Octopus agile

Immersion heater going on at 11:30 tonight. (and being paid 2.65p/kWh for ding so)
 
We had two free hours on Octopus Go but Agile seems to be a better option. However I'm reluctant to change as with Go I am saving a lot of money compared to last year's bills, mainly due to getting a PHEV.
I really need to do a comparison when I've been on Go for 12 months to see if it's worth switching.

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MisterB said:
We had two free hours on Octopus Go but Agile seems to be a better option. However I'm reluctant to change as with Go I am saving a lot of money compared to last year's bills, mainly due to getting a PHEV.
I really need to do a comparison when I've been on Go for 12 months to see if it's worth switching.
Click to expand...
Very easy to do with the Octopus Compare app: it uses your Octopus API to check your actual usage against any other Octopus tariff.
 
MisterB said:
We had two free hours on Octopus Go but Agile seems to be a better option. However I'm reluctant to change as with Go I am saving a lot of money compared to last year's bills, mainly due to getting a PHEV.
I really need to do a comparison when I've been on Go for 12 months to see if it's worth switching.
Click to expand...
Sorry missed this as on holidays, but depends on your charger if Agile versus Go worth doing rather than anything else.

With the Ohme charger we have that supports both, Agile is actually cheaper than Go on average for us as we don't really mind "when" we charge as with 300 mi range, thats 2 weeks use for us, UNLESS we doing a long drive when we need to charge. The latter is only time we will pay over 15p a unit, but the Ohme has a nice feature with agile of "never" charger over x p a unit, which makes it trivial to charge at reasonable rates. If you look at this morning that means charging at 0-2p on average a unit, instead of the 8p of Go. There is nearly always a 0-5p window every 2 weeks if you check the statistics.

But it does depend on your car usage most as with a PHEV you will need to charge more often than a full EV, so it's really dependant on your "usage". BEV really benefits from it due to the only needing a charge every 1-2 weeks thing, where if we had a PHEV it would be every other day, so less use.
 
So, what is the view now. Do we stick with it?
 
It's tempting to change

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On the whole Agile has been very good to me.
But the last few months have not. Very little wind=higher pricing
December price average 18.94 but Jan 23.41
I will be switching to Intelligent Go very soon. That way at least you are sure of some 7p hours
 
Think it'll probably switch back to being cheaper once wind/solar take over in the summer again -> the winter has been a story of the gas companies taking piss on pricing, with averages wholesale of > 16p (it's usually 7!).

The issue this winter has been storage levels in UK in particular have been lower than any previous year and LNG ships have been being purchased from others at a premium apparently (FT reported that some ships bound for Asia were redireected mid-atlantic from going via the southern tip of South Africa onto Asia, to come direct to UK/Germany.

So yes, there have been blackouts, but not in UK/EU as we seem willing to pay any price to keep lights on. Stupid government policies (profit taxes) causing oil/gas majors to produce where it's cheaper (ie, less tax), given they don't pay uk o/g profit taxes on production in Africa/South America. The current prices are a consequence of the political classes view that UK O/G shouldn't have need licenses.

(I"d also note Agile will still be below price cap in April as it's expected to rise yet again by 5-6%).
 
starquake said:
Sorry missed this as on holidays, but depends on your charger if Agile versus Go worth doing rather than anything else.

With the Ohme charger we have that supports both, Agile is actually cheaper than Go on average for us as we don't really mind "when" we charge as with 300 mi range, thats 2 weeks use for us, UNLESS we doing a long drive when we need to charge. The latter is only time we will pay over 15p a unit, but the Ohme has a nice feature with agile of "never" charger over x p a unit, which makes it trivial to charge at reasonable rates. If you look at this morning that means charging at 0-2p on average a unit, instead of the 8p of Go. There is nearly always a 0-5p window every 2 weeks if you check the statistics.

But it does depend on your car usage most as with a PHEV you will need to charge more often than a full EV, so it's really dependant on your "usage". BEV really benefits from it due to the only needing a charge every 1-2 weeks thing, where if we had a PHEV it would be every other day, so less use.
Click to expand...

My Home charger and Octopus keep draining my home batteries......

If octopus decide rates are cheap enough, they 'tell' my Ohme to charge my vehicle, which it does BUT it then uses all the power in my home battery instead of the grid and I then pay a higher rate for anything I use for the rest of the day and if my vehicle is fully charged, I can't make use of the overnight cheap rate of Octopus Go, so it defeats the object!

If it could also 'tell' my Sunsynk inverter to charge at the same time, it perhaps wouldn't be as bad.

I never plug the car in now until the evening!

I have discussed via emails with both Ohme and Octopus but there's nothing they can do apparently....
 
