Octopus Energy - Intelligent Octopus & EV's Watch out

Mr_tim

Just to make people aware and not sure if anyone else is having this issue. I switched to the intelligent Octopus tariff recently as I have an EV and this all set up fine. I was monitoring my smart meter to keep an eye on my use age and i noticed my daily and monthly use age in October and November had dropped on what i was spending which is what you would think happen if you moved to a better tariff. I think may bill for October according to the Smart meter was £148 as I only use Electricity in my premises. I was then shocked to see on the app that my bill was over £300 for the month. After speaking to Octopus they told me that the readings on the unit would be in accurate now as on this tariff they take meter readings every 30 mins and to check the app instead and ignore the meter. However, on the app it doesn't show the use age in pounds and pence over the day and just KW/H with no option to switch to £ (they are working on it!) so it is impossible for me to now see how much my electricity is costing over the day at a glance. Octopus never told me this at the time when i switched over - that my IHD would be no longer accurate, it is not on the FAQ's either on the website but is in the small print on the web site which they send the link to you when you put in a complaint.  
I am really disapponted with them as a company and you would expect better of them because unless you were told specifically that your smart meter would no longer give accurate readings then you would not question it and assume it was correct and that was what your energy was costing.
It is no though so beware!

I wanted to know if anybody else has had this same issue?

born_again

When you get you bill, it has a breakdown of usage for everyday in 30 min segments. So you can see exactly what your cost is.

1st time I have ever had a bill with so many pages, thank god it not printed on paper 😶‍🌫️

If you want to see exactly what your usage is there are apps that will do that.

Netexporter

My Agile bill runs to around 30 pages, too.

The IHD only holds an example price. It doesn't reflect the price in each half-hour.

Keep_pedalling

iO may not be the fight tariff for you if your non-EV use is much higher than your EV use. 60% of our use goes on our EV so IO saves us a small fortune, but if you are using a lot for heating using daytime rates then it may not best for you (at least during the winter months)  As has already been said you have access to your usage on an hourly basis, so your first action should be to look at that data.

TheBanker

Mr_tim said:

Just to make people aware and not sure if anyone else is having this issue. I switched to the intelligent Octopus tariff recently as I have an EV and this all set up fine. I was monitoring my smart meter to keep an eye on my use age and i noticed my daily and monthly use age in October and November had dropped on what i was spending which is what you would think happen if you moved to a better tariff. I think may bill for October according to the Smart meter was £148 as I only use Electricity in my premises. I was then shocked to see on the app that my bill was over £300 for the month. After speaking to Octopus they told me that the readings on the unit would be in accurate now as on this tariff they take meter readings every 30 mins and to check the app instead and ignore the meter. However, on the app it doesn't show the use age in pounds and pence over the day and just KW/H with no option to switch to £ (they are working on it!) so it is impossible for me to now see how much my electricity is costing over the day at a glance. Octopus never told me this at the time when i switched over - that my IHD would be no longer accurate, it is not on the FAQ's either on the website but is in the small print on the web site which they send the link to you when you put in a complaint.  
I am really disapponted with them as a company and you would expect better of them because unless you were told specifically that your smart meter would no longer give accurate readings then you would not question it and assume it was correct and that was what your energy was costing.
It is no though so beware!

I wanted to know if anybody else has had this same issue?

The problem is that the price changes dynamically - by which I mean the cost of electricity depends on both what time it is (all electricity used between 22:30 - 05:30 is charged at the cheap rate), and whether your car is smart-charging (if it is, your electricity is charged at the cheap rate during that time, including any electricity your house uses, even it it's in the day time). I think it would be almost impossible for Octopus to communicate back to the smart meter what price applied in any particular half hour slot. 

I agree it would be useful if the app could show cost as well as usage, but they describe IO as a 'Beta' tariff - which means some things don't quite work yet.

MultiFuelBurner

I would also query using this at a business premises and as highlighted above your usage pattern might not be matched to IO

QrizB

Mr_tim said:

I wanted to know if anybody else has had this same issue?

What you describe is entirely normal for one of Octopus's beta TOU tariffs. Customers on Agile and Tracker have similar inconsistencies.

selinek

I am thinking to change to intelligent octopus. I have a BMW 330e hybrid. The savings look very enticing. I would be interested to know other peoples experience and have you found this Tariff worth it. I am already an octopus customer on a fixed term tariff.  

Petriix

selinek said:

I am thinking to change to intelligent octopus. I have a BMW 330e hybrid. The savings look very enticing. I would be interested to know other peoples experience and have you found this Tariff worth it. I am already an octopus customer on a fixed term tariff.  

It's worked very well for me. You'll need a smart meter sending reliable 30 minute data. As long as you don't have extremely high unavoidable peak usage then you'll save money. It's great if you can run appliances overnight. All my clothes washing and winter drying is at the 7.5p rate.