Are you thinking of joining octopus for electricity?

[enrico]

with Octopus but no phone signal, thus (happily) no smart meter.

Make sure you are on the tracker tarrif then as it is the cheapest after agile

 

[enrico]

Nothing wrong with a smart meter. I have had one for a year and with octopus agile I have saved £400 so far. In fact my bill is less and I charge 2 EV’s as well. If you pay your bills you are not going to be cut off!

I saved £90 compared to Bulb in the first two months!

 

[The Poot]

I had that. They were arranging a date to come and fit the meter, I Took the phone off my wife and told the caller I was happy with the one I had. He went on to tell me it was 'the law' and I told him 'no it ain't' that's a pack of lies, the silence was quite funny.

The insistence and pressure to have one makes me think its not in my best interest.....
Enrico - recently signed up to a twelve month fixed tariff with Octopus.

 

[madasafish]

So........ I have been with Ovo for some time and they did install a smart meter. There are cheaper tariffs out there but I've been put off because there are reports that my smart meter would be incompatible with another supplier. You get the gist here? You can see I have no idea what I'm talking about (On this occasion )
So....I can just change supplier and abandon the smart meter ?

Your new suplier has to like it and use it or give you a new one or do nothing.
My smart meter stopped working when I first switched after it was installed...it is now just a meter.. My next two suppliers have accepted my readings and done nothing..

The Smart Meter System cost £12billions (or so) and makes Track and Trace seem efficient...

 

[enrico]

A smart meter does two main things. It sends readings to your supplier, these can be sent as often as half hourly or as little as once a month. For that they need a phone signal. It can also send real time readings to an in home display (IHD). The latter allows you to see Kw useage and usually the price. It helps you to see what is using the most electricity and the idea is to make you use electricity more efficiently.
With octopus agile you pay more when everyone is using electricity, for example between 4 - 7 pm. But less when demand is less. By simply switching the time you use things like dishwashers and washing machines you can spread the load to make the national grid work more efficiently, and at the same time save you money. Works for me!

 

[Philrob]

If you are really interested in energy monitoring (at a circuit level as well as whole house) it is worth exploring the iotawatt unit. Ships from the states but used internationally.

Has a well supported user forum.

Open source hardware and software (but easier to just buy the base unit from the manufacturer even if there is a bit of vat to pay to customs.)

Really useful in tracing things that consume electricity when they shouldn’t.

 

[deanrpwaacs]

I will take a look at Octopus , i do run a unit that draws just over 1.045kwh 24hrs a day and the cheap bit you mentioned peaked my interest . Due to renew in January .

 

[manek]

I know this is blatant but this is an eight day only offer. If you use the following code to join octopus you get £100.
This is the company that paid me o use electricity during lockdown. Their agile rates have half hour varying rates. They have fixed rates and tracker rates for electricity and gas.they are totally green.
If you were thinking of switching then for £100 with no exit fee it seems like now is a good time!!!
Please use this code and I get £50 too!.

share.octopus.energy/mauve-camel-415

Just applied. Thanks for the link!

 

[manek]

PS: I got a referral link too: 8 days of Mates Rates

 

[enrico]

Thanks Manek, there are two types of people that will really benefit from the agile rate, those that use a reasonable amount of electricity all day eg an air source heat pump especially if you can avoid the 4pm to .7pm peak. And those that can use all the night time cheap rates for charging things like cars, batteries etc. I run an air source heat pump and heat an indoor swimming pool so I am quids in as I can take advantage of both!
There is a good Facebook called agile octopus chat which is good for getting hints and tips

 

[rampino]

Except for Octopus Agile, there seems to be little advantage to the consumer using a smart meter. A disadvantage may be that in the future somebody may be able to tell remotely whether you are in or not. The financial advantage seems to rest with the energy companies reading your meters remotely and being able to make the meter readers redundant.
My gas meter reading is so faint as to be almost unreadable: replacement smart meter FREE, change the battery in the existing meter? We will charge you for replacement. Sod that, if it can’t be read, it’s your problem, it’s your equipment after all.

 

[Arfermo]

So........ I have been with Ovo for some time and they did install a smart meter. There are cheaper tariffs out there but I've been put off because there are reports that my smart meter would be incompatible with another supplier. You get the gist here? You can see I have no idea what I'm talking about (On this occasion )
So....I can just change supplier and abandon the smart meter ?

I am currently with OVO too but when my current contract expires I am hoping to avoid my annual check for a better supplier/tariff by using lookaftermybills.com to save me the bother. It's free and can opt out any time so why not? Anybody out there tried it yet?

