Octopus Go or Agile

[KasEV]

Well you are right not taken over but are being funded by the Japanese. I am told Octopus are on their way to become a complex multinational with money making as their core principle. The industry gaints Octopus is patterns with are not known for equitable pricing and customer benefits and as the British elements of the company deminish we are likely to see all the things we think are good about octopus vanish.

 

[Jake]

They haven't been taken over ... UK's Octopus Energy valued at $2bn after Japan supply deal

Thanks tangerine to me that looks quite positive and re-assuring there's plenty being invested and not laden with debt.

 

[tintin]

Well I shop around every year for the best deal so only locked in for 12 months max, can pay a penalty to leave early so if they are not competitive people will leave, but for some EV drivers Octopus has one of the best rates at the moment and a lot of power companies are foreign owned or have a big stake in them

 

[mj224]

And they have given me a zero charge rate from 8am to 12pm tomorrow---to cook the Christmas dinner...(gas oven..)

 

[Severnless]

Wow today could of been expensive! It’s been capped off at 35p per unit for most of the day!
Good job we’ve made sure all of the heavy wattage appliances have been switched off!
But I will say that even with extra usage of charging the car over the last 6 months our overall leccy bill has fallen quite a bit!!

 

[notdodgy]

Only had the car for less than 2 weeks (Spread out over 7 weeks due to it going faulty).
I have used a rough estimate of 2000kWh extra a year on Electric, to compare energy providers.

Currently with Avro energy - 10 months to go.
A standard energy comparison shows nothing else is cheaper .

However Just looking at electric costs, assuming I charge overnight, Octopus Go and SSE Fix and Drive both would be cheaper.
Unfortunately the increased gas costs means most of the savings with *Octopus are wiped out and overall SSE would cost more.

Given that its just an estimate with the extra hassle of only charging overnight, my best case saving is £30 a year with Octopus.

Bottom line is it's a bit early to tell, so will up the direct debit if needed.
(Don't yet know how much free charging at some local supermarkets I will use).

I do like the idea of Octopus Agile, but getting washing / drying moved to overnight may hit some objections...

 

[Severnless]

@notdodgy

We've set up all the washing and drying and dishwasher to go with the cheapest on the day or night with no problem, that’s with 2 under 5 year olds in the house.
Over the 6 months we have been on Agile we have still saved! Even with the addition of our ZS
Yes the last few weeks have been eye watering prices but we have just changed our power usage habit, which is the whole idea with Agile.
Only you can make the decision if you think it works for you. But there have been a lot of people bailing out of octopus Agile tariff and changing to Go tariff which you can do online but you can’t change back for 30days after notification,
due to the high prices recently, but we are staying put, need to give it at least 12 months

If you do decide to go with Agile, you are more than welcome to use our referral code in my signature to get £50 free

 

[notdodgy]

@notdodgy

We've set up all the washing and drying and dishwasher to go with the cheapest on the day or night with no problem, that’s with 2 under 5 year olds in the house.
Over the 6 months we have been on Agile we have still saved! Even with the addition of our ZS
Yes the last few weeks have been eye watering prices but we have just changed our power usage habit, which is the whole idea with Agile.
Only you can make the decision if you think it works for you. But there have been a lot of people bailing out of octopus Agile tariff and changing to Go tariff which you can do online but you can’t change back for 30days after notification,
due to the high prices recently, but we are staying put, need to give it at least 12 months

If you do decide to go with Agile, you are more than welcome to use our referral code in my signature to get £50 free

Thanks - I am not against the idea of octopus or agile. I shall be keeping it under review.
Currently its just the significantly higher cost for gas that wipes out the the estimated savings.
One I have better usage data it may tip the balance.

 

[Severnless]

You don’t have to stick with octopus for gas, you can change to any providers whilst staying with octopus for electric.

 

[notdodgy]

I know - but not spotted many that do gas on it's own and the couple I found are not even close to what I have now.

 

[Fireman frog]

Please don't use your white goods at night. Especially your tumble dryers.

You can tell what I do for a living by my name.

These appliances do catch fire. At least you are awake and alert (hopefully) during the day time. People die due to fires caused by these machines being used at night. It doesn't happen every day but it does happen. I've been to dozens of fires caused by white goods in my career. Far too many to count.

We plan to join agile and put our wash on first thing in the morning

 

[Severnless]

Please don't use your white goods at night. Especially your tumble dryers.

You can tell what I do for a living by my name.

These appliances do catch fire. At least you are awake and alert (hopefully) during the day time. People die due to fires caused by these machines being used at night. It doesn't happen every day but it does happen. I've been to dozens of fires caused by white goods in my career. Far too many to count.

