[andyswarbs]

I have just had my first quarterly bill from Octopus on the Agile tariff and I thought i would report on the result. This covers a short period before I had my smart meter installed and then eventually got onto Agile tariff a few days later. The whole report is 74 pages long (because the Agile tariff rate changes every 30 mins the report is one day per page.)

Here's the summary section of the report section for agile

This shows that my average rater per day (day & night) is 8.42p/kWh for 1625.4 kWh of charge.
Including Standing Charge for 74 days @ 20.00p/day £14.80
Subtotal of charges before VAT £151.73
VAT @ 5.00% £7.59

Looking at the daily graphs it is very heartening to see how the Ohme charger, day after day, automatically charges to the cheapest rates. And given that, when charging, the EV costs dominate.

I copied my son in on our bill. He has just upgraded to the Ohme/Agile combination and from what he can see he is getting similar results. (He has a old Zoe and commutes daily 30-40 miles each way daily.) His previous energy supplier was Bulb and the plan he was on was 15p/kwh. So similar to me, he has halved his EV charge costs. The big one though is against what would cost him in petrol, of course - he reckons he is now saving £140 monthly.

 

[KenB]

what are you doing to dodge the expensive times?

 

[Woodulike]

You don't need to avoid the peak times completely to get below 9p average. The very cheap charging soon brings the average down.

 

[andyswarbs]

what are you doing to dodge the expensive times?

I set the ohme to never charge above 10p as a safety. Then in profile ask the ohme to prefer cheapest rates.

 

[Scrooge]

what are you doing to dodge the expensive times?

I have just had my first quarterly bill from Octopus on the Agile tariff and I thought i would report on the result. This covers a short period before I had my smart meter installed and then eventually got onto Agile tariff a few days later. The whole report is 74 pages long (because the Agile tariff rate changes every 30 mins the report is one day per page.)

Here's the summary section of the report section for agile
View attachment 137071
This shows that my average rater per day (day & night) is 8.42p/kWh for 1625.4 kWh of charge.
Including Standing Charge for 74 days @ 20.00p/day £14.80
Subtotal of charges before VAT £151.73
VAT @ 5.00% £7.59

Looking at the daily graphs it is very heartening to see how the Ohme charger, day after day, automatically charges to the cheapest rates. And given that, when charging, the EV costs dominate.

I copied my son in on our bill. He has just upgraded to the Ohme/Agile combination and from what he can see he is getting similar results. (He has a old Zoe and commutes daily 30-40 miles each way daily.) His previous energy supplier was Bulb and the plan he was on was 15p/kwh. So similar to me, he has halved his EV charge costs. The big one though is against what would cost him in petrol, of course - he reckons he is now saving £140 monthly.

Great to read your update on Agile/Ohme

 

[QPRfan]

I was on Agile from May until mid September. A very cheap Spring, followed by a cheap Summer but prices were ever edging upwards.

So I moved to Go faster in mid September.

My last full month on Agile was at an average cost per kw 9.49p . My bill for the last 6 weeks arrived yesterday. The average cost per kw was 9.5p and with no daily worry about not using too much between 4pm and 7pm. Sadly in the South West region our power happens to be one of the more expensive regions

I am pretty sure that Go Faster will be there or thereabouts with Agile over the Winter so I will be sticking with that for the next 4 months

Then come mid March, once my panels start making decent amounts of power again and the heating is off, I am sure I will be back on Agile for the Spring and Summer again

 

[Sparkalicious]

Daft question. Is there a way of integrating a home battery into Agile as well as an EV? So that you can benefit from cheaper all round electricity for the day to day running of the home?

Would be great to use stored electricity from cheaper periods during the expensive times and completely avoid the high prices. This would presumably also take pressure off the grid?

I have a battery on order and a Zappi. EVs is usually away from the house during the main part of the day.
Just seems to be a sensible idea to me, to use Agile on all the batteries in the household at any time of the day

 

[idiotzoo]

Yep, you can either do something yourself to manage the charge times of the battery or get a system that integrates with the Agile API, a few can. Octopus have recently launched a Works with Octopus thing where vendors can submit their products that are designed to take advantage of the Octopus API.

They're at great pains to underline that you shouldn't get a battery in order to take advantage of Agile. If you're getting home storage to fit in with solar, Agile can work with that for big wins but the payback for a storage battery, using Agile, is going to be a long time and Agile may not exist this time next year. I don't think they're suggesting there are plans to ditch it, just that you shouldn't make 10 year plans based on a tariff offered today.

 

[Scrooge]

Daft question. Is there a way of integrating a home battery into Agile as well as an EV? So that you can benefit from cheaper all round electricity for the day to day running of the home?

Would be great to use stored electricity from cheaper periods during the expensive times and completely avoid the high prices. This would presumably also take pressure off the grid?

I have a battery on order and a Zappi. EVs is usually away from the house during the main part of the day.
Just seems to be a sensible idea to me, to use Agile on all the batteries in the household at any time of the day

Cool, are you starting a thread on this project? Would be a good read. Cheers

 

[Scrooge]

For myself, I guess initially I was quite unsure of Agile. But with starting off on Go I found myself suckered into the advantages of Agile and the home automation projects it offers

 

[Sparkalicious]

Cool, are you starting a thread on this project? Would be a good read. Cheers

I can once I get the ball rolling. I already have solar installed. So loading the battery with cheap off peak electricity during the winter months when solar generation is poor will help offset the battery slightly. Also, more importantly for me, will make me feel better that I am taking the pressure off of the grid and helping my bottom line as a consequence.

