Tomato Energy (Electric Only Supplier) - Too Good To Be True ?

Bendo

It's quite simple, you just add it as a custom tariff and put in the half hourly rates as per the screenshot.

Veteransaver

Telegraph_Sam said:

I was curious to see how Tomato stacked up against Dec 23 Tracker using the (Octopus) Compare app. Disappointing to see that Tomato is not in the list of products that can be added for comparison. That said, the same applies to Brit Gas, EDF, and most of the big names from how I read the instructions.

Tracker is very expensive by comparison. By way of example The Tomato lifestyle tariff has cost me c£58 so far for November - 24 days, Tracker would have been £110.
Thats on usage of far of c430kwh, with just over 60% being at the offpeak rate.
On average during November the tracker rate has been very very slightly cheaper than the Tomato peak rate, about 22p on average vs the 23p Tomato rate.
Factor in the 5 or 6 hours offpeak, plus the "mid peak" rate of c14p, and Tomato Lifestyle tariff should easily beat tracker (for November) even if you don't use any extra offpeak over the house base load,

crumpet_man

I have just moved from Octopus electric tracker Dec 23 to Tomato.  Octopus compare showed me it should be about 15% cheaper and that's without loadshifting to the 5p night rate.

On the negative side, Octopus compare no longer shows my stats as it is linked directly to Octopus and not to the smart meter.  The tomato website mywatts could be better and I have similar issues with the app Bright.  The data is there but requires a lot of work to get the same info which compare can show on one screen.  E.g. you can see cost or energy consumption but not at the same time.

I can't find a way for mywatts or Bright to show the average price per kWh.

tlcgrantham

Tomato appear to be trying to fix the 30min error on timings for the various rates. MyWatts is not updating every 3 hours as it was before.    

However it is showing my use up to 6:00am today and it is charging me correctly @ 5p for the 5:30am-6:00am slot rather than 23p as it was previously.

Veteransaver

tlcgrantham said:

Tomato appear to be trying to fix the 30min error on timings for the various rates. MyWatts is not updating every 3 hours as it was before.    

However it is showing my use up to 6:00am today and it is charging me correctly @ 5p for the 5:30am-6:00am slot rather than 23p as it was previously.

Not sure about that. The 6am slot (which is actually 5.30-6am slot )is missing on mine, so can't tell on mine. However the change of tariff I requested (to the 6 hour EV one with 5p offpeak) does seem to have now been backdated to 1st November. 
Which is a good start

Newbie_John

In my one definitely you can see the fix - I stop using heavy items at 5:30 so 5:30-6 slot is just baseload and this would be £0.02 if it was charged at 23p but is now shown as £0.01 (rounded £0.005). 
But as others said, data delayed, stopped at 6am weird gap at 0:30 and the previous days are still incorrectly shown.

But it is a positive movement.

SVts

Is MyWatts an actual app or just a web page?

lohr500

SVts said:

Is MyWatts an actual app or just a web page?

It's a web page rather than a mobile phone App
You can view the webpage on a mobile and create shortcut on your mobile, although it isn't optimised for mobile browsers. 

Telegraph_Sam

I found MyWatts online which I would always consider preferable to a mobile for such applications.
Does MyWatts give you info that is not available from Tomato's or Octopus's web site?
How easy is it to get MyWatts and Tomato (or Octopus) to "shake hands" and speak to each other?
I get the feeling that for Tomato quite a lot of organising hassle is required for comparatively little gain in absolute terms.

bagand96

Telegraph_Sam said:

I found MyWatts online which I would always consider preferable to a mobile for such applications.
Does MyWatts give you info that is not available from Tomato's or Octopus's web site?
How easy is it to get MyWatts and Tomato (or Octopus) to "shake hands" and speak to each other?
I get the feeling that for Tomato quite a lot of organising hassle is required for comparatively little gain in absolute terms.

Tomato Energy don't have a My Account portal or anything on their own website.  It's all done through MyWatts - that is the customer portal.  Although it's separate from the Tomato Energy website, the platform is owned by the same company. I think they may intend to license the platform to other providers which is why they've kept it separate.

As a customer portal I find it OK.  It's set up for you automatically when you join Tomato, it has usage data available in 30 minute blocks which can be downloaded, you can access your tariff details and contract, Tomato upload your bills to there, you can add manual meter reads.  Just like any other supplier portal really, no real complaints.

Some are reporting missing smart meter data (not an issue unique to TE).  Some seem to be able to see same day data, delayed by a few hours, however my experience is that I'm only seeing data the next day - but that's the same as the Bright app so maybe my meter?  It did work seemlessly for me from switching though.

Tomato are reporting the 30min issue is resolved, my data on MyWatts does now seem to match Bright exactly.