New Octopus Go tariff and off peak options?

[jimbo_hippo]

Had a smart meter installed last week. Just waiting for Agile tariff to go active. Have a solar PV and Powerwall so we’re giving it a whirl. I really did get the impression that Octopus don’t like their smart meter subcontractor any more than the customers do. If it was possible to hear someone roll their eyes at the mention of them, I reckon I would have heard it. Whilst they ARE ultimately responsible for their subcontractors, the problem is their contractor lies to them. Octopus lady (just by nature of her job.... only two arms I’m sure) was being told they were at my house and rang me back 1 minute later and I said absolutely not. She was super helpful and even though he turned up 5 mins later, we got a credit of £30 for the inconvenience.

As for the pros and cons of smart meters, I get that it’s Big Brother but if these reactive tariffs (if that’s the phrase) are going to work, I kind of think it need some two way communication. That said, the more I think about it, me being armed with the wholesale prices via their website and me acting accordingly seems to be all I need.

I’m sure I’ll be back as things progress. I think I just confused myself as I typed that. Need a lie down now.

 

[NewbieT]

I’m deciding whether ‘Agile’ is just a gimmick (for now). If I have this correct:

Octopus Go
1/2 hourly wholesale electricity mostly bought well in advance. Night is cheaper than day (5p yay). Octopus takes the risk that they haven’t bought enough or have bought too much electricity. We have smart meters so they should have a very good idea what this looks like rather than using a standard profile.

Octopus Agile
On the day generation varies and the Balancing & Settlement Code takes play. Supplier can back-to-back purchase & sale quants and tariffs taking a simple margin. Low risk to the supplier.

Does anyone know how often ‘plunge’ pricing happens & how long for? Does it always happen at the same times of day?

My guess would be that in 15yrs time we will all be agile because most suppliers will price the risk if you’re not. In the meanwhile Keep It Simple = Octopus Go.

 

[vitesse]

I’m deciding whether ‘Agile’ is just a gimmick (for now). If I have this correct:

Octopus Go
1/2 hourly wholesale electricity mostly bought well in advance. Night is cheaper than day (5p yay). Octopus takes the risk that they haven’t bought enough or have bought too much electricity. We have smart meters so they should have a very good idea what this looks like rather than using a standard profile.

Octopus Agile
On the day generation varies and the Balancing & Settlement Code takes play. Supplier can back-to-back purchase & sale quants and tariffs taking a simple margin. Low risk to the supplier.

Does anyone know how often ‘plunge’ pricing happens & how long for? Does it always happen at the same times of day?

My guess would be that in 15yrs time we will all be agile because most suppliers will price the risk if you’re not. In the meanwhile Keep It Simple = Octopus Go.

Somebody here posted a graph to show how Agile was good if you needed cheaper electricity out of the 4 hour off-peak window but it does get expensive in the early evening.

 

[Mark_T]

The key differences are that with 'Agile' you need to be able to avoid or reduce your exposure to the peak pricing between 4-7pm or just naturally not be a significant user during those hours and preferably not be charging your car for 4 hours every night as the night prices rarely fall as low as the Go tariff.

For 'Go' you ideally need to be fully using your 4 hours of cheap power every night and have significant unavoidable use between 4-7pm.

Agile gives you more flexibility to consume what you need when you need it but that late afternoon period is critical so solar/powerwall can make a big difference if you can't avoid significant usage in that period.

Go works best for those with regular full use of the 4 cheap hours to recharge the car, nothing else really uses enough power in that time frame to make it worth having.

I've been tracking usage and costs for 5 weeks now and modelling against Go, Agile, EDF and Bulb. We have low to moderate use of power between 4-6 and typically only have significant use in the 6-7pm period. We do not recharge the car on a daily basis as mileage is relatively low and there is a convenient Supercharger close to home on the days when there is more significant mileage.

So far Agile is the better tariff for us with EDF a close second, then Go and finally a long way behind is Bulb.

The Agile prices are going up as we get deeper into winter so the gap between Agile and EDF is closing, and last week EDF was cheaper than Agile, so over a full year EDF may well have the edge for our mix of use.

Also keep in mind that ignoring Bulb, the spread over the other 3 is only 12% from top to bottom so there isn't a lot in it so far...

 

[Glan gluaisne]

Does anyone know how often ‘plunge’ pricing happens & how long for? Does it always happen at the same times of day?

.

The agreed half hourly wholesale prices are kept private, so all that's published is aggregated data, which makes it hard to know for sure what the actual variance is between the two extremes. Wholesale prices have gone to zero for very short periods, for example, where generators have needed suppliers to take energy from them. This has happened when demand has been very low and when generators that cannot shut down need to export energy in order to keep their plant spinning. Conversely, at peak demand wholesale prices have significantly exceeded the retail price.

There is some aggregated data here that is indicative of price variation: Electricity Data Summary | BMRS

Taking yesterday as an example (19/11/2019), it looks as if the lowest sell price was around £33.60/MWh (3.36p/kWh) and the highest around £90.00/MWh (9.0p/kWh). Yesterday was not a very demanding day, and yet there was still a sell price variation of around 270%. It's not unusual to see a much greater spread of sell price, though. Even at yesterday's peaks of around 9p/kWh the suppliers may have been making a loss for those periods, as they work out their profitability on the mean sell price.

