How to choose between Octopus Agile and Go?

[Noel83]

Hi all,
I'm already with Octopus on a normal tariff and just looking to switch to Agile or Go ahead of my Evezy M3P arriving shortly.

I've skimmed through the massive Go related thread but am not sure if there's an easy way for me to choose between Agile or Go?

'Normal' family household, peak use between 5 and 9pm, will have one EV once the M3P arrives.

Go costs would be 14.29p/kwh 0430-0030, 5p/kwh 0030-0430 and 25p/day standing charge
Agile is obviously variable with some info I've seen suggesting an average price as low as 9p over 12 months for some customers, 21p/day standing charge

Not wanting to spending hours on spreadsheets so just wonder if there's any simple rules for me to consider.

Am investigating whether there's a way to delay start our tumble dryer and dishwasher use as that could help whichever tariff we go for.

Cheers in advance

 

[Chanser]

Home - Energy Stats UK
Check past history of agile tariff.

Seems like GO tariff suits your needs, as your are active during peak times.

 

[Durzel]

Agile will be expensive if you’re not prepared or able to regulate your peak usage. People rave about Agile but you can see there are some high peaks too.

Go is not too expensive at peak times, relative to everything else, and obviously much cheaper for charging which is 7kW+ at a sustained rate.

 

[Yev000]

Agile peaks are not so bad. It's basically double between 4 and 7. Cooking dinner for my family with induction hob is about £1 during this time.

However the rates at night are often below 5p. During storm Dennis they were - 2p for about 6 hours. I charged my 3 and my leaf as much as i could. 7kw + 2kw.


If you have an ev, unless you charge during peak your average will be lower.

Washing machine pulls about 2kwh. Just don't do stuff like that during peak.

 

[Rooster6655]

Go costs would be 14.29p/kwh 0430-0030, 5p/kwh 0030-0430 and 25p/day standing charge
Agile is obviously variable with some info I've seen suggesting an average price as low as 9p over 12 months for some customers, 21p/day standing charge

Yes I have been considering these two tariffs as well, it seems that if you can avoid 4-7pm with Agile you would benefit the most but the pricing seems reasonable when you consider the lower rates for the 21 hours

 

[Mark_T]

If you don't already have a smart meter I'd suggest starting the process now and moving to Go initially.

That way you can build up your real usage data and make an informed decision based on that.

My last full weeks data comparing Go and Agile was as follows:

Go: £28.20
Agile: £16.10

So much depends on how often you need to recharge overnight and how much you use in the 4-7pm period.

I do not have to recharge every night so I can pick and choose when to do it, and we are light users for most of the 4-7pm period.

 

[up_north]

I tried to do some analysis on this ahead of car delivery next month. It hurts my head. But looking at the Agile figures for the past 12 months from Octopus's website (and note I'm comparing the Northern region only):
Average Agile cost per kw/h = 10.61p
Average Agile cost per kw/h excluding the 4p-7pm peak = 8.97p
Number of half hour times slots (from a total of 17560) where the Agile price is higher than Go (which is 12.93p for me) = 2666

Then making an, albeit unrealsitic, assumption to compare like with like which is charging your car from 00:30-04:30:
Cost of Go = £1.48
Average price of Agile across the year: £2.11
Lowest price of Agile: -24p on December 8 (that's minus 24 pence)
Highest price of Agile: £3.89 on March 10

Above doesn't include daily charge.

The above probably means little as much of it depends on your electricity usage as a whole and whether you want to put the time into reviewing the daily Agile costs and planning you electricity usage accordingly. Obviously if you have an Agile friendly charger like Ohme this will go a huge way to getting the most out of that tariff because it would seem that using the same 4 hour time slot on Agile that Go uses, it would work out more expensive on Agile, but again all depending on your electricity usage as a whole and not looking at the car in isolation.

Edited to add that even using Ohme to pick the cheapest time slots, the expensive day mentioned above would still cost £2.05 for a 4 hour charge.

 

[Mark_T]

Very hard to do anything useful with the old data for pricing and no real granularity on your own consumption.

It all gets much easier when you have the details from your own smart meter, which is why I'd suggest going to Go first.

