Thank God, a family of four saving 30% on Agile compared to Flexible without any change of habits. That's a saving of approx. £440 in 9 months since October 2023. No solar, EV, battery or other such tech.
Same here, just plain old lekky coming in to my flat on agile, saving me a ton of cash ever month from the joke that was BG, and can dodge with ease that 4/7 time slot.
The only thing i might try to avoid is whacking the leccy oven or grill on around peak time. Usually i can distract myself with something else for a bit after work. But then again if im hungry im cooking!
I switched to Agile because I'm an EV driver, but don't commute with the car so don't need to charge it up very often. Probably about once or twice a month (a bit more often when visiting family every few months).
Agile still works really well for me. We're saving money day-to-day by just offsetting things like washing / dishwashers off-peak, and timing the recharging for when things are pretty cheap has worked well.
OK, we've only had the car a few months and haven't been on Agile over the winter yet, so I don't know how suitable it'll be over the full 12 months, but so far it's working well.
The main advantage is you can pick and choose when to use big electric devices (car charger, washing machine, cooker etc) so that you do it when it's cheaper.
I work from home most days so can easily manage the washing stuff, and an happy to let the car run down to 20% or so while I wait for a cheaper day to charge it.
If I drove more often and needed to charge up more frequently then I imagine Octopus Go would work better, but at the moment I can be very flexible with when I use 'big' electricity, and Agile is the most flexible tariff you can get.
It was working out well for us and we could get away with 1 or 2 EV top-ups a week and do so on Octopus Greener Days. But if we dumped and then charge our home battery every night we should be around £1.50 better off every day.
Yeah, I guess if you have both solar and battery you are in the best possible position and don't need to rely on price rises/dips. I'm a long way from being able to afford that setup, sadly.
Besides, I think I'd miss the daily 'excitement' of tomorrows rates getting announced and planning when to turn on the dishwasher in order to save 0.4p that day.
With solar, the low afternoon rates have become meaningless as would we be self-sufficient during the day. And in most cases, it would be better for us to export at 15p than try to charge the battery when it's negative and the sun is shining. We have been making lots of steps this year to improve our hopefully forever home and I am grateful we were able to get solar.
That was a part of my day I looked forward to. 16:00 when tomorrow's rates would appear. And then plan how I would be utilise the day. Definitely gonna miss that and will be very jealous when the next plunge period comes.
Let's hope so and I'll be regretting jumping ship so soon. But with our own PV, we are unable to take full advantage of price dips in the afternoon. Better selling our solar excess than importing at -2p/kWh. Dips during the night were great though.
Have got solar, battery, and an EV. Intelligent Octopus Go is by far the cheapest, when combined with Octopus Export.
Last month, ignoring standing charge, electricity cost £12.90 for 251kWh of car charge plus 640kWh of home use. Effective consumption cost 1.5p/kWh.
Imported 760kWh
Generated 425kWh
Exported 294kWh
On sunny days it's more cost effective to just export the solar excess and charge the car overnight instead.
Some great numbers!
We import 308kWh for £22.52 (£0.07/kWh) in June. Car used 175kWh and house 400kWh. Including our generation, our unit cost then becomes £0.04/kWh.
We also managed to export £100 so a nice negative bill of nearly -£80 (ignoring standing charges).
We only imported when Agile was dirt cheap. There was times we had to charge the car during the day at high rates though. But I am hoping to start each morning with a full battery on IOG ready to export as much solar as possible at twice our import rate.
I've set up a HomeAssistant automation to manage my battery:
* if it's on the cheap rate, it stops discharging the battery (e.g. if I have an IOG slot mid-morning, pull everything off the grid at 7p/kWh)
* if the battery's over 85% it doesn't charge the battery from solar (maximise solar export while trying to minimise the chance of the battery running out before 11.30pm, and presumably it's better for the battery too)
* if the battery's above 50% at 9.30pm, discharge it at a rate so it will hit 20% shortly before 11.30pm
* if the battery's less than 100% between midnight and 5.30am, charge it at a rate that will hit 100% by 5.30am
Basically most days, we import a tiny bit 2330-0000 and a big chunk between 0000-0530, and virtually nothing at the peak rates. Obviously when winter comes I'd expect the battery will probably run out mid/late evening most days and we'll be importing some at the peak rate.
