Moving to Octopus on economy 7? check your bills carefully

sebtomato

I moved from EDF to Octopus in October.

Off peak hours (as specified on each EDF invoice) were:

22:30 -> 00:30
02:30 -> 07:30

so a total of 7 hours, with a two hours peak gap during the night.

My smart meter is a 5 terminal SMETS2 version, designed to switch on a specific circuit during off peak hours (ALCS activating a relay), for instance for the immersion water heater or underfloor heating to work during the night.

Octopus off peak schedule is now 00:30 to 07:30 (GMT) apparently. They didn't tell me it was going to be different from EDF when I joined.

Octopus didn't update the ALCS schedule on the meter when I switched to them, so at around 22:30, the smart meter will still trigger the ALCS/auxiliary load, despite the fact that it's peak rate for Octopus until 00:30.

Basically, the time of the day where a lot of my energy is used has gone from off peak rate to peak rate when switching to Octopus, costing me at least 20% more per day, from my own calculations...

Lucky I checked. I am not impressed.