It is not as often as we wish, there was a rash of 'price plunge's a few months back, but some power stations are off line at the moment.

I think if someone can't avoid power 4 to 7PM then agile is probably not cost effective for them right now. YMMV!

I can exclude pretty much all electrical power in 4-7 so it's still cheaper even though I grimace sometimes at 9p/kWh! And I just avoid other times. If you are a busy family, then forget about it and use the 'go' tariff if you want to charge.

It's not an 'in my area' thing, it only varies by a fixed small amount due to network peculiarities but the tariff variations are the same nationally.

See my link below if you want the 'Go' tariff, that would make sense for an EV driver, if not agile.

 

If you are a busy family, then forget about it and use the 'go' tariff if you want to charge.

I’ve programmed my house battery to charge from 3pm to 4pm each day and have requested that the washing machine/tumbler/dishwasher don’t go on between 4 & 7. The oven is allowed and the house battery can power that ok.

 

I have now switched between Go and Agile a couple of times. Agile in the summer as the PV can keep me going most of the time and Go in the winter as Agile prices tend to be worse then. I'm currently on Go Faster (3 Hour / 4.5p/kWh) which I'll stick to until it expires.

 

Same here

Was on Agile from late March until late September. Saved buckets of money.

Now with much lower solar generation, dark evenings, heating on I moved to Go Faster - 4 hours from 0230. This month so far Go Faster has been cheaper than Agile by about 10%

I fully expect to stay on Go Faster until late March when I am sure I will be looking at Agile again for the summer generation months

 

The prices don't vary too much by area

 

I'm not sure that your title is a fair statement. For a number of consumers Go is a lower cost deal than Agile - particularly those with large amounts of load that they need to charge up over night and can get significant benefit from the ~ 5p/kWh rate, and for those that need/want to consume significant amounts during the peak/penalty period from 16:00-19:00. Agile is, as the name implies, designed for people that can and do move their consumption on a daily basis and perhaps can move their consumption within a longer period than "just" 24 hours. Both tariffs are "experimental" with Go targeting the need for short range* EV owners to charge daily, and Agile to see if price causes consumers to change their habits both potentially smoothing out grid usage and potentially reducing CO2 emissions.
* By short range I mean people that use close to their battery capacity on a daily basis and hence need to charge daily (such as me with a 80 mile commute in a LEAF30) rather than someone with say a Kona64 driving 20 miles per day with the occasional 300 mile trip).
Don't be suckered into Agile by the occasional reports of plunge pricing - I downloaded the rates over a 12 month period up to the beginning of this year and on only 24% of the time would Agile have been cheaper than Go given my consumption needs (about 2/3rds of the total required overnight for 2xEV charging), but I switched to Agile when the pandemic struck as our mileage requirements dropped as did average Agile prices. Over the last two months it has been swings and roundabouts with some weeks better for one than the other. My current depressed view of the world sees another 6 months of lockdowns and reduced travel ahead so I am sticking with Agile from an environmental perspective, but if things "return to normal" I'll probably end up back on Go as it is so much less hassle than Agile with no need to spend significantly on controls to regularly move consumption around.

 

I'm not sure that your title is a fair statement. For a number of consumers Go is a lower cost deal than Agile - particularly those with large amounts of load that they need to charge up over night and can get significant benefit from the ~ 5p/kWh rate, and for those that need/want to consume significant amounts during the peak/penalty period from 16:00-19:00. Agile is, as the name implies, designed for people that can and do move their consumption on a daily basis and perhaps can move their consumption within a longer period than "just" 24 hours. Both tariffs are "experimental" with Go targeting the need for short range* EV owners to charge daily, and Agile to see if price causes consumers to change their habits both potentially smoothing out grid usage and potentially reducing CO2 emissions.
* By short range I mean people that use close to their battery capacity on a daily basis and hence need to charge daily (such as me with a 80 mile commute in a LEAF30) rather than someone with say a Kona64 driving 20 miles per day with the occasional 300 mile trip).
Don't be suckered into Agile by the occasional reports of plunge pricing - I downloaded the rates over a 12 month period up to the beginning of this year and on only 24% of the time would Agile have been cheaper than Go given my consumption needs (about 2/3rds of the total required overnight for 2xEV charging), but I switched to Agile when the pandemic struck as our mileage requirements dropped as did average Agile prices. Over the last two months it has been swings and roundabouts with some weeks better for one than the other. My current depressed view of the world sees another 6 months of lockdowns and reduced travel ahead so I am sticking with Agile from an environmental perspective, but if things "return to normal" I'll probably end up back on Go as it is so much less hassle than Agile with no need to spend significantly on controls to regularly move consumption around.

This debate has gone on for the past 16 months that I have had SMETS2 meters. It comes down to annual consumption and pattern of use: no one tariff suits everybody. I am currently on Go because it suits my overnight charging requirements. I was on Agile for 7 months from March and I got my price per kWh down to c.8p. In the past 2 months, the average cost increased to over 11p/kWh.