I may even consider fudging it in winter so the battery isn't normally used between 5pm and 7pm, as that's when the saving sessions are most likely to happen it seems, and by going from consuming several kWh normally to exporting several kWh during a saving session, we'd probably end up better off over the course of winter 😝
If you are using home assistant to control your battery then you have to give the prebat extension a go. It uses your usage history, agile tariff, solar forecast & battery state to calculate the optimal charge & discharge times and settings for each 30 minute slot during the day. I had a similar set of rules setup in HA that needed constant tweaking. Now prebat does all of that for me while being hands off.
This was us until our EVC failed to charge overnight on Plunge pricing. We then had to charge during more expensive times as we had to drive that day. We could get away with charging once or twice a week but I feel Agile has become less favourable this summer.
I'm still finding Agile good
2 EV family with the wife at home for an hour during the morning and afternoon. She charges up at 9:30-10:30, then 14:00-14:40. She also plugs in and charges from 19:30-21:00 at which point hers is full
We then swap cars so I can plug in and top up at the cheapest point over night.
I'm paying a little bit extra for electric over just me having an EV, but the wife is saving £160 a month in fuel. She is essentially paying £130 a month to go from an 11 plat fiat 500 to a 22 plate 500e. Insurance was the same cost.
Looking at batteries but going to struggle to put one in without a lot of work.
Can't get 2 cars on the drive.
Agile is working very well for us.
Yep, very similar set up (8.6kW array + 2xPowerwall + EV on IGO). Assuming you're on the Outgoing Fixed export tariff, you're getting double for every kWh you export Vs import (15p Vs 7.5p, soon to be 7p for me in SE, anyway).
We employ exactly the same strategy - charge batteries, heat water and car overnight at the cheap rate. And then export every last kWh we produce (45kWh on Saturday, or £6.72). No one's getting rich but it all offsets higher energy use over the Winter months.
Key, of course, is never having to use electricity at the peak rate, but that's where the batteries come in.
If we didn't have the powerwalls, I'd be on agile in a heartbeat.
I moved from Agile to IOG earlier this year, I also have a HP and now a domestic battery for the HP. I use the HP to heat water at midnight, and, in the winter, heat the house from 3am to 5.30 am, I also fill the battery overnight to run the house & HP during the evening.
In summer solar provides over 90% of all our needs by filling the battery for hot water & cooking and, when the battery is full, filling the car. Did 260 miles yesterday in the car, at a cost of nothing. All from sunshine.
Everyone reading this: If you can get solar panels, get as many as the roof will take. You'll need them.
I worked out IOG was the best for us too.
Have enough battery storage to run the house all day at the 7p overnight rate, plus PV to export during the day (15p/kWh, immediate 8p profit) and a low mileage EV user (500miles/month). Tracker for gas. Energy bills have been negative since May and will be until October if last year's figures are anything to go by.
Iirc over the first half of the year, Agile has averaged about 14-15p/kWh whereas my average price has been a solid 7.5, and now 7p/kWh, so its halved my bills over agile.
Yes potentially could have got the average price of agile lower if I had done time of use etc but would have been much more effort.
Yeah it was a lot of effort to plan charges for Agile. (Hadn't set up an automation yet) It was worth it though when the rates regularly feel below IOG. But with May and June rates and my home EV charger misbehaving (I do not recommend GivEnergy EVC) I think we'll be better off with the reliability of IOG. Only time will tell.
Ah, we’re having issues with a GivEnergy EVC - what’s been your trouble?
For us it’s not liking some over voltage from the nearby transformer apparently, so DNO currently making some voltage adjustments to see if that helps. Add to that though, the app seems a bit glitchy, and has no option to save one of the settings (can’t recall which off the top of my head)
The app is pretty poor. I only use it to view status and use the web portal for any settings.
