New Octopus Go tariff and off peak options?

[MrBadger]

Octopus didn't fix anything for me until I had waited 2 weeks - "it can take up to 2 weeks" even though installer said 30 mins to 24 hours - which it did for electricity, or was it gas... for the other, a problem was found and could have been sorted 2 weeks before had Octopus not hidden behind the 2 week thing.

 

[Roy W.]

Do they take on any smets 2 meter or just secure meters?

Secure branding compatibility only applies to SMETS1. They will take on any SMETS2 meters. Don’t forget to use a referral code if you join!

 

[Adopado]

Do they take on any smets 2 meter or just secure meters?

The SMETS 2 are fully flexible but if it's SMETS1 then it's only the Secure brand ... referrals galore around here!

 

[gangzoom]

Having previous looked at Go/Agile versus Bulb E7 and coming to the conclusion Bulb E7 was cheaper the last few days things have changed a little.


With the higher sun, longer days, the split SE/SW facing solar PV panels + PW2 is now able to deliver a whole day of electricity totally off grid!! That included adding about 10% SOC to the car, running the dish washer, oven etc.

This means if I can now shift virtually 100% of my grid electricity use to solar, and only need the grid electricity to charge the EV, charging at 5p per kWh clearly is cheaper than charging at 8p per kWh.

As it happens Bulb is now doing gen 2 start meter install, so I could even get Bulb to install the meter than I switch to Octopus........

.......However than I saw my latest bill from Bubl. Bare in mind this was pre Corona Lock down, and actually for most of March/late Feb I was still using some grid energy to charge the PW. A grand total of £38, including charging the EV. Am not at all sure the hassle of getting a smart meter and than switching energy suppliers is worth trying to save money on what is already a very small electricity bill. Next month bill will be under £30 I suspect as am now using the electric bike more, travelling less due to Corona,

BUT my biggest cost of the energy bill is actually gas, and I notice Octopus is actually cheaper than Bulb on gas with both unit charge and standing charge.

So when this Corona thing is over I'll probably get Bulb to install the smart meter and if their gas prices remain higher switch over to Octopus!!

.

 

[Mark_T]

BUT my biggest cost of the energy bill is actually gas, and I notice Octopus is actually cheaper than Bulb on gas with both unit charge and standing charge.

Generally speaking you will often be better off having gas and electric with separate providers, and while the current Octopus gas rates are low, you can usually find someone somewhere that is lower, but personally I'm happy to trade a little cost against the comfort of going with a company that is still going to be around after a few billing cycles

If you really do just need the grid for a few hours EV charging a night then Octopus Go is an easy choice. Also do consider that if you have the ability through solar/battery to avoid the grid during the 4-7pm period all year round then Agile is still likely to be a good choice for you and would open up the option to charge at other times of the day depending on pricing. It certainly doesn't always go as low as 5p every night but it is usually close and not infrequently less than that as well.

 

[gangzoom]

Future to complicate my energy calculations, now that we've had week of sun, only using the car for 7 mile round trip to nursery our house hold grid energy use was only 16kWh for the WHOLE WEEK!!

At 8p per kWh of E7 rates, the 20p per day standing charge has made up 50% of the electricity bill, making a grand total of £2.68.

Come the proper summer I suspect we'll have weeks at a time when our total electricity bill including car charging will be made up totally of the standing charge.

Thats with only 4KW of split SW/SE facing panels + one PW. With more solar and/or another PW we could off grid for electricity use for 50% of the year quite easily!!

So for our usage am going to look into gas costs much more than electricity rates.

 

[MrBadger]

Come the proper summer I suspect we'll have weeks at a time when our total electricity bill including car charging will be made up totally of the standing charge.

You will probably find that this time of year you get better than summer values, certainly peak values - length of day still has its say though.

PV will be at its best the next few weeks, with the panels being kept chilled. Summer heat takes the edge off production.

I noticed today by chance (first solar season with a smart meter) that we were exporting > 3.7kW so pretty much 100% of our 16A system going back to the grid for others to benefit from - won't ever get that in the summer I suspect. Last week on couple of days, we were probably just shy by 4kWh of peak daily energy and that will be down to a couple of trees further up the road casting late afternoon shadow.