We plan to join agile and put our wash on first thing in the morning

Only just seen this reply, Thankyou for your concern.
Yes I understand what you are saying with regards using white goods over night, I’m fully aware of the risk, I even have a brother in law who’s a fireman, so can say I’ve heard first hand what he has to deal with.
But I will say I don’t buy cheap white goods, the dryer uses a heat pump and it is cleaned after each use.
You could say the same with fridges and freezers causing fires and what about boilers failing and blowing up?
Life is sometimes a risk and I fully accept the risk I take and don’t expect to blame anyone else for my faults and mistakes I make!
Also for your information and concern the washer and condensing dryer are not inside the house!

 

[Fireman frog]

It's true that any appliance can fail however, tumble driers especially have a lot of power going through them. Followed by dishwashers and washing machines. They do catch fire more often.

In 18 years I've only been to one fridge freezer that caught fire. Fridges are designed to be left on 24/7.

Stay safe

 

[jamesie]

After a long running saga with regard to a smart meter install I managed to get onto the Octopus GO tariff. mid October I monitor this each day by running OctoComparison (3rd party software). This details what my consumption would cost on each tariff versus GO.

Until yesterday GO has been the cheapest. However, I noticed the graph for Agile, which had been at max (35p kwh) all day, has now started to fluctuate during the day. In fact, for 3 half hour periods yesterday the price goes negative! Overall, it would have been slightly cheaper for me to be on Agile.

I am keeping a close eye on this but not dipping my toe in the Agile water just yet.

Is anyone on Agile and seeing a reduction in electricity cost?

 

[djenson]

It's true that any appliance can fail however, tumble driers especially have a lot of power going through them. Followed by dishwashers and washing machines. They do catch fire more often.

In 18 years I've only been to one fridge freezer that caught fire. Fridges are designed to be left on 24/7.

Stay safe

Very late, but the thread has just been revived haha.

I'm not sure that you understood what Severnless was trying to say. As you well know, most tumble dryers use a resistive element that gets very hot, and vent's the hot, humid air to the outside. What happens with these is the vent to outside clogs, the lint builds up, until it eventually reaches the hot element, and combusts. That's why dryers usually catch fire. Severnless has a dryer that uses a different technology, it's a bit like a glorified fridge. It uses a compressor just like a fridge to Heat up the air, cycle it through the clothes then dehumidify it and repeat. It uses much lower temperatures, uses much less power and doesn't have a vent, therefore a lot of the risk of a traditional dryer has gone.

Much respect to what you do

 

[Severnless]

After a long running saga with regard to a smart meter install I managed to get onto the Octopus GO tariff. mid October I monitor this each day by running OctoComparison (3rd party software). This details what my consumption would cost on each tariff versus GO.

Until yesterday GO has been the cheapest. However, I noticed the graph for Agile, which had been at max (35p kwh) all day, has now started to fluctuate during the day. In fact, for 3 half hour periods yesterday the price goes negative! Overall, it would have been slightly cheaper for me to be on Agile.

I am keeping a close eye on this but not dipping my toe in the Agile water just yet.

Is anyone on Agile and seeing a reduction in electricity cost?

Yep I noticed the negative cost over a couple of hours yesterday and Saturday, don’t think of swapping from go tariff yet.
when we were on agile, yep we could work the house and charging so that it was cheaper than the go tariff, but that was when the average half our rate over a 24hr period was about 8p
now it’s about 30p and has been days of 35p.
don’t jump yet….!

 

[Chrisjk]

Hi guys
ve interested in the discussion on solar, batteries etc
we are totally electric, use about 12000kw pa
we have 10 pv panels and solar thermal HW and a heat pump
podpoint EV charger
no battery, so far decided payback too long, although recent events make me rethink
were with Avro , now Octopus and so far very impressed with customer service

anyone out there with my usage/set profile to offer experience?

 

[MGBok]

Have you enquired about the Octopus Go Faster tariff , when I moved over they talked about it but the rates weren't advertised...the process was you sign up to standard tariff, once they could see your smart meter data the switched to to 'Go' but then you requested (as an existing customer) yo transfer to 'Go Faster'
I did this in Oct and now on 15.5p peak/5.5p off peak
Worth a phone call

 

[Fishettibean]

Have you enquired about the Octopus Go Faster tariff , when I moved over they talked about it but the rates weren't advertised...the process was you sign up to standard tariff, once they could see your smart meter data the switched to to 'Go' but then you requested (as an existing customer) yo transfer to 'Go Faster'
I did this in Oct and now on 15.5p peak/5.5p off peak
Worth a phone call

They updated go faster rates, think its 30p peak and 8.25p off on the 5 hour. 3 hour isn't available now and the 20.30 start time isn't available either.