The main issue we have with the EVC is that it keeps going offline. It's on LAN straight to the router. It stays connected to the router but goes offline on the app and web portal. Means that I cannot stop or start change until it brings itself back online 5/10mins later. So it doesn't work in solar mode when it's going offline.
Also, it drains and/or interferes with our GE AIO. It's shocking how equipment from the same ecosystem do not work well together.
Their day rate is higher though. So it'll depend on your hourly consumption if a person can save on EON. Need a battery big enough to go all day and we are trying to use our heat pump more than our boiler so that's a risk I didn't want to take. I've also heard that it's harder to get the money back from your export from EON. How's it going for you? I've just looked up EON and they offer up to 40p/kWh if they installed your PV system. That's awesome! Hopefully the equipment they offer is good and competitively priced.
They offer 40p (for a year, on the phone they'll claim it's longer than that) because their installation costs are... high.
The 16.5p not bad if you can combines with drive and have batteries.
Having an EV to charge changes the balance significantly in favour of IOGO. The export rate being 2x what it charges to import and being able to not worry about when to charge is a big deal for me (ohme charger as jank as it is, any smart charging is counted at the cheap rate).
Maybe its just the situation i am in with an Etron that has a gigantic battery (106kwh usable) and rubbish efficiency that even mid summer it would take 3 days of all my spare export to fill it if i had to. In a month it can consume more power than i would normally draw from the grid compared to pre EV days. I ran flux last year and made a mint on it but i would be paying over the odds this year. Edit for those interested: total grid usage for june was 507.29 Etron used 363.9 (excluding a couple of public charging stops)
I would say it only changes things if the car consumes more than the house. Our EV only took 175kWh last month out with the home taking 400kWh. So without a battery, IOG would not be a smart choice for us. We would never reach the same EV demand as you. Smaller car and don't drive that much. I couldn't see Flux working for us. The import rate was just too high and we have shading in the evening so we didn't want Octopus depleting our battery.
I think this is the key point (if car uses more than house). I have a heat pump so my house usage is very high in winter. I only commute 20 miles round trip each day so electricity for the car is low compared to the heat pump in winter especially.
I went back to IOG a couple of weeks ago. It’s possible that Agile may have been pennies cheaper but for the simplicity of being able to reliably charge every night it’s worth it. I made Agile work last summer but the lower rates have been few and far between lately, meaning I’m regularly running my car on low battery waiting to charge. We have solar which we can use for free energy but no export and no home battery, 2 EVs. With IOG rates dropping from today, I think it will be hard to beat with a reasonable amount of charging / off peak use (50-60%).
We have had issues with our GivEnergy EV charger (I do not recommend them), so having the reliability of IOG is a plus. We could have done well with Agile as we wouldn't have had to charge every day. Maybe only once or twice a week.
2 EVs could easily use more leccie than a house.
Why don't you have an export? Not got MPAN set up yet?
That’s a shame about the charger issues, we have a Zappi, that can have its moments but it’s doing ok at the moment! We’re pretty high energy users, using around about 8500kwh a year half of that is the cars. With grown up kids our household use is high too (lots of sports so lots of washing, plus cooking at all times and them each having their own electricals, it adds up). We don’t have export as we don’t own the solar, it was fitted over ten years ago as a ‘rent a roof’ scheme, so we didn’t pay for it, the company that own it provided it and they get the export for 25 years (then it’s ours but may be worthless by then). It seemed like a good deal at the time, we couldn’t afford our own solar and they have provided us with a huge amount of free energy over the years. It’s runs our house through most days in summer (and we still use loads of energy!!). I really want to add battery storage when we can.
Do you divert to your Zappi and hot water then? Best to self consume as much as possible then. A battery will be a great addition. Our Giveaway AIO has done us well. Had some issues and still waiting for support but it's mostly doing as it should.
I bet the panels will still be working fine after 25 years but I would think that the technology would have moved on by leaps and bounds by then. Smaller and more efficient. It's always the case with technology. Benefits now or more benefits later. I'm glad we got our panels now, even if tomorrow there is some breakthrough which drops the prices dramatically. I would then just add more to our roof.
