Octopus energy company. Anyone use 'em?

Octopus energy company. Anyone use 'em?

Author
Discussion

AyBee

10,764 posts

212 months

Friday 10th January
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Hedobot said:
Thanks, will contact them.

I would be looking to get away from gas for heating and move more over to electric.

Its a shame my 60's house is so bloody leaky
Me too. I probably need better loft insulation, cavity wall and under floor to make my house much less leaky. I'm doing the loft stuff on my own, but cavity wall and under floor are huge investments and risky (cavity wall) and I won't see the return.

Road2Ruin

5,665 posts

226 months

Friday 10th January
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AyBee said:
Me too. I probably need better loft insulation, cavity wall and under floor to make my house much less leaky. I'm doing the loft stuff on my own, but cavity wall and under floor are huge investments and risky (cavity wall) and I won't see the return.
There are often grants for some insulation projects, so keep an eye out.

tamore

8,356 posts

294 months

Friday 10th January
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no saving session called in east mids. surprised given the prices.

Chumley.mouse

545 posts

47 months

Friday 10th January
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Im just cruising through the high agile prices. Just me the wood burner and ipad for company smile

Skodillac

6,796 posts

40 months

Friday 10th January
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Chumley.mouse said:
Im just cruising through the high agile prices. Just me the wood burner and ipad for company smile
I've sent the wife and daughter to the supermarket. All quiet and dark here too.

Defcon5

6,342 posts

201 months

Friday 10th January
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Got my latest statement from octopus today.

It says I could save 400 quid a year on electric with one of their fixed tariffs

I’m on tracker, so for this calculation do they base it on the rate I was paying on that day, or an average over the month or what?

Condi

18,315 posts

181 months

Friday 10th January
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Chumley.mouse said:
Im just cruising through the high agile prices. Just me the wood burner and ipad for company
The more I see of Agile prices at the moment, the less I think they're good value.

Their formula is (for West Mids) "2.1 x wholesale price, +12p between 4 and 7pm" or 99.99p, whichever is lower.

Their average margin on fixed price power will be small, probably between 2 and 3p/kwh.

The "extra costs" to make the retail price above the wholesale price will be about 15p/kwh, and so if wholesale prices are above about 15p per kwh then agile is more profitable for them than a fixed contract. This has been very evident across the last few days, and I've been thinking about this across every evening peak. Their margin per kwh will be enormous, especially so in recent high price days. The highest hourly wholesale price for today was 60p/kwh - add on 15p additional costs, and the price per kwh they're paying, even for the most expensive hour, was 75p, which they're selling via Agile at 99.99p/kwh. Each kwh sold across the evening peak times is generating 3 or 4 times their usual margin.

At times of very low prices then they will lose money, as the "2 x wholesale cost" will fail to cover the network charges, green levies, etc, but I still can't help feeling that Agile probably works well for them, and there is probably a space for another supplier to offer a similar tariff which better reflects wholesale costs without the excessive premium for peak power, and then penalties when wholesale costs are high.

KTF

10,154 posts

160 months

Friday 10th January
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When agile was launched I am fairly sure that there was no loading for the peak periods.

It was cost plus the formula every 30 mins all day.

Then they changed it to encourage load shifting with a cap.

Trustmeimadoctor

13,935 posts

165 months

Friday 10th January
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Are we going to see really high gas prices now we have less than a week's gas reserve. I mean that's obviously ignoring the fact we still have gas coming in to the country and it is getting warmer from Sunday smile

Condi

18,315 posts

181 months

Friday 10th January
quotequote all
KTF said:
When agile was launched I am fairly sure that there was no loading for the peak periods.

It was cost plus all day long.

Then they changed it to encourage load shifting with a cap.
There is a good reason to try and discourage the use at peak times, for a slightly technical reason to do with how much the supplier pays for their network usage. It's measured across the 3 highest demand days of the year, and the more energy your customers are using at peak time, the more you pay in network charges. This was introduced on the customer side about 2 years ago, so it would explain why they are so keen to discourage usage then, but it seems excessive to me. Or you could have no peak loading across 9 months of the year, and then add it in across winter (Dec/Jan/Feb), something like that.

Condi

18,315 posts

181 months

Friday 10th January
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Trustmeimadoctor said:
Are we going to see really high gas prices now we have less than a week's gas reserve. I mean that's obviously ignoring the fact we still have gas coming in to the country and it is getting warmer from Sunday smile
Centrica, the same company who run the UK's largest gas storage facility and are wanting government funding to bring more of it back into use?

It's not "news". The UK has very little storage anyway, we rely much more on piped gas and LNG from abroad.

Mark-ri571

632 posts

117 months

Friday 10th January
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Got my IO Go bill the other day. Still managing to keep my average price pkwh down by load shifting and smart charging the car when we need to use appliances in daytime eg ovens , washing machine etc



Edited by Mark-ri571 on Friday 10th January 20:57

lost in espace

6,327 posts

217 months

Friday 10th January
quotequote all
I jumped from gas Tracker to fixed on Wednesday, the next day the fix went from 5.8p to 6.2p (roughly).