It would seem that some Octopus customers have been taking advantage of the ability to switch from Agile to Go and vice versa without restriction or cost. Octopus has just published a Blog (slightly confusing in places as Go is treated as a fixed semi-smart tariff) but the message is that if a customer switches away from Agile, then no switching back to Agile within 30 days.

 

It seems to me that to make agile worthwhile you've got to invest some time into it and/or invest in the tech. So I wonder if when many people claim to have saved on Agile they've probably already spent that saving a few times over in smart cables, devices and plugs. In reality it may take many people a few years to be quids in over Go.

 

It depends whether you buy additional equipment or just specify something for similar cost. For example, as a new EVSE the Ohme leads and the Charged EV Smart+ support Agile as standard, or I modified our Charge Points for around £10 each to provide basic support for Agile. But I agree, if you have to go out and replace an existing EVSE with a new one then the payback period is significant.

 

Happy with Agile here; solar but no battery, 2 EVs but we haven't driven much in 2020. Charge the larger car using an Ohme smart charger. We usually cook at peak times, and don't run large appliances between 4 and 7. No smart stuff really, except the Wiser radiator stats, and that's running on gas. The most expensive average price per kWh on the bill has been 9.9p/kWh. That's a huge saving vs the average tariff. Perhaps Go is cheaper under certain conditions but it won't be by much.

 

This autumn has been unseasonably still. Only now have we started to see some windy days or better windy nights. There appears to be a string of cyclones coming off the Atlantic so we should see some better pricing. The plunge that just happened may have been affected by the same cyclone producing winds covering the Irish sea southern Scotland‘s uplands and the North Sea including the German Bight and Denmark and also into the Baltic Sea. There is a bit of a lull in new wind power coming to fruition at the moment but in 18 months time we might see the impact of Hornsea 2 the world’s new biggest wind farm coming on stream along with 2 or 3 smaller ones.

 

That's a lot bigger requirement for a battery on Go than Agile. For us that would be around 15kWh (our net winter consumption less EVs outside of Go hours) rather than <1kWh (ditto during the Agile penalty period as we arrive home around 18:00). We would also lose the ability to be paid for export from our solar. So neither product is ideal for all users.

 

I went for 21:30 - 00:30. The batteries charge at 13kW and the car takes 7.5kW (which is about the limit for a 100A fuse) so even if the solar gain is virtually non-existent I can get enough in the batteries to easily last until 21:30 the next day and just under 100miles in the car/day. That way I never draw on the Go Faster peak rate.
I have not checked when Go Faster expires. I seem to remember it was sold as a trial tariff so it may only have a limited life.

 

For me in Canada, this entire thread is one long culture shock for me. Here, electricity is relatively inexpensive (most of Canada's electricity comes from hydro-electric, and most of the rest comes from nuclear and wind, and the first two of which can respond to increases in peak demand). Most of Canada doesn't have time of day rates, I pay the same rate at 6pm as I do at 3am. But if I could set the car to charge at a specific time to save money, I'd be right with you in doing it.

Interestingly, having the same rate day and night takes away most of the financial case for a house battery, since there's no ability to charge it when rates are low and drain it when rates are high. Since we also have net-metering here for people with solar production, the only reason to have a house battery is for power outages.

 

... and do you think that is right and better, than having a variable rate which dissuades electric consumption during times of use of CO2-generating fuels?

 

I'm not sure the variable rates are primarily there to reduce CO2. It is more to do with the lumpy nature of our generation and usage in this country, something that will only get worse when Hornsea 2,3 and 4 come online. Nuclear doesn't ramp up or down quickly in response to demand and the wind just has a mind of its own. We use a lot of gas just filling the gaps. Hydro is just that little bit more flexible. I toyed with the idea of a micro pumped storage as I have a suitable hill nearby but the red tape involved in digging a reservoir up there sunk the idea.

 

Canada and particularly British Columbia is different. Wind power and hydro are a great combination, you can’t store wind but you can and do store water. So demand is easy to meet in real time. UK is linking up with Norway to swap hydro power in spring and summer when the snow melt causes water to be spilt over the dams. At the same time we’ll sell it back in winter when we have excess wind power and their snow piles up. (Great bears claws at the bear claw cafe in Jasper by the way, after a visit to the hydro dam!) For agile users this will flatten the peaks of prices and plunges. Other technologies like hydrogen will also flatten prices but given Scotland has just published a desire to reach 11 GWh of offshore wind by 2030 and Boris wants 40 GWh (does that include independent Scotland?) we‘ll continue to have fun with Agile. Given all the inter connectors planned with Europe we will still see variations in power prices when a great wind blows up from Ireland to Poland.

 

My understanding is that in Canada a lot of home heating is done with electricity. If Donald were too add the UK heating gas use and then compare to Canada then I suspect Canada would be far ahead.