Octopus Agile Tariff

Puntoboy

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Recently moved over to Octopus energy on a 12m fixed tariff. Since doing that I've been looking at our energy usage as they provide a nice dashboard for it on their website.

Here's our electricity usage for (Monday) yesterday. Seems we are using just under 1kw per hour. Peaks are after 7pm around 2kw per hour. Seems the house idle power consumption is around 0.6-0.8kw per hour.


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I've been thinking about moving to their agile tariff as their website seems to suggest we would save money. Our peak usage is after the national average peak (3pm-6pm) so we wouldn't get stung by the higher prices. I'm just not sure it would work for us as we don't have an EV, so it won't be charging over night, but we will have air con on most nights in this weather and with our idle power usage that would be balancing out our usage throughout the day.

Here's the estimation from Octopus. The top graph is there view of energy usage vs unit price. The bottom is a calculation for our home, based on 24kwh per day. My direct debit is currently £125 on their fixed tariff.

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I am also playing with the idea of building my own "power wall" to do a bit of "peak shaving". Something around 2-3kwh. I could then charge the batteries at cheap/free rates and use them during the peak hours. We could also move some of our other loads, washing machine, dishwasher etc. to over night usage.

It 's a tricky one to decide, they seem sure it would save us money but as the unit price fluctuates so much it's difficult to calculate.

Any thoughts?
 
Here's our electricity usage for (Monday) yesterday. Seems we are using just under 1kw per hour. Peaks are after 7pm around 2kw per hour. Seems the house idle power consumption is around 0.6-0.8kw per hour.

Agile is fine if you can avoid their 'peak' rates, but barein mind in winter the average base rates go up.

I would look at why your house 'idle' consumption is so high, this is our usage from yesterday (my was working at home hence random spikes through out the day). You can see we used far more 'peak' demand than you - EV charges at 4KW, than add in oven/dyer etc, but because our 'idle' consumption is only 0.2KW (often 0.1KW) our usage over the day was less than yours despite charging an EV.

What's consuming so much 'idle' power in your house? Your house if effectively using 12kWh a day more than ours for doing nothing!!


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^Have you got solar PV already? If not that's worth adding on, as it would help you reduce the back ground load during day time hours, and even on really cloudy/wet days would still help with overall demand. A battery storage system will also really need be connected up to a solar PV setup to make it worthwhile, just load shifting will take a long long time to pay back on any investment.

Given your usage of almost constant through out the day, I would have thought Agile will work fine for you though.
 
I would love a Solar PV setup but the upfront cost stops that in it's track. One day though.
 
I'm also on an Octopus fixed tariff at the moment as we're waiting for a smart meter (I don't quite understand why they can't be fitted at the moment as there's less people involved than fitting a solar PV system that were quite happy to do so at the beginning of June!).

I've also been advised to check out Agile, but the difference here is we do have solar (no storage, one thing at a time!), and an EV is coming soon. We're planning on moving to Octopus Go. I think I really need year's worth of data, particularly October through to March, and see how Agile would work as our demand on the grid will be greater. We're seeing between 6 and 28kWh generated in a day at the moment; winter has by far shorter days!

@Puntoboy I would definitely check out this Excel workbook:

If >average rates match your >average consumption periods, I think I would avoid this tariff if I were you. I'm not in a position to ask right now as mentioned above we don't have a smart meter yet, but can they provide you with a cost per month to give you a comparison between Agile and your current fixed tariff? I'd totally ignore the Direct Debit because this will just be an averaged per month figure so you accrue a fund in the summer and it diminishes in winter.
 
Thanks. I had already looked at that spreadsheet.

I have taken the plunge after speaking with them. I can swap back at any time.

I think it is going to work. but we will see.
 
Great. It will be really interesting to hear how you get on. Please do let us know. :)
 

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