and without any history.

So in answer to your question I personally wouldn't draw any conclusions from relative Agile and Go prices.

Out of interest, what's driving the question?

I am just curious as I've just switched to Octopus and I was just researching on the various tariffs.  It seemed like, if Agile tracks wholesale prices and the average price in the early hours of the morning is above 20p, this might seem to imply that selling the electricity at 9.4p at that time must be making a loss on a lot of days (or they are making a big profit on Agile at those times but if the pricing effectively tracks the wholesale rates it shouldn't be better or worse than any other hour).

masonic

Pat38493 said:

mmmmikey said:

Pat38493 said:

When I look at the average price of Agile from 00.30 to 04.30 every day for the last year, it's over 20p.  I understood that this tariff is linked to wholesale rates in a transparent and published way?

Should I conclude from this that Octopus are selling energy to Go customers at a loss during the non peak period, when charging 9.4p?

Last year has been bizarre to put it mildly so I'm not spending too much time trying to analyse it. I certainly not going to use it as a basis for making any kind of future predictions. In my mind, I'm treating all the various smart tariffs as new and without any history.

So in answer to your question I personally wouldn't draw any conclusions from relative Agile and Go prices.

Out of interest, what's driving the question?

I am just curious as I've just switched to Octopus and I was just researching on the various tariffs.  It seemed like, if Agile tracks wholesale prices and the average price in the early hours of the morning is above 20p, this might seem to imply that selling the electricity at 9.4p at that time must be making a loss on a lot of days (or they are making a big profit on Agile at those times but if the pricing effectively tracks the wholesale rates it shouldn't be better or worse than any other hour).

The formula is quite clear. When below the £1 cap and outside of the peak 4-7pm period, Agile is priced at 2.0x to 2.4x (depending on region) the wholesale price for the relevant half hour period before VAT.

Take 01:00-01:30 tomorrow for example (from here) priced at £24/MWh = 2.4p/kWh resulting in an Agile price of 4.85p/kWh (using East Midlands region as an example).

QrizB

Pat38493 said:

I am just curious as I've just switched to Octopus and I was just researching on the various tariffs.  It seemed like, if Agile tracks wholesale prices and the average price in the early hours of the morning is above 20p, this might seem to imply that selling the electricity at 9.4p at that time must be making a loss on a lot of days (or they are making a big profit on Agile at those times but if the pricing effectively tracks the wholesale rates it shouldn't be better or worse than any other hour).

You're not comparing apples with apples.

Agile tracks the day-ahead prices. These aren't known until the close of trading on the previous day, and (qt least in principle) Octopus buys energy for Agile customers on those same markets.

For Go, and for other long-term tariffs (even Economy 7), suppliers buy energy months or years ahead, and/or enter into power purchase agreements with generators directly. It's possible that Octopus contracted with someone a while ago to supply electrictity between 0030 and 0430 for less than £50 a MWh - which was pretty much the market rate up to the end of 2020.

Of course Octopus could then have resold that energy for more money on the spot market, rather than selling it to Go customers, but having a big pool of EV-owning customers might be an asset in itself for Octopus.