 

[gangzoom]

You will probably find that this time of year you get better than summer values, certainly peak values - length of day still has its say though.

Your probably right, am still learning how the PW+Solar PV interact. One thing is clear, I can see why whole sale electricity costs can go down so much with 'green' generation, once the infrastructure is built you have very little to maintain the system.

 

[MrBadger]

Anyone else having approx 10x discrepancy between web account gas readings and billing/smart meter?

Octopus said they had resolved this for me, but just got latest bill and clearly not resolved.

Account web meter readings - 8.823kWh - wrong - approx 10x smaller than it should be
View attachment 515950

Billing daily average - 81.75kWh - inline with smart meter
View attachment 515951

Smart meter - 98.49kWh - cold day!
View attachment 515953

Now fixed, sort of. Wish they had unified it as kWh, but progress as since complaining about this, they taken my 1/2 hourly gas readings offline, but now they are all back. Thankfully the graphs have retained their historical readings - I really wanted to see how my heating and DHW usage changed over the shoulder months - latter is fully covered by Solar most days.

Interestingly, the m3/kWh debate continues though. According to the developer API documentation, what gets reported is SMETS 1/2 dependent. But at least the graph is now consistent with underlying units, well for SMETS2 at least.

Unit of measurement:

• Electricity meters: kWh
  
• SMETS1 Secure gas meters: kWh
  
• SMETS2 gas meters: m^3

 

[Mark_T]

Now fixed, sort of. Wish they had unified it as kWh...

They made the right choice, the anomaly is that the SMETS1 return 30 min data in kWh as that will always be merely an estimate due to the use of a fixed calorific value.

Both SMETS1 & 2 can only measure gas volume used, not kWh, so no idea why anyone ever thought it was helpful to use kWh estimates that will never match the actual amount billed each month.

 

[MrBadger]

I'm billed in energy kWh rather than volume, so kWh is the meaningful unit for me. They use the same fixed conversion each bill to convert the m3 to kWh. The volume correction has remained at 1.02264 for the >3 years that I have been with them across multiple tariffs and meters. TBH, they should be supplying both values, or at least an additional billed cost, so if they ever bothered to adjust the conversion as other suppliers of mine have done, the consumed m3 and billed kWh would remain historically correct. At present, there is no way of looking at a historical consumption record and calculating the billed price other than relying on the anomaly of a fixed conversion value that they thankfully never seem to update. Whether that method will remain valid indefinitely remains to be seen. Bit like their tariff codes.

 

[Mark_T]

I'm billed in energy kWh rather than volume, so kWh is the meaningful unit for me. They use the same fixed conversion each bill to convert the m3 to kWh. The volume correction has remained at 1.02264 for the >3 years that I have been with them across multiple tariffs and meters.

It is the calorific value that will change, not the volume correction.

It doesn't move by much but it does change. Over my last 3 monthly bills it has been 39.4. 39.3, 39.2 ...

The way gas is billed is the same for all suppliers, they have to use the average calorific value for the period being billed, truncated to one decimal place so the only accurate number that can be given before the month end is the volume consumed, the price for that consumption is only fixed at the end of the period when it is billed.

 

[MrBadger]

Understood. As you say, its only a small change, mine fluctuated between 39.0 and 39.4 (mostly 39.3) looking back at a decent selection of 3 years worth of bills.

Shame, that makes it impossible to get the exact gas cost or kWh for comparison purposes (such as mixed mode heating) without looking at a bill.

 

[Simavon]

We switched to the EDF Go Electric tariff on 9th March. It’s taken them until a couple of weeks ago to agree a final reading with British Gas. For which I blame EDF entirely. BG had already taken a final payment in March of 160-odd. Since we have a smart meter this should not have been any issue.

EDF requested a manual reading but rejected it because we have a smart meter. Then they said as we didn’t receive your reading in time they’d estimate our reading with our previous supplier. An update online on 24th April said they would now contact BG and expect it to take 6-10 weeks to resolve. (This is already more than 6 weeks after switch date).

So time passes. Now something happens. It’s 18th May. BG have taken a final final payment. Presumably they made some huge error and EDF were right to take so long to sort it out for us.

Want to guess how much?

£0.03.

Three pence. Well done EDF for taking more than two months to sort that out.