MisterB said:
My Home charger and Octopus keep draining my home batteries......

If octopus decide rates are cheap enough, they 'tell' my Ohme to charge my vehicle, which it does BUT it then uses all the power in my home battery instead of the grid and I then pay a higher rate for anything I use for the rest of the day and if my vehicle is fully charged, I can't make use of the overnight cheap rate of Octopus Go, so it defeats the object!

If it could also 'tell' my Sunsynk inverter to charge at the same time, it perhaps wouldn't be as bad.

I never plug the car in now until the evening!

I have discussed via emails with both Ohme and Octopus but there's nothing they can do apparently....
Click to expand...
Your Ohme charger is wired in wrong. It should come from a henley block after your meter but before the henley block to your solar connection . Your battery is seeing the demand for power, it should only see the house. If it is wired correctly, are your CT clamps in the wrong place?
 
Bolti said:
Your Ohme charger is wired in wrong. It should come from a henley block after your meter but before the henley block to your solar connection . Your battery is seeing the demand for power, it should only see the house. If it is wired correctly, are your CT clamps in the wrong place?
Click to expand...



It all works perfectly well for almost two years now except for the issue I raised. Neither octopus or Ohme have suggested there is an issue re wiring it differently. I won't be changing anything but thanks anyway.

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Last edited:
MisterB said:
It all works perfectly well except for the issue I raised. Neither octopus or Ohme have suggested there is an issue re wiring it differently. I won't be changing anything but thanks anyway.
Click to expand...
Check the ct clamp for your battery is on the wiring after the Ohme charger and before consumer unit
 
neilydun said:
On the whole Agile has been very good to me.
But the last few months have not. Very little wind=higher pricing
December price average 18.94 but Jan 23.41
I will be switching to Intelligent Go very soon. That way at least you are sure of some 7p hours
Click to expand...

I'm surprised that you have not already as I take that you have an EV ?
 
MisterB said:
My Home charger and Octopus keep draining my home batteries......

If octopus decide rates are cheap enough, they 'tell' my Ohme to charge my vehicle, which it does BUT it then uses all the power in my home battery instead of the grid and I then pay a higher rate for anything I use for the rest of the day and if my vehicle is fully charged, I can't make use of the overnight cheap rate of Octopus Go, so it defeats the object!

If it could also 'tell' my Sunsynk inverter to charge at the same time, it perhaps wouldn't be as bad.

I never plug the car in now until the evening!

I have discussed via emails with both Ohme and Octopus but there's nothing they can do apparently....
Click to expand...
Does octopus control your inverter too? I don't have an electric car so am curious how it works, my daughter is looking into a small electric car which would mean I would end up in your predicament!

I occasionally set my sunsynk inverter manually but in general use the live price for charging my home batteries.
 
LostInSpace said:
So, what is the view now. Do we stick with it?
Click to expand...
We've been on IOG since January - will consider moving back to Agile once prices come down a bit. Its not so much the high peak prices that bother me, but there's no lower periods to balance it out. And with a new job that means more car charging, we need at least a few guaranteed low price slots overnight.

Agile was great last year - we were on it from Feb till Nov and averaged 14.6p (no battery and only a 1.4kW solar). When prices started getting silly in December we flipped between IOG and Agile a few times as the huge price difference more than made up for the higher standing charge (which was going to go up in Feb anyway).

So far this year on IOG (except for 1st Jan where we were on Agile) we've averaged 13.9p, and according to my spreadsheet, Agile would have been higher than Flexible. Though of course we've adapted our usage pattern now to IOG, so possibly we could have got a little lower if we'd been optimising for the Agile slots, but given the prices recently probably not that much.
 
we are on octopus go, not agile. i dont know much about agile, so hopefully others will be able to give you more informed and accurate information.

no, octopus dont control my inverter, to be honest we love our setup, our bills have reduced significantly since accessing the go tariff. FiT payments obviously help, though i am considering going onto the actual feed in amount, not the deemed 50%.

It was only later last year that octopus started to control our ohme (after i gave them permission) but it just hasnt worked out, so ive told them to stop controlling it, but we dont leave it plugged in during the daytime anyway. The car is a PHEV with around 11kw of battery giving around 25-30 miles per charge, which is more than enough for SWMS (She Who Must Shop) to visit her local money laundering operations in the local area, she calls it shopping but i am wise enough to recognise what is really happening .... :wasntme:

to be honest, going onto Go is subsidising the amount we paid for the car, if we had gone for an older model with a much less spec, we could be saving a lot more, but its a nice car Mitsubishi Outlander and it doesnt get hammered, unlike my 63 plate 205000 mile skoda yeti !!

