Smart Meters and Tariffs

Originally Posted by downquark1

The go tariff also "over charges" you for the rest of the day.

Compared to what ? IGO, SVT, Agile, Fixed, Tracker, Cosy, ECO7, Flux, IFlux, Snug ? or B.Gas, E.On, OutFox ...

The average price of Go is 21.8p - and atm its cheaper (for me) than the current fixed, standard, tracker & even agile.

IGO would be even better, but I dont qualify for that.
If you're on a fixed (or overall) deal thats < 21.8p then congrats, your doing well.

Agile may start to become cheaper again as we get into spring, and then summer, if it does, I'll switch back again.
I cant prove you right or wrong, as I still have no idea what your actual point is. All I care about is what is cheapest for me.

[SnoopZ]

For anyone with Octopus and OctoPlus you can currently get a free movie from Rakuten TV, you just have to grab a code asap as they're released every Friday, I've just redeemed Deadpool & Wolverine.

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

For anyone with Octopus and OctoPlus you can currently get a free movie from Rakuten TV, you just have to grab a code asap as they're released every Friday, I've just redeemed Deadpool & Wolverine.

Brilliant! But what about the energy?

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

But what about the energy?

What about it ?

[GrimUpNorth]

We might be visiting the Volvo garage tomorrow so a smart meter will probably follow in the very near future.

[SnoopZ]

Just decided to renew both Trackers on the December 2024 Tariff as I am a low user and expecting prices to fall a little in warmer months. I wanted to lock in the Standing charge now as it will likely go up in a few weeks and there is no exit fee if I need to come out of it, new tariff starts 11th April. I can't load shift with the hours I work so Agile or any other tariff is not suitable and didn't want to fix because the standing charge is the same.

I switched back to Agile over the weekend, now the weather has picked up its looking ok again, and predicted to be better as we go into March.
I'll be keeping an eye on it, now I know switching is easy, but I'm hoping it'll be largely be ok until we get towards next winter, then I may come off it again.
It does seem poorer in colder weather, when demand is higher.

It turns out that Intelligent Octopus GO is a tad … flaky … when it attempts to control a domestic EV charger’s overnight schedule. I registered my Indra charger in my Octopus app and allowed it to begin setting schedules. I noted that having signed in to Indra via the Octopus app in order to allow this to happen, it then became impossible to set schedules directly in the Indra app (fair enough).

However over 3 weeks, Octopus would, on average, once a week, simply not charge the car at all. Thankfully my daily mileage is so low the car can easily go 3-4 days without a charge and if need be I could manually charge it in an hour, so no big deal, but even so, not working as advertised.

I have to say however that I’ve found Octopus support via Twitter to be absolutely brilliant. Responsive, happy to discuss details and deal with tons of screenshots of various apps and timings of things that worked and didn’t. It really feels like this is a mission for them, that they want to get right.

At the moment, at their request, I have de-registered my charger from the Octopus app and am using my Indra charger app directly to schedule overnight charges. Once we have a couple of weeks’ data we will be able to rule out a fault with the charger (of course they’re not perfect, their first instinct was to blame Indra, but at least they’ve still been prepared to engage and test that idea). So far, scheduling directly with the Indra charger’s own app has worked flawlessly.

And, also worth noting, while you are meant to have a compatible device registered with Octopus in order to get the super cheap Intelligent GO overnight rate (7p) as opposed to the slightly less cheap and fewer hours regular GO overnight rate (8p), they have intervened to manually keep my account on Intelligent GO for the duration of our experiment. Altogether I’m pretty impressed with the way they’re bug-fixing what is still a fairly new product.

[SnoopZ]

Got another completely free electricity Power-Up session tomorrow afternoon for 2hrs....... Only problem is I am at work.

Well, we have had a month of Intelligent GO, which is roughly 25p in the day and 7p overnight; previously we were on Flexible Octopus at about 24p all day/night.

This time last year our February electricity bill was £69, and that was without having an EV to charge. This year, our electricity in February was £49. That difference seems insane to me so I compared some other months as well. January 2025 was £103, with an EV but on the flex tariff. January 2024 was £93. December 2024 was £73 (with an EV from mid-month, but hardly used because of Christmas), December 2023 was £89.

I think we’re actually saving a significant bit from having one of our nocturnal offspring grow up and move out late last year, but despite using 98kWh charging the car in February (about £7 as we do it exclusively on the 7p overnight rate) it looks like the ability to move just a few regular things to overnight use is making a big cumulative difference (refilling the kitchen hot water boiler, running the dishwasher) - that plus I guess we have quite a lot of stuff that just runs and drains power 24x7

Originally Posted by Chris

that plus I guess we have quite a lot of stuff that just runs and drains power 24x7

This is why I tend to save on Agile and/or Go.
My usage is suprisingly steady across the whole 24 hours.
In winter it slightly increases overnight as one room has an electric heater.

Most of the time my 30 minute slots are around 0.3 - 0.4 Kwh used.
There are slight spikes in the morning at 7-9am (about 0.55 Kwh), 12pm (0.6 Kwh) and 4.30pm, 6pm & 7pm (0.6 Kwh per slot).

I'm saving money over SVT whenever the 1/2 hour rate is less than 24.2p, which is most of the day (except 4-7pm) now Agile is back to how it generally works .

It also saves over Go for the 19 hours that runs at its higher rate (25.4p). The Go low rate (8.5p for 5 hours) is usually better than 'Agile' (but not always).
The result is that thay are often close to each other in cost, and some days Go wins, on other days Agile wins. When Agile wins it often wins well.

A small example, since I switched back to Agile from Go (on 22nd Jan).
I have saved £4.94 over SVT, and £2.75 over Go (despite the fact Go was fractionally better for half the days).

It will be interesting to see what happens to Go after April, as its current higher rate will almost certainly be less than the new SVT rate.
Its current rates have not changed since Oct 2022.

[SnoopZ]

Looks like Tomato Energy is on the brink, they're currently closed to new customers. I think I've read somewhere that their CEO has had company fails before but I can't find it now.

I looked at them a few weeks ago. Their prices seemed a little too good (and obviously were).
They did a version of Agile, but official details on how exactly it worked (formula) were impossible to find.

[Mr K]

Originally Posted by SnoopZ

Looks like Tomato Energy is on the brink, they're currently closed to new customers.

Trying to make energy from tomatoes was never going to work. Fools.

All the recent sunshine is showing up in UK power generation.
For example, at midday (yesterday) more of the UKs power was being generated by solar than wind (26% v 25%).
This has actually occured a few times in the last two weeks, one day in late February, solar generation was twice as high as wind generation.

Of course, this is only for short periods on these days (maybe 1 - 2 hours max) while the sun is at its strongest.