Electric Only Tarriff

IanfromHants

Morning all,
I'm hoping for some advice if possible please.
I currently have a duel fuel tariff with Octopus Energy.
I am moving house soon, to a village and the house only has electricity, for lighting/general power, and oil for the heating.
Octopus are sorting my leaving bill etc and have said that they do offer an electricity tariff that is cheaper during the day, but they throw in the 'warning' that it is more expensive at peak times.
I'm not entirely sure where to go here, as i've never been in a position that I only need electricity.
I'm not the brightest spark in the box, so if anyone can help/advise on what I should do, that would be great.
Do I take up the one with better day time rates and make sure the wife only puts the washing machine and tumble dryer on during those peak times.  Not a lot else you can save on during the day, maybe if remembering, charging up a few bits of equipment here and there.
Or have others found that just a general rate from another supplier has always outweighed the daytime off peak rate?
Thanks in advance, for your help

Rwhb12

We have this tariff and if you are able to plan your day around the peak period, like cooking on electricity outside the times, it is ok. Some also use bottled gas as a cooking fuel where we live. Avoid washing, immersion heater and any high kW load in the peak period.

Keep_pedalling

What sort of electric heating does the new house have? The best tariff for storage heaters is not going to be the best one for panel heaters or a heat pump.

IanfromHants

Rwhb12 said:

We have this tariff and if you are able to plan your day around the peak period, like cooking on electricity outside the times, it is ok. Some also use bottled gas as a cooking fuel where we live. Avoid washing, immersion heater and any high kW load in the peak period.

Thanks for your reply.  Can you tell me what hours the peak and off peak periods are please?

Robin9

Keep_pedalling said:

What sort of electric heating does the new house have? The best tariff for storage heaters is not going to be the best one for panel heaters or a heat pump.

.................. oil ....................

IanfromHants

Keep_pedalling said:

What sort of electric heating does the new house have? The best tariff for storage heaters is not going to be the best one for panel heaters or a heat pump.

Thanks for the reply also.  No electric heating, it's provided by oil from a tank near the house

Keep_pedalling

Robin9 said:

Keep_pedalling said:

What sort of electric heating does the new house have? The best tariff for storage heaters is not going to be the best one for panel heaters or a heat pump.

.................. oil ....................

Whoop! Another senior moment 😖

FrugaiMacDugal

When you move to new house you will be with whoever the supplier is just now.

You will need to contact them and provide a meter reading, then you can think abouy switching supplier.

Keep_pedalling

FrugaiMacDugal said:

When you move to new house you will be with whoever the supplier is just now.

You will need to contact them and provide a meter reading, then you can think abouy switching supplier.

You can set up a switch to Octopus before the move. I did this when we moved last year, it avoided the need to have a deemed supplier for a short time. 

lohr500

Keep_pedalling said:

What sort of electric heating does the new house have? The best tariff for storage heaters is not going to be the best one for panel heaters or a heat pump.

OP original post says new house has oil heating.

@IanfromHants Lengthy reply follows, but it may help!!

  Does the new house have a combi oil boiler, or a traditional boiler with a hot water immersion tank and supplementary electric immersion heater? Do you know the oil boiler make and model?

If it isn't a combi boiler and you do have an immersion cylinder then you need to decide how you are going to heat your hot water. You can either use the boiler to heat the hot water or electricity.

Without knowing the boiler make/model it's hard to say exactly what the cost would be to use the boiler to heat the hot water. But 1 litre of heating oil yields 10.35kWh of energy. 

If the boiler was 85% efficient (big assumption without knowing the model) then 1 litre of oil would give you around 8.9kWh.

In our region 1 litre of heating oil is £0.52 delivered.  So 5.8p per kwH for your hot water heating.


If you decide to heat the hot water using electricity, then you have several choices.

If you choose a standard single rate electricity tariff then I think the standard variable tariff will be around £0.26 per kWh. Clearly heating your water at this rate will be much more expensive than oil, even if the boiler efficiency is less than the assumed 85% used above.