Currently considering Tomato Lifestyle, although there is poor feedback about customer service and at some point they could well go bust.

Trustmeimadoctor

13,935 posts

165 months

Friday 10th January
quotequote all
Condi said:
Trustmeimadoctor said:
Are we going to see really high gas prices now we have less than a week's gas reserve. I mean that's obviously ignoring the fact we still have gas coming in to the country and it is getting warmer from Sunday smile
Centrica, the same company who run the UK's largest gas storage facility and are wanting government funding to bring more of it back into use?

It's not "news". The UK has very little storage anyway, we rely much more on piped gas and LNG from abroad.
Indeed bring back the gasometer!

Byker28i

69,548 posts

227 months

Friday 10th January
quotequote all
Trustmeimadoctor said:
Condi said:
Trustmeimadoctor said:
Are we going to see really high gas prices now we have less than a week's gas reserve. I mean that's obviously ignoring the fact we still have gas coming in to the country and it is getting warmer from Sunday smile
Centrica, the same company who run the UK's largest gas storage facility and are wanting government funding to bring more of it back into use?

It's not "news". The UK has very little storage anyway, we rely much more on piped gas and LNG from abroad.
Indeed bring back the gasometer!
I said this the other day. Gas pressure is noticeably low, so much that when the boiler lights, the gas ring on the cooker noticeably drops for a second, or goes out if on a very low simmer.

eein

1,424 posts

275 months

Friday 10th January
quotequote all
Byker28i said:
Trustmeimadoctor said:
Condi said:
Trustmeimadoctor said:
Are we going to see really high gas prices now we have less than a week's gas reserve. I mean that's obviously ignoring the fact we still have gas coming in to the country and it is getting warmer from Sunday smile
Centrica, the same company who run the UK's largest gas storage facility and are wanting government funding to bring more of it back into use?

It's not "news". The UK has very little storage anyway, we rely much more on piped gas and LNG from abroad.
Indeed bring back the gasometer!
I said this the other day. Gas pressure is noticeably low, so much that when the boiler lights, the gas ring on the cooker noticeably drops for a second, or goes out if on a very low simmer.
Gasometers stopped being necessary when the gas grid updated to be able to store gas through varying the pressure in the system, mostly in the 40" national backbone. This creates more storage capacity than all the gasometers did


eein

1,424 posts

275 months

Friday 10th January
quotequote all
KTF said:
Hedobot said:
Whats the negative? ... (no pun intended)
The negative, as such, is the cost.

Lets say it costs £10k to install a battery. You then have to work out how long it will take to recover the cost before it becomes 'free'.

.
It's very simple to work out the payback period of a battery.

Example:
Up front cost = a GivEnergy AIO is about £6k installed
Usage = charge 13kwh at 7p at night, use in the day to avoid 27p
=>13 x 20p saving per day = £949 per year
So payback is roughly 6 years.

There's various ways this could be sooner, eg the charge-discharge I posted about earlier, however there above example gives a simple no fuss illustration based on real current numbers.

For the avoidance of doubt, I have a large spreadsheet where I modelled the above calculation one the agile tariff for the last 12 months assuming a retrospective optimal battery charge discharge timing and it wasn't close to the 20p saving, was approx 14p.

Byker28i

69,548 posts

227 months

Saturday 11th January
quotequote all
eein said:
Byker28i said:
Trustmeimadoctor said:
Condi said:
Trustmeimadoctor said:
Are we going to see really high gas prices now we have less than a week's gas reserve. I mean that's obviously ignoring the fact we still have gas coming in to the country and it is getting warmer from Sunday smile
Centrica, the same company who run the UK's largest gas storage facility and are wanting government funding to bring more of it back into use?

It's not "news". The UK has very little storage anyway, we rely much more on piped gas and LNG from abroad.
Indeed bring back the gasometer!
I said this the other day. Gas pressure is noticeably low, so much that when the boiler lights, the gas ring on the cooker noticeably drops for a second, or goes out if on a very low simmer.
Gasometers stopped being necessary when the gas grid updated to be able to store gas through varying the pressure in the system, mostly in the 40" national backbone. This creates more storage capacity than all the gasometers did
Interesting, thanks. Cold then affecting pressure? Physically or just through the increased demand?

Accelebrate

5,373 posts

225 months

Saturday 11th January
quotequote all
Mark-ri571 said:
Got my IO Go bill the other day. Still managing to keep my average price pkwh down by load shifting and smart charging the car when we need to use appliances in daytime eg ovens , washing machine etc



Edited by Mark-ri571 on Friday 10th January 20:57
Nice. I seem to always average 14.xp/kWh on IO, with minimal effort put into load shifting. I seem to remember paying 14p to npower about a decade ago.

anonymous-user

64 months

Saturday 11th January
quotequote all
Dropped off daughter at the airport in the middle of the night, didn’t want to put car on charge before as not sure what -6 would do to the charge port!
Got home at 0430 with 20% left.

Plugged it into the ohme/iog & said to add 50% by 11am

Whole house on 7pKwh since then & until 1057am



Edited by anonymous-user on Saturday 11th January 09:45