Would those of you with Octopus Energy recommend them?
Which tariff are you on?
Which tariff is your gas on?
Which tariff are you on?
Which tariff is your gas on?
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Octopus Tariffs
- Thread starter Pagemakers
- Start date
I find the standard 5p per kWh 4 hour 00.30 to 04.00 Octopus Go is ideal for our own pattern of use. I have very rarely needed to go beyond that. In total kWh (in non virus times) we have a fairly equal balance between car consumption and general house consumption.
No problems with Octopus now that our billing is well established. My first generation smart meter means I use the website to monitor use and must admit that sometimes the information in my account lags for a few days before catching up with itself.
I don't have mains gas.
I’ve been with Octopus since last August. Because I had compatible smart meters I was moved onto the 5p GO tariff a couple of days after going live.
Since then I’ve moved onto the GO Faster trial tariff, which gives me five hours off-peak at 5.5p per kWh starting at 2030. I’ve also recently moved to a cheaper gas tariff fixed for a year.
l’ve looked at the Agile tariff but to be honest I really can’t be bothered altering my routine and charging times to save a penny here and there. The average price I paid before the lockdown (when I was still charging the car!) was about 7p a unit for all my electricity, peak and off-peak, combined.
You have to join Octopus on one of their 'standard' tariffs first and then you can switch to one of their others if you want once they've confirmed a live smart meter. Took 4 days once I had the smart meter before the switch, and the switch was activated at midnight the same day.
I moved onto Go and haven't looked back. I would look at the Go Faster - but not sure they're accepting new people onto it at the moment.
If you want both elec and gas with the same provider then they are reasonable (currently 2.67p/kWh and 17.85p/day), however I have since found a British Gas gas deal which saved a further £5pm (Avg.).
Unfortunately what works for you will depend on your usage. Typically given we're higher elec users, a higher daily charge and lower kWh charge is likely to be better.
Nick
I moved onto Go and haven't looked back. I would look at the Go Faster - but not sure they're accepting new people onto it at the moment.
If you want both elec and gas with the same provider then they are reasonable (currently 2.67p/kWh and 17.85p/day), however I have since found a British Gas gas deal which saved a further £5pm (Avg.).
Unfortunately what works for you will depend on your usage. Typically given we're higher elec users, a higher daily charge and lower kWh charge is likely to be better.
Nick
MrBadger
Badger out
We both work from home, as such we use Agile and in the last couple of days I have been paid to use electricity, and this hasn't been at daft times, this has been between 09:30 and 16:00 for the last couple of days. Car is 100% charged, the hot tub has been refreshed and heated etc, all at no cost to me. If you can be a little flexible I believe Agile is well worth it and if u want a code to join and share a bounty ping me a message
MrBadger
Badger out
How did that compare to over winter?
Extraordinary times and perfect weather conditions meaning unprecedented electricity supply patterns and headline grabbing prices at the moment (for comparison, our average daily rate in these conditions is around 4p/unit thanks to a modest solar install and thats without taking into account the FiT rate so really -15p/unit, but it doesn't last, just a good point in time thats totally unrepresentative to normal usage). Yes, Agile can give a saving if your usage patterns can accommodate its variable pricing, but the only way to know if it will work for ones usage is to compare several years real world usage vs equivalent Agile rates.
But if you just want to know you can plug in for 4 hours (around 28kWh at 7kW, so between around 40% and 55% battery top up of a Model 3) and be guaranteed a decent tarrif rate, Go makes it very easy.
Extraordinary times and perfect weather conditions meaning unprecedented electricity supply patterns and headline grabbing prices at the moment (for comparison, our average daily rate in these conditions is around 4p/unit thanks to a modest solar install and thats without taking into account the FiT rate so really -15p/unit, but it doesn't last, just a good point in time thats totally unrepresentative to normal usage). Yes, Agile can give a saving if your usage patterns can accommodate its variable pricing, but the only way to know if it will work for ones usage is to compare several years real world usage vs equivalent Agile rates.
