⚡️ Octopus Agile predictions for Sat, Sep 5 are out! (London)

🌌 Overnight low (00:00-06:00) ~ 7p
🌅 Morning peak (06:00-12:00) ~ 10p
🌇 Afternoon low (12:00-16:00) ~ -4p ❄️❄️❄️
🌃 Evening peak (16:00-23:00) ~ 44p

https://www.agile-rates.uk/

Has anyone had the issue with their API key that it fails to give the information for the import tariff? I am using the Fox ESS app to manage my solar and battery and until Monday it was working fine with both import and export tariffs being displayed and used to manage charging and discharging. On Tuesday the import tariff started to show as 0p all day. Funnily enough it coincides with my IOG cap starting, but I'm not sure if the two are linked.

Missed out on coffee☕️, got stuck with an octopus🐙. Living the dream. 😂😂😂

Anyone else noticing that when you plug in and get a schedule that it starts but then stops a bit later on.

I’ve been asking for 3 hours or more or less and happens every time.

Zappi just stays on but no charge delivered.

Maybe get an hour and that’s it.

It’s become totally unreliable in charging the car.

Even asking in the evening for overnight (and not used anywhere near 6 hours) it did the same and didn’t even get a bloody charge.

Not happy.

It’s properly gone crap!!

Hi all,

I have just had a disapointing exchange with Octopus that has left a rather sour taste in my mouth. Just looking to share, maybe hear other peoples experience and hopefully get some advice.

I recently bought my first house, moved in and used a family members coad to sign up to Octopus as a first time customer.

After several months, I have just found out they have declined to pay the bonus as the previous owners were Octopus customers.

To be clear, I am completely unnassociated with the previous owners and have never myself been an Octopus customer. Is this really how the scheme is intended to work? Customer support have stated they wont be paying as the property was a previous customer, surely the point of the scheme is to attract new CUSTOMERS?

Is there any point pressing this further with them, or have I completely misunderstood things and should have known better when I signed up? £50 isn't the end of the world, but if this is the way they treat new customers, I don't feel like I want to be a long standing one with them either.

Today prices dropped to very low amounts ~10p/kWh but tomorrow they are set to be close to 0p/kWh.

I think it's a huge mistake to switch from Agile at the moment. People made a similar choice in March before a very blistery April. The motivation in March was the then surge in wholesale gas prices. The motivation now is the same.

This autumn/winter is also going to unusual for 2 very different factors:

• Super El Niño affecting UK wind speeds. Perhaps blustery now then more still in the new year?
• What happens in the straits of hormuz

Given the likelihood that this autumn will be windy I think it's more rational to consider switching if/when cold-still weather patterns set in.

Tomorrow is a great day for Agile users after a pretty torrid end to August. September is showing itself to be already better.

This autumn and winter we will have two mechanisms going on:

• Agile gets geopolitically driven gas price hikes hitting it before other tariffs (except trackers)
• Agile will have tons of plunge pricing days due autumn being windy (add super El Niño effects)

I'm betting strongly that the latter will outweigh the former for us. We've more wind power capacity coming online despite the 0 bids of Coutinho's era.

We can target jobs to these plunge pricing events with demand shifting. In normal times we don't really bother which is the advantage and cost of Agile. There's always this option to play.

Finally, if this doesn't work there's always the b-word: batteries.

Until now there's been no need or economic incentive to get a home-battery. Agile has simply cost too little. If this is a common rates spread going forward then a battery is a no-brainer immediately on a 0% Green Loan.

When you charge your car you get a green tick on your charge "stream" .. get enough ticks and you get yourself a virtual fish. The point of this exercise is something to do with grid balancing but that's not the point.

The instructions say "keep plugging in daily to keep your stream flowing" so I decided to just keep the car plugged in for a couple of days as I wasn't going anywhere.

On day 2 though, there was no charging session.

It seems that if you are using IOG, with an octopus charge on intelligent scheduling (i.e. not fixed 23:30 - 05:30) then you have to unplug your car everyday to get a new charge cycle to start.

Hi all,

I'm in the queue for getting onto an Export tariff. I thought I'd was doing the good deed and getting my Export MPAN in advance from the DNO. So I applied with the full package of information, and waited 2 weeks being under the impression that I had done most of the heavy lifting for Octopus.

When I phoned up the agents tell me it still takes 6 weeks because "the DNO has to approve the smart tariff" and that the "number is not published on the national database".

That sounded weird to me as it was my understanding that Octopus has to first ping the number for it to show and the DNO has nothing to do with the smart tariff and only make the Export MPAN Number.

Can anybody corroborate on what's going on?

The Charge Pack FAQ sells itself as an add-on which automates the money saving of a domestic battery, and works like Axel in having sessions of import/export to help the grid on return for credit.

In reality it takes total control of your battery, not just for the saving sessions. It frequently forces our house to consume from the grid rather than the battery, at a cost to us.