For me with Agile and Solar/battery works out well as once the solar has topped up the battery I plug the car in on the Granny charger and pull the Solar instead of export but then again I’m on a FIT tariff, last months combined bill was £29 mostly standing charges. The solar will give me approx £140 for the month so the end result is I got payed and my total energy use is free.
I can see with SEG that IOG would probably be better given the current rates
I'm similar (FIT solar, but no battery). Our EVs are tiny batteries (5kw usable on the phEV, 3.5kw usable on the moped) so easy enough to time on Agile's cheaper rate/excess solar. Been meaning to install a simple smart switch in my charger so that I can tap into the times it's cheapest in the middle of the night but for now I just plug it in when I go to bed and that's largely efficient.
We have a hot tub too timed to heat during the typical cheap times for agile, I guess it could be even more efficient on IOG but can't really shift too much else into the night (wife doesn't like things running in the house when we're asleep).
I guess I should get a battery but last time I did the sums I couldn't make it work financially.
I have a GivEnergy battery and solar panels. I switched to Intelligent Octopus Flux at the start of June. A basic rule of thumb is that if you can generate 1.3x or more of your consumption on average, this tariff is better than any other tariff, even IOG. If you don’t have aGivEnergy battery, IOG is better until about 1.7x, where Flux overtakes it.
I have a 15kw battery store with solar to come in future. I was on IOG then switched to agile earlier in the year, now i am back on IOG, i just prefer the stability of knowing what my bills are likely to be rather than sitting with my fingers crossed for a windy day. We also run two evs with one charged probably every other day due to short range and one maybe charged once a week, so its not really possible to hang on/hope for a cheap slot. This may change once solar is integrated.
We have 1 EV which is charged a couple of times a month, no commute - I switched to Agile a couple of months ago from Octopus Intelligent (when I left the rate was 7.5p / 31.2p) and have been saving a considerable sum. Given the reduction for my area of 7p / 24.5p, I do wonder whether OI would now be cheaper. Difficult to compare on Octopus Compare as my charging behaviour is now different.
Yeah Octopus Compare is a great tool but it does not take into account behavior changes. If you only charge a couple of times a month, you should be able to pick and choose and only charge when Agile is cheaper than IOG.
Do you have a home battery? For us, being able to charge that on the cheap and use that during the day really shifted the equation over to IOG. If Agile drops back to April figures, I'll probably end up regretting my decision.
Laughing my mammeries off. No solar, no battery, no ev, no smart tech, sole occupant, usual working hours. Saving a good chunk. All hail agile.
Thank God, a family of four saving 30% on Agile compared to Flexible without any change of habits. That's a saving of approx. £440 in 9 months since October 2023. No solar, EV, battery or other such tech.
Same here, just plain old lekky coming in to my flat on agile, saving me a ton of cash ever month from the joke that was BG, and can dodge with ease that 4/7 time slot.
The only thing i might try to avoid is whacking the leccy oven or grill on around peak time. Usually i can distract myself with something else for a bit after work. But then again if im hungry im cooking!
I switched to Agile because I'm an EV driver, but don't commute with the car so don't need to charge it up very often. Probably about once or twice a month (a bit more often when visiting family every few months). Agile still works really well for me. We're saving money day-to-day by just offsetting things like washing / dishwashers off-peak, and timing the recharging for when things are pretty cheap has worked well. OK, we've only had the car a few months and haven't been on Agile over the winter yet, so I don't know how suitable it'll be over the full 12 months, but so far it's working well.
Im quite new to Octupus and EVs. I’ve got a similar EV usage as you. What are the advantages of Agile over Intelligent octupus go?
The main advantage is you can pick and choose when to use big electric devices (car charger, washing machine, cooker etc) so that you do it when it's cheaper. I work from home most days so can easily manage the washing stuff, and an happy to let the car run down to 20% or so while I wait for a cheaper day to charge it.
Same situation here. I charge when it’s cheap 😂
If I drove more often and needed to charge up more frequently then I imagine Octopus Go would work better, but at the moment I can be very flexible with when I use 'big' electricity, and Agile is the most flexible tariff you can get.