But if you just want to know you can plug in for 4 hours (around 28kWh at 7kW, so between around 40% and 55% battery top up of a Model 3) and be guaranteed a decent tarrif rate, Go makes it very easy.
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The other thing to realise is just how cheap electricity is as long as you are on a half decent traiff and not wasting electricity for no reason.
Thanks to all the sun we are getting and the PW, this is what our grid electricity usage has been looking like the past few weeks. Currently the PW is 100% charged, the car is at 75% (I don't want to charge it any higher as its currently SORN), the forecast still says sun for the next few days, luckily we have an immersion heater linked to the solar PV, so tomorrow once the PW is charged up again from overnight usage I should be able to turn the gas boiler off for hot water.
Our weekly electricity usage is currently 10kWh per week averaged out versus 110kWh per week earlier this year. Thats a massive 90% drop in our grid usage, however our bill will drop from £10 per week to £2.2 - our standing charge is 20p per day. Yes £2.2 per week is less than £10 per week, but given the massive reduction in actual grid energy use, the absolute financial 'saving' is pretty small.
If you try and guess say for 25 weeks a year when we have sun we might be able to hit savings of £8 per week, that's a saving of just £200 per year!!! £200 per year is better than nothing, but I bet most people could spend that much extra on food over a couple of months without noticing.
Yes there are saving to be made from swapping tarffifs, trying to be really clever etc, but the reality is even if you achieve net zero grid use electricity - as we are close to the last few weeks, unless you can disconnect from the grid for the sake of saving at most £100-200/year the effort just isn't worth it.
SORNing our X and getting the VED refund back for the £40K+ car tax is likely to have achieved more financial benefit than the PowerWall will in it's first year of use!!!
I started with Go and then switched to Agile.
Virtually no changes in our lifestyle of usage pattern required.
We just became more aware of the 4-7pm peak, but still cook using electricity between 6-7pm, just don't do things then that can be easily done at other times of the day.
The biggest factor in picking between the tariffs in my opinion is your ability to regularly make use of the 4 hours a night at 5p. If you need that much of a recharge each day on a regular basis, but don't need more than the the 4 hours then Go is pretty hard to beat.
If you are not a high mileage driver but work from home and do not use a lot of power in the 4-7pm window then Agile is probably better.
Virtually no changes in our lifestyle of usage pattern required.
We just became more aware of the 4-7pm peak, but still cook using electricity between 6-7pm, just don't do things then that can be easily done at other times of the day.
The biggest factor in picking between the tariffs in my opinion is your ability to regularly make use of the 4 hours a night at 5p. If you need that much of a recharge each day on a regular basis, but don't need more than the the 4 hours then Go is pretty hard to beat.
If you are not a high mileage driver but work from home and do not use a lot of power in the 4-7pm window then Agile is probably better.
I'm waiting for financials to go through with my car (which is ready to collect!) but delayed because of Covid shenanigans. So taking the time to sort out my electrical supplier and charging needs. I commute around 70 miles a day and do use cars for trips during work (sporadic amounts between 10 miles and 50 miles a few times a week). I only just (based on my calcs) fill up the car during the 4hrs for my regular commute so additional 'work' mileage will be filled up outside of the low rate - shame, but better than burning diesel.
Can anyone send me a referral please - will use first one in inbox - the race is on!
Can anyone send me a referral please - will use first one in inbox - the race is on!
tj333
Member
I'm waiting for financials to go through with my car (which is ready to collect!) but delayed because of Covid shenanigans. So taking the time to sort out my electrical supplier and charging needs. I commute around 70 miles a day and do use cars for trips during work (sporadic amounts between 10 miles and 50 miles a few times a week). I only just (based on my calcs) fill up the car during the 4hrs for my regular commute so additional 'work' mileage will be filled up outside of the low rate - shame, but better than burning diesel.
Can anyone send me a referral please - will use first one in inbox - the race is on!
Sent!
