Octopus Day/Night billing split is incorrect. anyone else noticed?

renegade62

I'm on the Octopus split daytime/night time rate with a smart meter. I've started analysing my usage using the half hourly usage data downloaded from them and imported to a spreadsheet. I have noticed the total KW/h from the usage data agrees with that on my monthly bills, but the split between day and night does not, consistently different between 9 and 10% allocating more to daytime usage on the bill than the usage data. I've queried this with them and so far still awaiting an explanation. The night time hours are between 00:30 and 07:30 (as advised by them in a response to one of my many emails on this subject).  Has anyone actually noticed this also?   I even tried adjusting the day/night times in the spreadsheet to try and match their day/night splits, but cannot, even by reducing the nigh hours radically. 

Gerry1

You need to SEE when the meter actually switches over, not merely rely on the times that it's supposed to switch over.

QrizB

Gerry1 said:

You need to SEE when the meter actually switches over, not merely rely on the times that it's supposed to switch over.

Gerry is absolutely correct.

A conventional E7 tariff is billed on two registers in the meter, not on the 30 minute data. It's entirely possible (and quite normal) for the meter to switch at an intermediate time, not exactly on a 30-minute boundary.

You need to stay up late, then get up early, to check the switching times.

It's also quite possible that the times do not adjust for BST, so 0030-0730 in the winter would be 0130-0830 now.

Edited because I got my BST backwards!

MWT

There is an allowed offset in the switching times, without that there would be a sudden spike when thousands of homes at the same moment.

Need to check exactly when your meter switches as Gerry suggests...

Boffinboy24

I am on octopus, my timing is 12:30-7:30 GMT. At the moment it’s therefore 1:30-8:30 BST. Could be that you have the same situation?

Gerry1

Remember that your E7 cheap rate hours could be split.

At present mine are 11:31pm - 1:31am and 3:31am - 8:31am BST.

There's theoretically a +/- 15 minutes variance allowed but my times seem fixed except for being an hour earlier on GMT.

Scot_39

QrizB said:

It's also quite possible that the times do not adjust for BST, so 0030-0730 in the winter would be 2330-0630 now.

01:30 to 08:30 in summer would be the norm for those GMT timings IF fixed - DST (BST as I am used to calling it) is hour ahead not behind

That potential 1 hr  - can be a big error - in summer or winter.  And it can be a few minutes out by some posts on digital or smart.

So as @Gerry1 says - if possible manually check when your actual rates switch - check which register is recording current use at the time and the absolute values against bills etc. if in any doubt too.  (Mistakes are possible - and some are not detected for months / years)

There seems to be some debate in other threads as to whether meters stay on GMT for ACLS and tariff switching.

Some suppliers warn tariff times change on likes of E7/E10/e20:20 etc - others only mention one set of times.

iirc Octupus E7 FAQ.

More recently B Gas EV tariff users have posted their smets2 timings are fixed by numbers - 12 midnight GMT / 12 midnight DST etc or 1 am or whatever - if it's a smets2 meter (their specific one ? ).

Similarly threads discussing the 1/2 hr timeslots on the apps - whether some of the apps - reflect the actual times - or GMT etc.

They never used to work for my smets1 model - so got into using Octave ( a free Matlab clone ) on PC - to work my day / night splits - and graph year to year comparisons etc etc.

Raxiel

I don't use E7, but have a meter configured for it. This year I've had it switch at three different times of the day. The first time it moved WITH daylight savings (something it had never done historically) and then it changed again to 2AM-9AM BST.

(This was before I switched to Flux with it's 'economy 3 and expensive 3' so that wasn't a factor, I just had the SVT)

No idea why it changed, but as I wasn't on an E7 tariff I didn't bother asking Octopus for the reason either. Agree with others that you need to confirm when its definitely changing over. My IHD has a countdown to the rate changes. If yours is the same you can use it as a guide as to when to go check the meter itself and confirm.

matthewatkinson64

I am livid with Octopus.  When they took over my nighttime electricity circuit came on during the day and the daytime at night...
They claim to have sorted this, but now I've been sent a bill where they have switched the day time and night time readings leading to a £3000 bill for one month.  
How do I complain effectively?

CSI_Yorkshire

matthewatkinson64 said:

I am livid with Octopus.  When they took over my nighttime electricity circuit came on during the day and the daytime at night...
They claim to have sorted this, but now I've been sent a bill where they have switched the day time and night time readings leading to a £3000 bill for one month.  
How do I complain effectively?

What sort of meter do you have?  Completely reversing the day/night timings seems odd.