Yep, you can either do something yourself to manage the charge times of the battery or get a system that integrates with the Agile API, a few can. Octopus have recently launched a Works with Octopus thing where vendors can submit their products that are designed to take advantage of the Octopus API.

That's good news, I'll have a chat with Octopus and see what I can come up with and start to formulate a plan. The Zappi is due to be installed anytime now but lockdowns have slowed that down. Was going to delay the battery for a bit but maybe I'll get it wrapped up all in one.

 

[Alex Lake]

This is good to know.
One thing that it strikes me that one might do one's own "super agile" tariff, as agile itself often isn't the cheapest. However, if you want to save every last penny, you can switch between Octopus tariffs, such that if you think a period of time (especially in winter) is going to be cheaper on (say) Go, then you could do that. Perhaps a little anal for me, though! ;-)
BTW, I'm probably going to be getting an Ohme cable to plug in to an EO Mini Pro.

 

[andyswarbs]

You don't need to avoid the peak times completely to get below 9p average. The very cheap charging soon brings the average down.

True on one given night. But we're in lockdown2 and there's little need to charge the car. So whereas normally I would bring the charge back to 80% at the moment I want to pick off the plunge pricing days so I've set the maximum price to 0p. So the car will only be able to charge when the grid has excess energy. Looking forward to stormy weather.

 

[idiotzoo]

I can once I get the ball rolling. I already have solar installed. So loading the battery with cheap off peak electricity during the winter months when solar generation is poor will help offset the battery slightly. Also, more importantly for me, will make me feel better that I am taking the pressure off of the grid and helping my bottom line as a consequence.



That's good news, I'll have a chat with Octopus and see what I can come up with and start to formulate a plan. The Zappi is due to be installed anytime now but lockdowns have slowed that down. Was going to delay the battery for a bit but maybe I'll get it wrapped up all in one.

Here's some useful info on the Lux & Pylontech combo that's probably the most cost effective.... it's certainly the most space efficient.

Battery Storage - Energy Stats UK

Battery Storage You might recall the comment from my Solar PV blog post that exporting unused generated energy back to the grid is the biggest annoyance of a Solar owner. The obvious solution to this is battery storage. I’d ummed and arghed about it for a while and finally took the plunge last...

www.energy-stats.uk

 

[andyswarbs]

Q

Here's some useful info on the Lux & Pylontech combo that's probably the most cost effective.... it's certainly the most space efficient.

Battery Storage - Energy Stats UK

Battery Storage You might recall the comment from my Solar PV blog post that exporting unused generated energy back to the grid is the biggest annoyance of a Solar owner. The obvious solution to this is battery storage. I’d ummed and arghed about it for a while and finally took the plunge last...

www.energy-stats.uk

That's an awesome contribution. I'd love to be able to have a very similar solar and battery setup. The total solution has so many advantages. It is so future proof and builds on EV & agile so well.

If an EV came out with V2H that makes it even better, especially for my home. Sadly my kona doesn't support taking energy out of the battery and pumping it into my home.

 

[Petriix]

@andyswarbs That's some serious electricity usage. I make it over 8000kWh per year, which is about three times my usage. How many EV miles do you do?

As for battery storage, I think I could only save around 1000kWh with a battery, so £125 on my current tariff. With some effort I could probably shift another 1000kWh to the 5p rate on Octopus Go and save another £25 (£75 less in unit charge but £50 more in standing charges).

That's only £1500 over 10 years, which is supposedly the usable life of a battery. A suitably sized battery would cost at least twice that.

 

[donald]

My bill has come in at 10.5p/kWh average and I am horrified!!! It was 4.3p/kWh last bill!!!!

WHERE'S MY FREE ELECTRICITY!!! IT'S VERY WINDY TONIGHT!

 

[andyswarbs]

@andyswarbs That's some serious electricity usage. I make it over 8000kWh per year, which is about three times my usage. How many EV miles do you do?

As for battery storage, I think I could only save around 1000kWh with a battery, so £125 on my current tariff. With some effort I could probably shift another 1000kWh to the 5p rate on Octopus Go and save another £25 (£75 less in unit charge but £50 more in standing charges).

That's only £1500 over 10 years, which is supposedly the usable life of a battery. A suitably sized battery would cost at least twice that.

Petriix, our total mileage in the kona since we got it in March is 8500: this is our only car. Obviously much of that is lockdown. Otherwise we've been doing upto 300 miles weekly looking after our grandson, a number of other days 150 mile round trips and 25 miles most other days. So we've been fully recharging and more weekly, and sometimes twice.

 

[andyswarbs]

My bill has come in at 10.5p/kWh average and I am horrified!!! It was 4.3p/kWh last bill!!!!

WHERE'S MY FREE ELECTRICITY!!! IT'S VERY WINDY TONIGHT!

I think leccy costs are going up. And up. That's my prediction - based on Brexit and covid.

 

[Woodulike]

I think Agile is more expensive this time of year, it was last year.
An average of 10-12p is still very cheap, and that's at the expense time of year.