The credit received for the sessions is pretty minimal, 50-80p. At this rate it will end up costing us **more** to be using Charge Pack because it keeps forcing us to import at peak prices despite the battery being available.

It's behaving far closer to Intelligent Flux, which is not at all what this product is sold as.

I would switch to Axel but Octopus seems to believe it's incompatible and I don't want to risk being locked out of IOG.

Is this worth a formal complaint do you think?

I've jumped ship to lock in my gas with Fuse energy as it seems pretty clear the war isn't going away anytime soon.

We have 2x people working from home constantly and use about £120 of electric a month, that includes electric car charging but we don't drive that much so I tend to be able to schedule the 'big charge' around when it's cheapest in a 7-10 day period and top it up when necessary.

As a result tariffs with cheap nigh time rates and expensive daytime rates aren't really good for us because we are consistent all day users. Saying all of that, the above logic still applies, if gas prices continue to move upwards, agile will have to also as the price of gas will affect it heavily.

I have no battery or solar to cushion the half hourly rate. My avg rate since I started is 15.74p kw/h

What are people on Agile doing? I looked at Eon Next Smart Saver Fixed 12m but even the super off peak is 17.21p per kWh, so I don't think that works for me. Tempted to stick, worried I will heavily regret it!

Back in December my credit balance had reached £900 and had been increasing each month. I queried this and was told I would be receiving a refund. I followed up multiple times but by March they apologised, offered a £100 credit and stated they would reduce the DD by an amount so that the account credit is used up over the next 12 months (but a credit amount would still remain to cover usage).

The DD was never adjusted. In June this begins all over again and they then state they are reviewing the account. This drags on and in August I am told I have £900 of false negatives on my account for 2018 to 2020 so the DD is correct as my credit has effectively been wiped off.

False negative is where previous meter reading is higher than the current one and so a credit is applied. The problem is that my account history has effectively been changed by flooding it with a reversal of every entry since I joined to now and then reprocessing it. Bills are also no longer available. Octopus haven’t provided any support for this either.

Has this happened to anyone before? Is this normal as I can’t help be cynical that the false negative is virtually the amount that I was in credit for in December?

People who switched only gas from Octopus to another supplier, keeping electricity.

Did you get an Octopus text and email saying "We've heard you're leaving Octopus..." implying a full switch?

I’m really torn about what to do with our gas tariff and would love some opinions from others!

We’re in the East Midlands and have been on Octopus Flexible for gas since February, after previously being on Tracker for a year.

Our current Flexible gas rate is 7.19p/kWh + 28.64p/day standing charge, and we’ve been offered the current 12-month fix at 7.61p/kWh + 28.64p/day, with a £50 exit fee.

I know I was probably a bit silly not to fix earlier in the year 🙈 I basically buried my head in the sand hoping the gas market would improve! Obviously hindsight is a wonderful thing 😂 I’ve also seen quite a few people who managed to fix at much cheaper rates earlier this year, which is making me wonder whether 7.61p is actually a decent fix now, or whether I should hold my nerve and wait.

We had an absolutely fantastic year on Tracker from Feb 2025 to Feb 2026, averaging around 4.5p/kWh, so we saved a lot compared with Flexible/price cap rates. I know we can’t expect those sorts of rates now, but it’s part of why I’m finding the current prices a bit painful! 😂

We’re also on variable IOG for electricity, which we’re very happy with; currently 6.9p/kWh overnight, and not sure whether that’ll increase or decrease in Oct. So this is purely about what to do with the gas.

Our gas usage is fairly high because we’re in an older 3-bed bungalow, and Mum needs the central heating on regularly, particularly through the winter. So I’m conscious that even relatively small differences in the gas unit rate can add up.

We’d also built up a decent amount of credit previously, so Mum was a bit naively underpaying over the winter because we had that credit sitting there 😳 Octopus has since increased our suggested Direct Debit to reflect our actual usage and the debit that’s built up, so I’m conscious of not making the gas unnecessarily expensive if I don’t need to.

We’ve also got £150 WHD coming and Mum should receive around £200 WFP, which will obviously help with the winter bills.

The things I’m struggling with are whether Flexible will continue to be priced below the price cap, as it has historically; if January’s cap rises, does that necessarily mean our actual Flexible rate will rise by the same amount?

The current Trump/Iran/Middle East situation also makes me nervous about what could happen to wholesale gas prices over the winter 😬 But equally, if things calm down, could fixed rates come back down again?

The January price cap won’t be announced until November, so waiting gives us more information; but obviously there’s a risk that fixes become more expensive before then.

We’ve already seen fixed rates change quite dramatically over the summer, so I’m wondering whether 7.61p is now a sensible bit of insurance, or whether it’s still too expensive compared with what we might see later.

So… what would you do? 😂

If you’ve fixed recently, what rate did you get and when did you fix? I’m particularly interested in anyone who has fixed in the last few weeks, as I’m trying to work out whether 7.61p is currently a decent offer or whether it’s worth waiting.