In the meantime the online graphs have been showing hourly gas usage. But on electricity they’ve only been taking a monthly reading. And in fact they’re claiming to have last taken an electricity reading on 23rd March despite having clearly taken data a month later and two months later.

About a week ago the electricity graphs started showing hourly data. I did switch to monthly then immediately back to hourly about two weeks ago in the hope of resetting whatever the issue was.

So now after heading for three months we have hourly data which is needed for the dual rate tariff. So we should be able to switch from the 12.5p flat rate that they’re using in the interim. So I went into the online chat and asked about it. I was told I needed an economy 7 meter (The tariff is not that simple as it’s 24h cheap rate at the weekend). So I had to explain that a smart meter is what we need, and that we have one. Then he gave me a number to call. I called this number, spend an age on hold (fair enough given corona) and was told they’d send a message to the EV team who would respond in 10-14 days, though hopefully quicker. Apparently they’ve been having problems getting the dual rate working. Well, why would this be different?

At least as of now we’re not charging the cars much and can easily get the charge we do need off solar.

 

[Roy W.]

We switched to the EDF Go Electric tariff on 9th March. It’s taken them until a couple of weeks ago to agree a final reading with British Gas. For which I blame EDF entirely. BG had already taken a final payment in March of 160-odd. Since we have a smart meter this should not have been any issue.

EDF requested a manual reading but rejected it because we have a smart meter. Then they said as we didn’t receive your reading in time they’d estimate our reading with our previous supplier. An update online on 24th April said they would now contact BG and expect it to take 6-10 weeks to resolve. (This is already more than 6 weeks after switch date).

So time passes. Now something happens. It’s 18th May. BG have taken a final final payment. Presumably they made some huge error and EDF were right to take so long to sort it out for us.

Want to guess how much?

£0.03.

Three pence. Well done EDF for taking more than two months to sort that out.

In the meantime the online graphs have been showing hourly gas usage. But on electricity they’ve only been taking a monthly reading. And in fact they’re claiming to have last taken an electricity reading on 23rd March despite having clearly taken data a month later and two months later.

About a week ago the electricity graphs started showing hourly data. I did switch to monthly then immediately back to hourly about two weeks ago in the hope of resetting whatever the issue was.

So now after heading for three months we have hourly data which is needed for the dual rate tariff. So we should be able to switch from the 12.5p flat rate that they’re using in the interim. So I went into the online chat and asked about it. I was told I needed an economy 7 meter (The tariff is not that simple as it’s 24h cheap rate at the weekend). So I had to explain that a smart meter is what we need, and that we have one. Then he gave me a number to call. I called this number, spend an age on hold (fair enough given corona) and was told they’d send a message to the EV team who would respond in 10-14 days, though hopefully quicker. Apparently they’ve been having problems getting the dual rate working. Well, why would this be different?

At least as of now we’re not charging the cars much and can easily get the charge we do need off solar.

It sounds like a real PITA. At least it’s not just Octopus cocking things up, it seems to be an industry-wide problem.

 

[ACarneiro]

Tried to switch to Octopus. It’s not going well.
They’ve emailed me to confirm my address and postcode (some issue with the meter database not showing my meter as E7).
I duly replied.
That was 5 days ago and I haven’t heard from them since.

This really is making me have second thoughts...

 

[opals]

I've been with Octopus (Go) for just over 4 months; I have found their email service pretty poor, but a phone call normally sorts things out much quicker. Once the initial teething issues were ironed out I have been more than happy

 

[Simavon]

So EDF emailed within 24 (working) hours to tell me to go online and apply for the split tarriff. They estimate about £20 per month cheaper than our current DD. I've done the application but so far, it's not happened.

 

[Simavon]

So EDF emailed within 24 (working) hours to tell me to go online and apply for the split tarriff. They estimate about £20 per month cheaper than our current DD. I've done the application but so far, it's not happened.

We're allegedly on dual-rate now and the fix is to August 21 instead of May.

 

[vitesse]

Sorry, haven't been on this forum a lot in recent weeks but after a year on GO now switched to Agile and after looking at my historical data on Octopus Comparison I wish I'd switched MUCH earlier. Octopus have also let me have their new customer rate for gas (2.2p/unit). I reckon in total I could be saving £500 a year. And Agile is rather fun to play with