While on Go I could see savings just from moving to Agile with our current usage pattern, once on Agile we have virtually doubled the predicted savings by making small changes to our timing on things like use of the dryer and when I charge overnight.

 

[Adopado]

Not wanting to spending hours on spreadsheets so just wonder if there's any simple rules for me to consider.

I would say there are no simple rules really ... the people who are making good use of Agile are being extremely careful about maximising their usage for cheap periods and avoiding expensive periods. Several appear to be doing this by time shifting by using their home battery setup and/or solar generation. If you are up for that kind of detailed monitoring and optimisation it looks like a good option to consider. If you are not then it's probably not for you!

 

[Durzel]

I agree with the above. Agile is tailor made for people who are prepared and able to implement a strict and ideally autonomous usage pattern.

If you just want to plug a car in and know it’s going to charge up to a certain amount every night then Go is a fire and forget solution.

Agile pays dividends if you have batteries (and ideally solar) so you can run off battery power when grid power it’s at its peak cost, and charge batteries, use power hungry things when it’s at its lowest (or negative), involving timers, etc.

Neither solution is best which is sort of the point.

 

[Adopado]

The obvious issue that can arise with GO is that you have only the 4 hours of super-cheap 5p rate. In the great majority of cases this covers daily charging requirements. I could imagine that someone doing higher than average daily mileage, and with a "thirsty" MS or MX with a big battery pack, could run out of time to keep the charging within that 4 hour window. (Mind you, even charging at the standard rate is so much cheaper than petrol it's hardly worth losing sleep over!)

 

[Noel83]

Thank you all really helpful
I’m going to go with go for the moment but also implement some smarts to shift loads that we can to 0030 onwards.

I have a smart z wave socket on our tumble dryer so will set that to switch off if it sees a post 8pm turn on, then restart at 0030,
Don’t have a delay function on the dishwasher but that’s an obvious and daily use I need to figure a way to delay automatically to 0030

got the ‘smart’ meter installed and 3 months post install it’s now working and reporting to octopus enabling me to move tariff,

Cheers
Noel

 

[Mark_T]

The obvious issue that can arise with GO is that you have only the 4 hours of super-cheap 5p rate.

There are some different 'Go' options these days which will give you 5 hours and different start times:

 

[Adopado]

There are some different 'Go' options these days which will give you 5 hours and different start times:


View attachment 514248

Of course ... I keep forgetting there have been some options introduced ... that's useful.

 

[Mark_T]

Agile pays dividends if you have batteries (and ideally solar) so you can run off battery power when grid power it’s at its peak cost, and charge batteries, use power hungry things when it’s at its lowest (or negative), involving timers, etc.

That is true, but I have neither solar, nor a powerwall and Agile is significantly better for me even without micro managing everything else.

It is more about macro management for me, avoid the majority of 4-7pm period and the rest is a lot cheaper than the 'day' rate on Go whatever you do. Hard not to save money if you can avoid high use from 4-7pm or at least a decent part of that period.

This is why I say start with Go and then track your actual usage pattern.

 

[OOvOO]

Try each one year.

 

[didn0t]

Try each one year.

Keep an eye on this twitter feed - Octo Comparison on Twitter

I'm currently using stevenewey/octograph to track my usage. However does need some setting up.

 

[Noel83]

There are some different 'Go' options these days which will give you 5 hours and different start times:


View attachment 514248

@Mark_T where did you find this info? In the info their support linked me to it only mentioned the original tariff?
5 hours from 2130 would be great as would cover some of the evening use albeit I assume there’s a downside and the non cheap rate is more?

 

[Mark_T]

@Mark_T where did you find this info? In the info their support linked me to it only mentioned the original tariff?
5 hours from 2130 would be great as would cover some of the evening use albeit I assume there’s a downside and the non cheap rate is more?

The downside is that you are paying 5.5p/kW instead of 5p/kW for the low rate.

The alternatives are all listed as current tariffs on their website, just scroll right down to the bottom to see them...

Octopus Energy

 

[Noel83]

The downside is that you are paying 5.5p/kW instead of 5p/kW for the low rate.

The alternatives are all listed as current tariffs on their website, just scroll right down to the bottom to see them...

Octopus Energy

thanks, I’m wondering if this is only for certain postcodes, I’ve asked the question and will post back what they say