New to Octopus and Agile

MultiFuelBurner

Hi all MFB here hope you are all well,

So I transferred from EDF with a referral code from a neighbour on 1st July and was already setup to switch to Agile as soon as the smart meter had connected. 

Performed the last reading to EDF and Octopus the start reading on the 8th. At this point I was looking at the next day prices and getting excited. I could see times of the day and night we could program washing machines, heating of water (we are all electric no gas btw) all sorts of ways to save a bundle.

Yet for a week the Octopus status screen stayed at connecting to you smart meter. 

Email to Octopus, is everything ok as half hourly readings were not an issue with previous suppliers. Anyway about 6 emails later to EDF and Octopus it appears the Octopi didn't send our start reading to EDF. So much for faster switching hey lol

Anyway fast forward to yesterday, over a month later,we went live with Agile. So we moved some load around to the best prices and convenience for us but today I am wondering when they show our usage pattern for yesterday so I can check what we did worked. Is there a set time Octopus pull out 48 half hourly reads the next day and display?

To Octopus credit not only have we got the £50 referral we also received a £75 goodwill gesture to make up for the savings we could have made on Agile for the past month and the back and forth chasing two energy companies.

[Deleted User]

For meters on a 30 minute profile, Octopus carries out a data pull sometime the following day. There is no set time as it would be impossible to send millions of data requests at the same time. Octopus is also dependent on its Adapter service provided by TMA to access your meters.

Bright App also accesses your smart meters and it usually populates its graphs at about 2am each morning.

Apps such as Octopus Watch can access your Octopus energy account. 

You may not be aware that Octopus’ billing is 100% dependent on the billing system getting uncorrupted smart meter data. Sadly, this data is far from assured. If an automatic bill is not generated then you need to email smart.help@octopus.energy and request a manual data pull. Octopus reserves the right to bill you at its flexible rate when there is a data loss which cannot be recovered.

Finally, bear in mind that the prices that you are seeing today may rise sharply in the Winter on a cold day with no sun and wind. When this happens you need to take a long term rather than short term view.

MultiFuelBurner

[Deleted User] said:

For meters on a 30 minute profile, Octopus carries out a data pull sometime the following day. There is no set time as it would be impossible to send millions of data requests at the same time. Octopus is also dependent on its Adapter service provided by TMA to access your meters.

Bright App also accesses your smart meters and it usually populates its graphs at about 2am each morning.

Apps such as Octopus Watch can access your Octopus energy account. 

You may not be aware that Octopus’ billing is 100% dependent on the billing system getting uncorrupted smart meter data. Sadly, this data is far from assured. If an automatic bill is not generated then you need to email smart.help@octopus.energy and request a manual data pull. Octopus reserves the right to bill you at its flexible rate when there is a data loss which cannot be recovered.

Finally, bear in mind that the prices that you are seeing today may rise sharply in the Winter on a cold day with no sun and wind. When this happens you need to take a long term rather than short term view.

Thanks for this, great info.

I didn't know about the billing failure email so have made a note and thanks that makes sense that not all data is pulled at the same time. I do have the bright app as well👍

We have a heat pump and have decided once it starts looking "wintery" with the Agile prices we will switch to the cosy tariff as we can avoid that post 4pm-7pm expensive period easily.

[Deleted User]

Have you seen this particular condition in your Agile contract:

If you can find a sympathetic CS team member he/she may waive the 30 day requirement if you have been on a smart tariff for more than 30 days.

I should add that the restriction was brought in because a small number of customers were switching tariffs almost on a daily basis when Agile prices were forecast to be high.

BeerSavesMoney

Octopus also have the Home Mini which connects to your smart meter and WiFi network, it sends live usage data to Octopus which is visible within your account on their app.

https://octopus.energy/blog/octopus-home-mini/

MultiFuelBurner

BeerSavesMoney said:

Octopus also have the Home Mini which connects to your smart meter and WiFi network, it sends live usage data to Octopus which is visible within your account on their app.

https://octopus.energy/blog/octopus-home-mini/

Nice, applied for that thankyouDolor said:

Have you seen this particular condition in your Agile contract:

If you can find a sympathetic CS team member he/she may waive the 30 day requirement if you have been on a smart tariff for more than 30 days.

I should add that the restriction was brought in because a small number of customers were switching tariffs almost on a daily basis when Agile prices were forecast to be high.

Yes that particular T&C was made very clear on confirmation of sign up 👍👍

MultiFuelBurner

I am genuinely excited to see what average price we paid yesterday per kWh on our first day of Agile.

Perhaps that's just me 😉

[Deleted User]

MultiFuelBurner said:

I am genuinely excited to see what average price we paid yesterday per kWh on our first day of Agile.

Perhaps that's just me 😉

It can become all too consuming as a family exercise in energy cost management.

Alnat1

MultiFuelBurner said:

I am genuinely excited to see what average price we paid yesterday per kWh on our first day of Agile.

Perhaps that's just me 😉

The Octopus Watch app (£1.99 to download) shows the price info usually around lunchtime the following day. Shows kWh used and average price. Also gives a rolling weekly and monthly total. It also gives next day's Agile rates as soon as Octopus updates around 4pm.

[Deleted User]

The Octopus Watch app (£1.99 to download) shows the price info usually around lunchtime the following day.

Octopus Watch is API based. It will only get the data from your Octopus Energy account if Octopus via TMA (its  Adapter Service)  has carried out successful data pulls. Each MOSN and MPRN is a separate pull. As I post, I have import and export electricity data for yesterday but no gas.

mmmmikey

I've been an Agile customer for about 3 months now and I'm rapdily becoming it's number one fan! Works really well for me as I can move my energy usage about to make best use of the best pricing. I've been progressively automating things using IFTTT (more on that in a sec).

The 2 apps I use all the time (multiple times a day at the moment as I'm still in the process of automating things) are the Octopus app - I have an Octopus mini so I use this to give me live data as well as what's happened today - and Octopus watch. I use Octopus watch to see the rates for the day ahead and also the reporting is great if you pay an extra £9.99 for the advanced version. It took me about 6 weeks to get the mini but I suspect the waiting time is quite variable.

Something worth exploring is IFTTT. I'm using it to automatically heat my hot water and charge my batteries when the prices are lowest. Even if you don't go the whole hog and go for that level of automation, you can use IFTTT to send notifications to your phone telling you when prices are the lowest, when the best time is to use the washing machine and so on. Or you can get SMS messages or emails - the possibilites are endless. You can set up basic IFTTT for free if you want to have a play while you wait for your mini - but be warned, it's addictive. If your thinking that sounds good but you've absolutely no idea what I'm talking about just Google something like "getting started with IFTTT" and you'll find everything you need.