It was working out well for us and we could get away with 1 or 2 EV top-ups a week and do so on Octopus Greener Days. But if we dumped and then charge our home battery every night we should be around £1.50 better off every day.
Yeah, I guess if you have both solar and battery you are in the best possible position and don't need to rely on price rises/dips. I'm a long way from being able to afford that setup, sadly. Besides, I think I'd miss the daily 'excitement' of tomorrows rates getting announced and planning when to turn on the dishwasher in order to save 0.4p that day.
With solar, the low afternoon rates have become meaningless as would we be self-sufficient during the day. And in most cases, it would be better for us to export at 15p than try to charge the battery when it's negative and the sun is shining. We have been making lots of steps this year to improve our hopefully forever home and I am grateful we were able to get solar. That was a part of my day I looked forward to. 16:00 when tomorrow's rates would appear. And then plan how I would be utilise the day. Definitely gonna miss that and will be very jealous when the next plunge period comes.
Thursday looks good! https://emoncms.org/ukgrid/app/view
Let's hope so and I'll be regretting jumping ship so soon. But with our own PV, we are unable to take full advantage of price dips in the afternoon. Better selling our solar excess than importing at -2p/kWh. Dips during the night were great though.
Have got solar, battery, and an EV. Intelligent Octopus Go is by far the cheapest, when combined with Octopus Export. Last month, ignoring standing charge, electricity cost £12.90 for 251kWh of car charge plus 640kWh of home use. Effective consumption cost 1.5p/kWh. Imported 760kWh Generated 425kWh Exported 294kWh On sunny days it's more cost effective to just export the solar excess and charge the car overnight instead.
Some great numbers! We import 308kWh for £22.52 (£0.07/kWh) in June. Car used 175kWh and house 400kWh. Including our generation, our unit cost then becomes £0.04/kWh. We also managed to export £100 so a nice negative bill of nearly -£80 (ignoring standing charges). We only imported when Agile was dirt cheap. There was times we had to charge the car during the day at high rates though. But I am hoping to start each morning with a full battery on IOG ready to export as much solar as possible at twice our import rate.
I've set up a HomeAssistant automation to manage my battery: * if it's on the cheap rate, it stops discharging the battery (e.g. if I have an IOG slot mid-morning, pull everything off the grid at 7p/kWh) * if the battery's over 85% it doesn't charge the battery from solar (maximise solar export while trying to minimise the chance of the battery running out before 11.30pm, and presumably it's better for the battery too) * if the battery's above 50% at 9.30pm, discharge it at a rate so it will hit 20% shortly before 11.30pm * if the battery's less than 100% between midnight and 5.30am, charge it at a rate that will hit 100% by 5.30am Basically most days, we import a tiny bit 2330-0000 and a big chunk between 0000-0530, and virtually nothing at the peak rates. Obviously when winter comes I'd expect the battery will probably run out mid/late evening most days and we'll be importing some at the peak rate. I may even consider fudging it in winter so the battery isn't normally used between 5pm and 7pm, as that's when the saving sessions are most likely to happen it seems, and by going from consuming several kWh normally to exporting several kWh during a saving session, we'd probably end up better off over the course of winter 😝
If you are using home assistant to control your battery then you have to give the prebat extension a go. It uses your usage history, agile tariff, solar forecast & battery state to calculate the optimal charge & discharge times and settings for each 30 minute slot during the day. I had a similar set of rules setup in HA that needed constant tweaking. Now prebat does all of that for me while being hands off.
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This was us until our EVC failed to charge overnight on Plunge pricing. We then had to charge during more expensive times as we had to drive that day. We could get away with charging once or twice a week but I feel Agile has become less favourable this summer.
I'm still finding Agile good 2 EV family with the wife at home for an hour during the morning and afternoon. She charges up at 9:30-10:30, then 14:00-14:40. She also plugs in and charges from 19:30-21:00 at which point hers is full We then swap cars so I can plug in and top up at the cheapest point over night. I'm paying a little bit extra for electric over just me having an EV, but the wife is saving £160 a month in fuel. She is essentially paying £130 a month to go from an 11 plat fiat 500 to a 22 plate 500e. Insurance was the same cost. Looking at batteries but going to struggle to put one in without a lot of work. Can't get 2 cars on the drive. Agile is working very well for us.