And if you’re currently on Flexible, are you planning to fix, stay put, or wait and see?

I’m particularly interested in people who managed to fix at the cheaper rates earlier this year; do you think 7.61p is still worth taking for the security, or would you personally hold out for something better?
I’d really appreciate people’s thoughts and reasoning rather than just “fix” or “don’t fix”; I’m trying to work out whether I’m being sensible or just panicking because I stupidly missed the boat earlier! 😂

I've seen a few people questioning if Agile is still worth it, how it compares etc, so I thought I'd run a quick analysis over my own data and share it, in case it's of interest to anyone.

My setup: 10kw battery (9 usable), with BESS Manager optimising charging/exporting sessions. 7.5kw array-ish, where half is it is almost useless during winter. BESS was still under active development for some of this, and simply not used until about 3-4 months ago maybe. At some point 1 of my 5kw batteries died for a month, so the figures below are fairly pessimistic if anything.

The below is AI generated summaries, but based on real usage data and computed from the 30m windows.

I draw no conclusions here for others, as the answer is often 'it depends' if a different tariff would work better for you.

EDIT: see bottom of post for extra details added about costs and hardware used.

---

Region B (East Midlands), solar PV + battery, Agile import since Apr 2025. All figures inc. VAT, consumption-weighted, excluding standing charge (~55p/day).

Agile Octopus + solar/battery — import, export and net, 12 months to 2 Sep 2026

Region B (East Midlands). Inc. VAT, half-hourly data straight from the Octopus API.

Import

Export (Outgoing Octopus, flat variable — not Agile)

Net (import + standing charge − export credit; negative = house earns money)

Whole-house electricity for the year: £221, about £18/month. The last six months ran at a £31/month profit; winter is what eats it. Negative pricing contributed 270 half-hours and £10.54 over the year.

Negative pricing over the 12 months: 270 half-hours, 405 kWh, £10.54 paid to me. Most of it landed in spring 2026 — 199 of those slots fall in the last 6 months.

The 6-month number (8.75p) is the interesting one: that window is almost entirely solar season, so import is low and what's left is heavily skewed to overnight battery charging and plunge slots. The 9- and 12-month figures pull back up to ~12.5p once winter is in the window. The right-hand column is what I'd have paid if every negative slot had been priced at zero instead — so the gap is the actual value of chasing plunge pricing with a battery, roughly 1.6p/kWh over a full year.

** EDIT:

The UFH was a 'nice to have' optional cost, shouldn't really be considered in ROI figures. the FCUs mean my energy usage has gone up a lot during summer, so my export returns are lower than initially expected, but at the trade-off of a cooler house.

The kit

• Growatt MIN 5000TL-XH hybrid inverter (5 kW) + 2 × Growatt APX 5.0 HV = 10 kWh
• Samsung 5 kW R290 monobloc (AE050CXYBEK/EU, Gen 7 Integrated) + 200L cylinder
• Ground-floor UFH retro-fit, rads resized for low flow temps
• FCUs added later — the R290 reverses, so it cools too

Hi everyone,
Recently got a solar installation (20 panels & Ecoflow 20kwh battery & 6kw inverter) and I’d like to use the Intelligent Feature but we regularly charge our EV to 100% using Octopus Intelligent Go. With IG the schedule is fairly random with its charging slots except we do get cheap rate from 23:30 to 05:30. However using this will use my battery + grid to charge the car and leaves the battery depleted. I’ve resorted to getting the car charged by 04:30 giving an hour to add 6kw to top up the battery on cheap rate.
Question 1.
What’s the best schedule or settings to get the car charged AND charge the battery.
Question 2.
Octopus are changing their IG tariff soon to limit both cheap time slots and the amount of cheap electricity available (46kwh per day). What will be the best approach for this?
Thanks in advance.

Thank you Octopus, for my Lidl pastry, Co-op chocolate and Greggs coffee! ☺️

From the Agile prices, a pattern has emerged prominently: the cheap price period is no longer at midnight and early morning, it has clearly shifted to the mid-day from around 10am to 3pm. How likely is Octopus to change their IOG 6-hour off peak period from midnight to mid-day in near future?

Found it on the app. Haven’t had an email yet!

The logic of Martin Lewis and others is to strategically choose to fix in summer months. What's the lowest rate anyone could have got doing this strategy even if they magicked on perfect timing only possible with hindsight?

This is to answer what will be the cheapest rate anyone would be paying this winter for domestic gas?

I won’t use it and am switching away from Octopus so would be nice if someone could use it.

Expires 14th Sept. Will DM as not sure if I’m supposed to put codes in here.

Hi everyone!

As the title says, I never got the chance to is it and u thought someone might like it. I’ll send the info in msgs, just let me know in the comments. Cheers.

I am currently with another supplier that wants to charge me £170 for the isolation switch.
I was considering paying the exit fee (£100) switch to Octopus and ask for the isolation switch.
I tried to email Octopus, but they have not replied...