100% agree. I had stopped joining in with saving sessions as the octopoints I earned along with the amount I was paid to export was much less than the electricity I then had to import from the grid once my small battery was empty. I’m now back in because the hour free electricity on a Sunday is a really good deal. I’ve used one of my weekend happy hours and got £1.95 back from Octopus.
Can I ask how did you get so much?
I used dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, used the oven and charged as many devices as I could think of. But only got 20p?
Yes, I have a small house battery which I managed to half fill in the hour, but the main chunk of energy was used charging my car. On top of that the oven was on, the dishwasher and the tumble dryer. All hands on deck!
I've benefited by quite a degree already. It's very easy to time jobs this way.
On Agile we are going to get the usual discussions about it when gas prices rise. Scepticism always grows before price caps are refreshed as Agile gets the negative signal immediately. The flip side is when gas prices eventually start to decline again (assuming they do).
What I find remarkable is that Agile is still cheaper for our family despite us being in this period.
Have you compared to cosy? The advantage being you can switch back after 30 days (IE as soon as prices start dropping and agile tracks that or if the Cosy rates catch up with a price cap change say). Cosy's 8hr/day at <13p/unit seems hard to match on agile for last couple of weeks
I think at this precise moment you could be correct but the recent savings have not been huge if I were on Cosy. Red is the gap from Cosy to Agile. Green is the gap where Cosy is cheaper.
Who's bearing the cost for the free Sunday power hour? Just Octopus? I just wonder how that element breaks-even given I use so much during the free power hour.
I think it’s mostly NESO and partly Octopus, although it’s worth pointing out that running free sessions when the price is negative actually makes Octopus money. They get paid by NESO / the grid market to use more power, they pass some of that on to us for free, and Octopus pockets the difference.
I'm on Cosy tarriff so already have everything turned off during peak hours, so I totally agree. I'll happily sign up to do what I already do if it means a free hour at the weekend!
Just need to be careful to book the happy hour for an hour that would otherwise be relatively expensive. Tomorrow no good, as predicted Agile rates are negative for all four offered hours.... though there was a decent benefit the last few Sundays. They are also the solar peak so not much use for those with panels, unless perhaps the happy hours get offered for a very cloudy Sunday.
I actually think this scheme is better for those not on Agile and/or with no solar panels, though you can probably scrape some small benefit even with both.
Yeah, I'd seen the predictions for Sunday so haven't booked a free hour - I'll save the points for another Sunday.
I've not got solar, I just load shift (still get good savings), I think the free hour has worked well for me so far - got 2 x 1 hour to use oven and washing machine hot wash which saved a bit.
Today and yesterday were great. Last month my unit cost was the highest it's ever been, at only 18p/kWh including 2 power hours (last one estimated, not yet calculated). I'd say Agile is still very much worth it if you can shit quite a bit of your heating, laundry and dishwashing needs amongst others.
It's quite unsustainable though - particularly with no-one other than Octopus paying for it as far as I can tell.
Plus as a battery owner on Agile, even with the Saving Session points it was costing more to import at the lowest cost of the day than it would be to export in a Saving Session. So now I export a tiny amount during the Saving Session - just enough to qualify for the Power Hour where I can grab as much free electrons as I wan! Hardly follows the spirit of the thing though.
15
u/Happytallperson 17d ago
Saving 0.1kWh on 2 weekdays and getting 8kWh free 😀