Another option is traditional Economy 7 where you get a lower cost off-peak rate for 7 hours overnight, but offset by a higher rate for the rest of the day. Economy 7 prices differ massively by supplier as they all apply different % splits to the peak/off-peak costs. As an example with Utility Warehouse I am paying only 4.8p for my off-peak rate, but 37p for the peak. In the same region, if I went with Eon Next, those prices move to 14p/29p.

Then there are various time of use tariffs offered by Octopus and others.

With Eco7 or a TOU tariff then as @Rwhb12 points out, the key thing is to switch as much of your usage to the cheapest off-peak time slot. You would need to evaluate what your usage is in the new house and decide how much could be moved to the off-peak times.

If it was me, I would move into the new house and start by heating the water with your boiler.
With only an immersion heater, my gut feel is that you wont be able to shift enough of your electricity load to a cheap off-peak slot to offset the higher peak rate day costs. If the house had storage heaters as well, then it would be a different matter.

Start with a variable (or fixed with no exit fee) electricity tariff that you can change once you have a better idea of your usage. Download the free Bright App on your phone so you can monitor the electricity usage in 30 minute/hourly/daily/weekly/monthly increments. From the data you can see how much electricity you are using at what times.

As we approach winter it will be difficult to work out how much oil you are actually using to heat the hot water, vs central heating. But through next summer, if you don't use the heating, you can try to monitor roughly how much oil you have used just to heat the hot water. Make a simple dipstick for the tank out of a broom handle with some calibration marks on it. If it is a rectangular tank, the calibration marks are easier to work out than a cylindrical shape. But some tank manufacturers provide charts showing the data. 


Oil pricing is generally more volatile than electricity and isn't covered by the same price cap guarantee.
But you can get an idea of historical pricing here : 

https://www.boilerjuice.com/heating-oil-prices-england/


 

Scot_39

IanfromHants said:

Morning all,
I'm hoping for some advice if possible please.
I currently have a duel fuel tariff with Octopus Energy.
I am moving house soon, to a village and the house only has electricity, for lighting/general power, and oil for the heating.
Octopus are sorting my leaving bill etc and have said that they do offer an electricity tariff that is cheaper during the day, but they throw in the 'warning' that it is more expensive at peak times.
I'm not entirely sure where to go here, as i've never been in a position that I only need electricity.
I'm not the brightest spark in the box, so if anyone can help/advise on what I should do, that would be great.
Do I take up the one with better day time rates and make sure the wife only puts the washing machine and tumble dryer on during those peak times.  Not a lot else you can save on during the day, maybe if remembering, charging up a few bits of equipment here and there.
Or have others found that just a general rate from another supplier has always outweighed the daytime off peak rate?
Thanks in advance, for your help

I assume you were maybe pointed at Cosy.

https://octopus.energy/smart/cosy-octopus

You'd have to work out how much of your daily use you could put into their off peak (51% below single rste) and standard rates (standard rate higher than SR, peak rate 51% higher than sr 4-7pm ) and how easy it would be to avoid that peak.

Its priced to suit - to save - those who can say schedule electric hw (using 3-6kW of immersion heaters to heat tank) and specifically electric heating using say 3-4kW per hour input power for say small to medium rated AsHP or 6-9kW per hour for a wet boiler or heat store say during many of its  8 off peak hours.

Assuming oil is efficient for hw and heating it may not suit you - and relies on connected smart meter in a good (wan) signal area as billed 1/2 hourly.

But if say you needed to use an immersion heater for hw - then that can be a significant chunk of daily use too - for 2 including hot water tank fed showers maybe 5-6 kWh plus.

If it were me though, Id be tempted to go single rate and try the oil for hw only and soon heating - propably by tge time you actually move - it will be in heating sesson - then use the Octopus compare tool once got a baseline profile in new home to choose a fancier deal.

And concentrate on other preperations for move for now.

Most Octopus tariffs are flexible to swap in and out of  - even many (possibly not all so check) of their fixes have zero exit fees if you want some rate protection vs svt over winter - and so you can switch quickly.

I dont know how much tge oil tank and boiler / tgd oil pump bit uses electric power wise - but assume the water side uses standard gch circulation pumps for tank and radiators. 

And your soon going to be saving c£125pa on the gas standing charge to help pay the electric.