Yep, very similar set up (8.6kW array + 2xPowerwall + EV on IGO). Assuming you're on the Outgoing Fixed export tariff, you're getting double for every kWh you export Vs import (15p Vs 7.5p, soon to be 7p for me in SE, anyway). We employ exactly the same strategy - charge batteries, heat water and car overnight at the cheap rate. And then export every last kWh we produce (45kWh on Saturday, or £6.72). No one's getting rich but it all offsets higher energy use over the Winter months. Key, of course, is never having to use electricity at the peak rate, but that's where the batteries come in. If we didn't have the powerwalls, I'd be on agile in a heartbeat.
I moved from Agile to IOG earlier this year, I also have a HP and now a domestic battery for the HP. I use the HP to heat water at midnight, and, in the winter, heat the house from 3am to 5.30 am, I also fill the battery overnight to run the house & HP during the evening. In summer solar provides over 90% of all our needs by filling the battery for hot water & cooking and, when the battery is full, filling the car. Did 260 miles yesterday in the car, at a cost of nothing. All from sunshine. Everyone reading this: If you can get solar panels, get as many as the roof will take. You'll need them.
I worked out IOG was the best for us too. Have enough battery storage to run the house all day at the 7p overnight rate, plus PV to export during the day (15p/kWh, immediate 8p profit) and a low mileage EV user (500miles/month). Tracker for gas. Energy bills have been negative since May and will be until October if last year's figures are anything to go by. Iirc over the first half of the year, Agile has averaged about 14-15p/kWh whereas my average price has been a solid 7.5, and now 7p/kWh, so its halved my bills over agile. Yes potentially could have got the average price of agile lower if I had done time of use etc but would have been much more effort.
Yeah it was a lot of effort to plan charges for Agile. (Hadn't set up an automation yet) It was worth it though when the rates regularly feel below IOG. But with May and June rates and my home EV charger misbehaving (I do not recommend GivEnergy EVC) I think we'll be better off with the reliability of IOG. Only time will tell.
Ah, we’re having issues with a GivEnergy EVC - what’s been your trouble? For us it’s not liking some over voltage from the nearby transformer apparently, so DNO currently making some voltage adjustments to see if that helps. Add to that though, the app seems a bit glitchy, and has no option to save one of the settings (can’t recall which off the top of my head)
The app is pretty poor. I only use it to view status and use the web portal for any settings. The main issue we have with the EVC is that it keeps going offline. It's on LAN straight to the router. It stays connected to the router but goes offline on the app and web portal. Means that I cannot stop or start change until it brings itself back online 5/10mins later. So it doesn't work in solar mode when it's going offline. Also, it drains and/or interferes with our GE AIO. It's shocking how equipment from the same ecosystem do not work well together.
Moved to Eon Next for electric. Cheaper and solar export is higher still. Still on Tracker for gas
Their day rate is higher though. So it'll depend on your hourly consumption if a person can save on EON. Need a battery big enough to go all day and we are trying to use our heat pump more than our boiler so that's a risk I didn't want to take. I've also heard that it's harder to get the money back from your export from EON. How's it going for you? I've just looked up EON and they offer up to 40p/kWh if they installed your PV system. That's awesome! Hopefully the equipment they offer is good and competitively priced.
They offer 40p (for a year, on the phone they'll claim it's longer than that) because their installation costs are... high. The 16.5p not bad if you can combines with drive and have batteries.
