Breaking fixed Octopus plan to move to Go?

[scatteredpixel]

I have a M3LR coming in next week. I've seen a few thread on Octopus, but not one from an existing customer switching to Go.

I currently have a 24 month locked in plan since June last year. Which has been serving me well with all the price increases going on recently. I'm wondering whether to just power through with the fixed at the risk of paying a bit more but at old rates or switching to Go to take advantage of late night charging.

Been trying to do a bit of research on what would be the best call, but Octopus support aren't very good at being clear. Is it going to be more prudent to switch to Go?

 

[Rooster6655]

What are your current rates?

Not sure of the current Go rates but I suspect the night rate for charging will still be competitive when compared to previous fixed rate deals its just the day rate that might stiff you!

 

[Durzel]

Really depends on your usage. Are you charging a lot every night? If so, the Go rate (which I think is 7.5p/kWh now) might offset your daily usage.

But if you're using a lot generally then you might find the day rate - which I guess would be higher than your fixed - invalidates any benefit you're getting from the lower car charging rate.

Only you can really know the answer to this - by looking at your recent bills to see the trends.

 

[Helguson17]

I have a M3LR coming in next week. I've seen a few thread on Octopus, but not one from an existing customer switching to Go.

I currently have a 24 month locked in plan since June last year. Which has been serving me well with all the price increases going on recently. I'm wondering whether to just power through with the fixed at the risk of paying a bit more but at old rates or switching to Go to take advantage of late night charging.

Been trying to do a bit of research on what would be the best call, but Octopus support aren't very good at being clear. Is it going to be more prudent to switch to Go?

I'm in exactly the same boat (save I'm waiting on a MYLR and probably won't arrive until later in March). A friend who works at Ofgem said it would be sensible to put the question to Octopus as they are essentially obliged to give you the info as to best rate for you - of course that's tricky when you don't know exact usage that you'll likely have once the car is here. Any insight from experienced Octopus users would be very welcome!

 

[scatteredpixel]

What are your current rates?

Not sure of the current Go rates but I suspect the night rate for charging will still be competitive when compared to previous fixed rate deals its just the day rate that might stiff you!

Currently at 20.80p/kWh using about 8-12kWH/day. We're going to be using the car mainly locally with the occasional longer trip, so at this point I'm thinking sticking on the current plan if we're only topping up a bit.

 

[spon88]

Currently at 20.80p/kWh using about 8-12kWH/day. We're going to be using the car mainly locally with the occasional longer trip, so at this point I'm thinking sticking on the current plan if we're only topping up a bit.

I'm with Octopus at the moment, albeit day/night rates. We use a fair bit of power during the day (home office, PCs, big screens etc) but not much at night. Mileage is relatively light with some local stuff and the odd longer trip - around 6k per year. I'm currently paying around 17.5p day rate and 9.5p night rate. I haven't done the sums yet but pretty certain 'Go' wouldn't work for us. I guess we're in for the big rate hike along with the majority. Maybe we should switch to a night shift

 

[cryo]

With Octopus go the way to make it pay is to use your high load appliances between the hours of 00:30-04:30. Car charging, washer/drier (especially drier), dishwasher. I'm retired and don't do a lot of miles in the car but it is still the biggest load on the system as a general rule. The majority of high load items can generally be set up to delay the start time to the appropriate 00:30 with just a few button presses. Items like big screen TV's, computers , lighting are fairly low level loads.

 

[Billbrown1982]

Its a tough call. I know the off peak rates are currently 7.5p for new customers but its kind of impossible to know what your day rate will be and they dont' seem to let you do an online quote at the moment either, they just say "you shouldn't switch right now because prices are high"

But you would have to find out what your day rate would be with them, see how many appliances you can switch to run at night, like we having washing machine/dishwasher all on delay timers and THEN work out how much it will cost.

As an example, I commute 62 miles a day, 5 days a week. I ONLY charge my car off peak.

Last month it cost me £40
If I charged at peak, it would be £120 (currently paying 15ppkw)

So for me, its pretty worth it. Just with the car alone but of course, ymmv.

 

[BK11SBY]

I think it's just a case of trying to work out how much of your usage you can condense into 4 hours (Go) or 5 Hours (Go Faster).
I'm on Go Faster and get 5 hours between 01:30am and 06:30am. (you can choose any 5 hours in a row between 8:30pm and 06:30am
I have a Heat Pump and schedule Washer/Dryer, Hot water etc between those hours. In addition my Heat pump comes on about 4am to pre heat my house so it's nice and cosy for when we wake up. I've seen days when 90% of our consumption is at 5.5p with only 10% at 23.6p peak rate. This works out better than on say a fixed rate of 20p for us.

You just need to figure out your usage patterns, the car charging is easy as that can always be off peak.

 

[Jason71]

With Octopus go the way to make it pay is to use your high load appliances between the hours of 00:30-04:30. Car charging, washer/drier (especially drier), dishwasher. I'm retired and don't do a lot of miles in the car but it is still the biggest load on the system as a general rule. The majority of high load items can generally be set up to delay the start time to the appropriate 00:30 with just a few button presses. Items like big screen TV's, computers , lighting are fairly low level loads.

I did that but shifted my cheap period to 20:30 to 23:30 makes doing that sort of thing easier and captures all the evening usage as well