 

[enrico]

I am currently with OVO too but when my current contract expires I am hoping to avoid my annual check for a better supplier/tariff by using lookaftermybills.com to save me the bother. It's free and can opt out any time so why not? Anybody out there tried it yet?

It doesn't cover clever tarrifs just ones that have normal tarrifs so you can't guarantee they are the best for you just the cheapest of the main bunch! Horses for courses!

 

[steve1958]

We haven't got a smart meter.
Reason being is that we have solar panels which generate quite a lot of our household energy.
We also receive 50% of the generated electricity back in the feed in Tariff.
Up until now we have failed to find an energy supplier that is able to link the smart meter and solar meter.
We are already with Octopus due to them taking over our account from the cooperative energy company

 

[Gilberdyke John]

We haven't got a smart meter.
Reason being is that we have solar panels which generate quite a lot of our household energy.
We also receive 50% of the generated electricity back in the feed in Tariff.
Up until now we have failed to find an energy supplier that is able to link the smart meter and solar meter.
We are already with Octopus due to them taking over our account from the cooperative energy company

I don't have a smart meter and have solar panels from the first promotion days with high rewards. Linking to the solar generation with a smart meter has little point. Except when the generation is plentiful in summer (when generation might produce more than you use) being paid for an assumed export of half the panel yield regardless of if you export it or not but heat your hot water store is a winner. It's easy to consume more than the panels generate for most of the year given you could arrange an immersion heater to switch on when the panels are pumping out power so you get free power. I don't see any economic point in starting out with solar under current incentives. The bait of the original scheme seemed too good to be true but it proved to be genuine.

 

[enrico]

We haven't got a smart meter.
Reason being is that we have solar panels which generate quite a lot of our household energy.
We also receive 50% of the generated electricity back in the feed in Tariff.
Up until now we have failed to find an energy supplier that is able to link the smart meter and solar meter.
We are already with Octopus due to them taking over our account from the cooperative energy company

Check out the octopus agile chat page on Facebook. There are loads of ways to link stuff and they are full of good ideas!

 

[enrico]

I don't have a smart meter and have solar panels from the first promotion days with high rewards. Linking to the solar generation with a smart meter has little point. Except when the generation is plentiful in summer (when generation might produce more than you use) being paid for an assumed export of half the panel yield regardless of if you export it or not but heat your hot water store is a winner. It's easy to consume more than the panels generate for most of the year given you could arrange an immersion heater to switch on when the panels are pumping out power so you get free power. I don't see any economic point in starting out with solar under current incentives. The bait of the original scheme seemed too good to be true but it proved to be genuine.

No batteries? Too expensive for me to consider but with your FIT rate you should be able to afford them!!! We had the highest rate but sold the house, now on a measly rate!!! But something is better than nothing! Look up Tesla Power wall

 

[JohnRB]

I don't have a smart meter and have solar panels from the first promotion days with high rewards. Linking to the solar generation with a smart meter has little point. Except when the generation is plentiful in summer (when generation might produce more than you use) being paid for an assumed export of half the panel yield regardless of if you export it or not but heat your hot water store is a winner. It's easy to consume more than the panels generate for most of the year given you could arrange an immersion heater to switch on when the panels are pumping out power so you get free power. I don't see any economic point in starting out with solar under current incentives. The bait of the original scheme seemed too good to be true but it proved to be genuine.

I'm not sure I understand the point you are making. I have solar panels, a smart meter and am on octopus go. Before I changed I checked and the smart meter makes no difference to the feed back tariff (that's not to say it won't in the future). The FIT agreement you took out at the beginning still stands, which is for half your export to count for FIT. You have always been able to use as much or as little of your self generated energy as you wish. If I feed all my energy into batteries or hot water, I still get paid for half my production regardless of whether I have a dumb or smart meter.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

I'm not sure I understand the point you are making. I have solar panels, a smart meter and am on octopus go. Before I changed I checked and the smart meter makes no difference to the feed back tariff (that's not to say it won't in the future). The FIT agreement you took out at the beginning still stands, which is for half your export to count for FIT. You have always been able to use as much or as little of your self generated energy as you wish. If I feed all my energy into batteries or hot water, I still get paid for half my production regardless of whether I have a dumb or smart meter.

My post was to query the suggestion by Steve 1958 his not having a smart meter was because it couldn't be linked to the solar meter.

 

[JohnRB]

My post was to query the suggestion by Steve 1958 his not having a smart meter was because it couldn't be linked to the solar meter.

Sorry, yes, I meant to reply to Steve. Finger trouble!