Website or spreadsheet to compare energy usage of Octopus tarrifs

Fozzie_Bear

I have just bought an EV (and soon installing PV system) so looking at the different Octopus electricity tariffs.
For EV charging Octopus Go Intelligent, on the face of it, appears to be a no brainer. However as a retired couple who are home most of the day our energy usage is spread fairly evenly across the day. We have gas central heating but all electric for cooking.

Our current electricity rate is 24.84p Kwh and Octopus Go Intelligent is 27.88p Kwh Peak with 7p Kwh off peak. That's great for EV charging (and anything using power after 23.30 hrs) but we don't need to charge every day so I need to work out if it more advantage to switch to OGI or stay on the current tariff.
I know we can schedule the washing machine and dishwasher during off-peak hours to take advantage of the very low rate but at the moment it's very much finger in the air without knowing exactly what appliances use how much during the day.

Are they any websites where you can plug in the usage figures that can do a comparison or has anyone ever written a spreadsheet ?

Scot_39

Are you with Octopus already ?

Theres talk of a three way tool in this thread - also in that case worried about EV charge rates -2 in their case - so maybe higher users.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6601931/octopus-or-edf-if-they-cost-the-same

Theres also a suggestion to look at EOn Drive iirc rather than one of the Octopus - was it IOG

glennevis

Have a kook at the Octopus Compare app, for android phones.

Spoonie_Turtle

glennevis said:

Have a kook at the Octopus Compare app, for android phones.

The free version of this is good for current usage patterns.  The paid version allows load shifting - although I can't remember if it allows adding in extra hypothetical usage.  But it has a 7-day free trial so one can certainly see if it does what one needs before actually paying anything for it.

FreeBear

Fozzie_Bear said: I know we can schedule the washing machine and dishwasher during off-peak hours to take advantage of the very low rate but at the moment it's very much finger in the air without knowing exactly what appliances use how much during the day.

Assuming you have half hour readings enabled, you can look at your daily usage on the My Energy page of your Octopus account. You'll also get your daily/weekly/monthly usage displayed too - That will give you your base line consumption without an EV.

I had an EV for a short period last year. Looking at my My Energy usage, charging up the car added ~150kWh to a monthly bill (basically, doubling my usage). Did briefly contemplate either OG or IOG, but the EV didn't stay that long. Other EV users have been on the Octopus Tariff and benefited greatly from the plunge prices that occurred last year (some days, going negative). If you can avoid the 16:00 to 19:00 peak, Agile might work for you.

Oh, and if you haven't already got your charger install booked, I'd recommend avoiding Ohme - Found their customer support to be extremely slow and of poor quality. The chargers are also reliant on the mobile phone network, so there may be an additional cost after three years for the sim card.

Dogbyte009

Try the Octoprice site, if you use the 'try it out' option rather than linking it to your Octopus account you can play around with different figures.

Keep_pedalling

We are in a similar situation and on average charge a couple of times a week, driving around 12,000 a year, we also use gas for heating and electricity for everything else. The car is responsible for around 60% so an EV tariff is really a no brainer. We are an OIG and also getting 15p pkWh in SEG payments for exporting and have just reached the point in the year where our net electricity costs are approaching zero. 

Unless you are doing less than around 6000 miles a year an EV tariff should be cheaper. 

Fozzie_Bear

Keep_pedalling said:

Unless you are doing less than around 6000 miles a year an EV tariff should be cheaper. 

I think that is likely to be the case. the Kia EV3 is a replacement for my wife's BMW 2 series and she was only doing 5.5-6k miles a year. I tend to use my diesel Skoda Yeti to do dump runs and other "dirty" journeys which further reduces our EV mileage.