We are all electric including overnight storage heaters (Dimplex Quantums) plus an inverter to heat the kitchen/dining/conservatory where we live all year, so having batteries and Go is a real game changer for us.

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Two on Tour said:
I'm surprised that you have not already as I take that you have an EV ?
Click to expand...
When I had batteries installed, I told Octopus I had an ev. At the time, that was all that was required to get on that tariff.
I then switched to Agile.
I don`t have an Ev yet, but one is on the way.
 
I am now wondering if all the new AI data centres are buying up all of the available off peak power as we have not seen any savings for a very long time now - even through the recent storms.
 
LostInSpace said:
I am now wondering if all the new AI data centres are buying up all of the available off peak power as we have not seen any savings for a very long time now - even through the recent storms.
Click to expand...
It's the wholesale price of gas, it's at record highs ($100 USD oil equivalent).

Not much the generators can do as they are forced to pay spot gas prices in many cases as part of their deal to operate generation.
When the gas to run a plant is costing roughly 10p a Kwh minimums (usualy gas plant isn't even 50% effecient) it's whats driving up the cost. Ie, gas alone is causing a base price of 15-20p a Kwh at moment -> unless there is literally ZERO gas on grid, the price will have a baseline of 15-20p a Kwh at present.

Should add it's so high as EU storage is at historic, 20 year lows.
 
MisterB said:
My Home charger and Octopus keep draining my home batteries......

If octopus decide rates are cheap enough, they 'tell' my Ohme to charge my vehicle, which it does BUT it then uses all the power in my home battery instead of the grid and I then pay a higher rate for anything I use for the rest of the day and if my vehicle is fully charged, I can't make use of the overnight cheap rate of Octopus Go, so it defeats the object!

If it could also 'tell' my Sunsynk inverter to charge at the same time, it perhaps wouldn't be as bad.

I never plug the car in now until the evening!

I have discussed via emails with both Ohme and Octopus but there's nothing they can do apparently....
Click to expand...
Hi, I have just had 9KWH Solar and Tesla Powerwall 3 installed (Inbuilt Inverter) , I have BMW I4 BEV and use Octopus IOG - exactly the same happened, IOG decides a schedule for BEV (frequently 4am - 5am) - Battery takes over, so I wake up to a 50% depleted battery. It is not the cabling. I can fudge it to work by making my Tesla Powerwall 100% reserved for backup, therefore it will not take over, problem is I have to remember to manually switch it back in the morning. I am currently trying a new approach - Turn off the Octopus intelligent charging and manually set a charging schedule on my BMW APP and EVCHARGER App to charge between 11:45pm and 3am, don't care if the battery takes over, as it still have 2 /15 hours to replenish between the IOG hours of 11:30pm and 5:30am. There are lots of mentions on multiple forums of similar problems encountered in the UK with Octopus and Batteries (in particular Tesla Powerwall). PS - don't like Musk, but his battery technology is very good, latest Powerwall is 13.5KWh and very clever, auto take over during any powercut, even checks weather and if storm due will ensure spare capacity in event of power cut. Also alows export (assuming permission) at up to 11kwh

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twerly said:
Hi, I have just had 9KWH Solar and Tesla Powerwall 3 installed (Inbuilt Inverter) , I have BMW I4 BEV and use Octopus IOG - exactly the same happened, IOG decides a schedule for BEV (frequently 4am - 5am) - Battery takes over, so I wake up to a 50% depleted battery. It is not the cabling. I can fudge it to work by making my Tesla Powerwall 100% reserved for backup, therefore it will not take over, problem is I have to remember to manually switch it back in the morning. I am currently trying a new approach - Turn off the Octopus intelligent charging and manually set a charging schedule on my BMW APP and EVCHARGER App to charge between 11:45pm and 3am, don't care if the battery takes over, as it still have 2 /15 hours to replenish between the IOG hours of 11:30pm and 5:30am. There are lots of mentions on multiple forums of similar problems encountered in the UK with Octopus and Batteries (in particular Tesla Powerwall). PS - don't like Musk, but his battery technology is very good, latest Powerwall is 13.5KWh and very clever, auto take over during any powercut, even checks weather and if storm due will ensure spare capacity in event of power cut. Also alows export (assuming permission) at up to 11kwh
Click to expand...
i sorted it by not letting octopus control it and not plugging it in until late afternoon. as i said, its not a big car battery and its a slow charge but enough for our current needs (excuse the pun!)
 
Looks like negative prices will happen tmrw (find out in 5 mins) from the day ahead auction. Typical I move away due to low wind forecasts and have a hugely windy month isn't it (I'm on Intelligent atm).
 
The negative prices are the middle of the day again, my batteries have been toppers by 1100 so still not worth moving from either go tariffs. 😔

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