Incidentally, I also (in normal times) travelled around 90 miles /day with longer trips every week or two. Go was good, after a while I switched to Agile and haven't looked back.
MrBadger
Badger out
Overshooting by a short amount doesn't affect the average unit price by too much.
A full 5 hour charge still averages out at 6.76p/kWh based on 5p/13.8p and even less if you don't need the whole standard rate period.
We had GO from when I got the car in August last year up until I switched to Agile 6 weeks ago. I extracted our actual usage from the API and did a comparison to the table of historical rates provided by Octopus before making the switch. Based on the same consumption profile, Agile worked out at £117 cheaper for our actual usage from 16 August to 16 February vs what we paid on GO.
Context:
I work from home, even before everyone else started copying the trend!
Our hob is gas (which is what most peak time cooking is done on) but our oven is electric
I would charge the car in the GO windows all of the time (drove circa 35-45 miles per day)
Heating is gas
As another data point - I have a friend who has a lot more electrical consumers and he did the maths for Jan/Feb and it was 70% cheaper for him on Agile vs the tariff he was on (EDF).
I will say this - if you look at it purely comparing the cost of charging the car, the car charging will look like it's more expensive as the rates aren't always that fixed 5p however the overall saving of moving from the 14.4p rate to an average of 7-8p across the rest of the day means your overall spend is significantly lower which more than offsets any additional charging cost and still leaves you coming out ahead.
All of this is before you start optimising for the way Agile works. Then the savings are even bigger (ie looking at next 24 hours, working out how much a charge you need in kWh and using TeslaFi to charge in the most cost effective windows). In my case, I didn't NEED to do this but I see it as a game to minimise the spend
Anyone had any benefit going to Octopus without smart meters? (This is more than my existing supplier)
Octopus quoted:
Elec
14.7735p per kWh
Standing charge
21.168p per day
Gas
2.6565p per kWh
Standing charge
17.85p per day
So Energy
Electricity standing charge (p/day) 22.05
Electricity unit rate (p/kWh) 13.40
Gas standing charge (p/day) 22.05
Gas unit rate(p/kWh) 2.42
13/3 to 13/4 used
552kWh Electric (no car charging, 'just' home life)
3610kWh Gas
Im guessing the benefits are there to be had with smart meters installed and trying to profile your use to suit the tariff
Octopus quoted:
Elec
14.7735p per kWh
Standing charge
21.168p per day
Gas
2.6565p per kWh
Standing charge
17.85p per day
So Energy
Electricity standing charge (p/day) 22.05
Electricity unit rate (p/kWh) 13.40
Gas standing charge (p/day) 22.05
Gas unit rate(p/kWh) 2.42
13/3 to 13/4 used
552kWh Electric (no car charging, 'just' home life)
3610kWh Gas
Im guessing the benefits are there to be had with smart meters installed and trying to profile your use to suit the tariff
I agree with Roy. The numbers do not add up to move to Octopus right now.
Total Elec with SO Energy - £80.80
Total Elec with Octopus - £88.11
Total Gas with SO Energy - £94.20
Total Gas with Octopus - £101.43
Look like a pretty high user of both - and March would have used a fair bit of both.
When the car charging comes into the equation (how many miles a week would you do?) then Go *may* be favourable, especially as you can probably off-set some of your usual day use to night use... I would ONLY move your electricity over - as you're better off with SO gas tariff.
Note, the daily rate and day kWh charge on Go is different to the tariff above. Mine is 25p/day and 13.72p/kWh. So in addition to the 5p kWh rate between 00:30 - 04:30 your daily usage (without moving things to night) would be:
Total Elec on Go - £83.48.
Better than the £88.11 on the 'standard' Octopus tariff. It wouldn't be difficult to move just dishwasher to night time to improve on the £2.68 difference between SO and Octopus Go.
So in summary - from the figures you've provided I think Octopus GO is a reasonable shout when charging again and wouldn't be difficult to actually save. But I'd only move electricity.
Hope this helps.
Nick
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