OFGEM publish the mean price data here: Wholesale energy market charts and indicators | Ofgem | Ofgem

Mean prices have been dropping steadily for the past year. For September 2018 the mean price was about 6.769p/kWh, and by August 2019 this had dropped to 3.962p/kWh, for example. In general, the retail price of electricity seems to be between 2.5 and 3 times the mean wholesale price, and one reason that OFGEM is saying that retail prices should come down is because the current retail price is significantly more that 3 times the wholesale price.

Although the general price trend is downwards, there also seems to be a trend towards higher volatility on an hour by hour basis. The latter is most probably the thing that is driving the move to smart metering, as it is one way of mitigating supplier risk.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Does anyone know how often ‘plunge’ pricing happens & how long for?

There is some analysis in this thread : Power Cost Per Mile

Upshot was: Out of several years of half-hour rates only 3 were negative, 60 < 5p. 551 >=31p, 1297 >30p, 407 >25p, 930 >20p. The vast majority were 10p or 15p

So seems like Go on 5p / 14p is more likely to be ahead. However, as North Sea Wind increases, and is curtailed more often, there should?? be more Agile low-price periods.

If you often need more than 5 hours car charging, per day, then E7 probably going to be better than a 4 Hour Off Peak tariff (although going over 4 hours "occasionally" would work out cheaper on Go than E7)

 

[jimbo_hippo]

A simple analysis from me (if that counts for anything) would be that if you work from home and have 2 EVs, solar + battery storage then Agile can win the battle easily. If you commute, Go or a similar tariff will be less hassle and give similar results.

 

[RealEvil_UK]

Just wanted to share my (so far) positive experiences with Octopus. Switched, within 2 days I had a smart meter appointment, phoned the 3rd party contractor and got bumped up by about 10 days to about 12 days from now. All in all its been good but proof will be in the pudding as they say.

 

[G1201]

Looking to move to Octopus Go, could someone PM me their referral code?

Also does anyone have in experience of lead-time to get smart meter fitted in South/West Scotland?

 

[*Adam]

Looking to move to Octopus Go, could someone PM me their referral code?

Also does anyone have in experience of lead-time to get smart meter fitted in South/West Scotland?

I’ve sent you one

 

[G1201]

I’ve sent you one

Thanks

 

[Tony Hoyle]

Signed up to Octopus and they appear to be able to work with my Bulb smart meter - that Bulb themselves said they wouldn't be able to make 'smart' until sometime in 2020.. so they're already better in that sense.

Just waiting for Agile to come online. I've checked against my real usage history and Agile comes out slightly cheaper than Go.

 

[gangzoom]

^What make is your smart meter.

 

[Tony Hoyle]

It's a landys and gyr smets2 meter. Bulb basically had no idea what to do with it, despite installing the thing..

 

[Mark_T]

It's a landys and gyr smets2 meter. Bulb basically had no idea what to do with it, despite installing the thing..

Yep, those are the ones that Octopus install as standard.

 

[G1201]

As I'm switching over to Octopus, I've been looking into things, I've just found this YouTube video about some new options to the Go tariff. Looks like they are starting to offer 3, 4 & 5 hour slots of cheap electricity with starting times of 8:30pm, 9:30, etc up to the normal 12:30.
Here's the link -

 

[vitesse]

As I'm switching over to Octopus, I've been looking into things, I've just found this YouTube video about some new options to the Go tariff. Looks like they are starting to offer 3, 4 & 5 hour slots of cheap electricity with starting times of 8:30pm, 9:30, etc up to the normal 12:30.
Here's the link -

Yes though invitation only at the moment.

 

[Smiddy]

Just a quick update on my dealings with Octopus, I chased again for a date that i might get a smart meter and was told there wasnt an engineer available in my area and it would be another month so i decided I would log a complaint with Octopus. It took them a few days to reply to my complaint and the person handling it was going to see if they could get me a date for install.

I waited a week and chased again but didnt hear anything back so I decided to email the CEO of Octopus Greg Jackson, I got a reply back from him at 2am the next morning apologising for the delay and he CC'd in director of metering at Octopus and by 9:04am I had an email with a link to book my meter install which is the 27th Dec.

 

[Adopado]

I waited a week and chased again but didnt hear anything back so I decided to email the CEO of Octopus Greg Jackson, I got a reply back from him at 2am the next morning apologising for the delay and he CC'd in director of metering at Octopus and by 9:04am I had an email with a link to book my meter install which is the 27th Dec.

Similar experience ... when I was trying to arrange my own transfer I had some email delays and wrote (on standard Octopus email address) saying I was disappointed given their reputation for good email comms ... Greg Jackson must have some direct monitoring because he stepped into the email exchange and everyone started jumping and my account was set up post haste!

 

[sims]

Looking to join octopus and this is a great thread, could someone DM me a referral code please?