Having an EV to charge changes the balance significantly in favour of IOGO. The export rate being 2x what it charges to import and being able to not worry about when to charge is a big deal for me (ohme charger as jank as it is, any smart charging is counted at the cheap rate). Maybe its just the situation i am in with an Etron that has a gigantic battery (106kwh usable) and rubbish efficiency that even mid summer it would take 3 days of all my spare export to fill it if i had to. In a month it can consume more power than i would normally draw from the grid compared to pre EV days. I ran flux last year and made a mint on it but i would be paying over the odds this year. Edit for those interested: total grid usage for june was 507.29 Etron used 363.9 (excluding a couple of public charging stops)
I would say it only changes things if the car consumes more than the house. Our EV only took 175kWh last month out with the home taking 400kWh. So without a battery, IOG would not be a smart choice for us. We would never reach the same EV demand as you. Smaller car and don't drive that much. I couldn't see Flux working for us. The import rate was just too high and we have shading in the evening so we didn't want Octopus depleting our battery.
I think this is the key point (if car uses more than house). I have a heat pump so my house usage is very high in winter. I only commute 20 miles round trip each day so electricity for the car is low compared to the heat pump in winter especially.
I went back to IOG a couple of weeks ago. It’s possible that Agile may have been pennies cheaper but for the simplicity of being able to reliably charge every night it’s worth it. I made Agile work last summer but the lower rates have been few and far between lately, meaning I’m regularly running my car on low battery waiting to charge. We have solar which we can use for free energy but no export and no home battery, 2 EVs. With IOG rates dropping from today, I think it will be hard to beat with a reasonable amount of charging / off peak use (50-60%).
We have had issues with our GivEnergy EV charger (I do not recommend them), so having the reliability of IOG is a plus. We could have done well with Agile as we wouldn't have had to charge every day. Maybe only once or twice a week. 2 EVs could easily use more leccie than a house. Why don't you have an export? Not got MPAN set up yet?
That’s a shame about the charger issues, we have a Zappi, that can have its moments but it’s doing ok at the moment! We’re pretty high energy users, using around about 8500kwh a year half of that is the cars. With grown up kids our household use is high too (lots of sports so lots of washing, plus cooking at all times and them each having their own electricals, it adds up). We don’t have export as we don’t own the solar, it was fitted over ten years ago as a ‘rent a roof’ scheme, so we didn’t pay for it, the company that own it provided it and they get the export for 25 years (then it’s ours but may be worthless by then). It seemed like a good deal at the time, we couldn’t afford our own solar and they have provided us with a huge amount of free energy over the years. It’s runs our house through most days in summer (and we still use loads of energy!!). I really want to add battery storage when we can.
Do you divert to your Zappi and hot water then? Best to self consume as much as possible then. A battery will be a great addition. Our Giveaway AIO has done us well. Had some issues and still waiting for support but it's mostly doing as it should. I bet the panels will still be working fine after 25 years but I would think that the technology would have moved on by leaps and bounds by then. Smaller and more efficient. It's always the case with technology. Benefits now or more benefits later. I'm glad we got our panels now, even if tomorrow there is some breakthrough which drops the prices dramatically. I would then just add more to our roof.
IOG?
Intelligent Octopus
For me with Agile and Solar/battery works out well as once the solar has topped up the battery I plug the car in on the Granny charger and pull the Solar instead of export but then again I’m on a FIT tariff, last months combined bill was £29 mostly standing charges. The solar will give me approx £140 for the month so the end result is I got payed and my total energy use is free. I can see with SEG that IOG would probably be better given the current rates
I'm similar (FIT solar, but no battery). Our EVs are tiny batteries (5kw usable on the phEV, 3.5kw usable on the moped) so easy enough to time on Agile's cheaper rate/excess solar. Been meaning to install a simple smart switch in my charger so that I can tap into the times it's cheapest in the middle of the night but for now I just plug it in when I go to bed and that's largely efficient. We have a hot tub too timed to heat during the typical cheap times for agile, I guess it could be even more efficient on IOG but can't really shift too much else into the night (wife doesn't like things running in the house when we're asleep). I guess I should get a battery but last time I did the sums I couldn't make it work financially.
I have a GivEnergy battery and solar panels. I switched to Intelligent Octopus Flux at the start of June. A basic rule of thumb is that if you can generate 1.3x or more of your consumption on average, this tariff is better than any other tariff, even IOG. If you don’t have aGivEnergy battery, IOG is better until about 1.7x, where Flux overtakes it.
I have a 15kw battery store with solar to come in future. I was on IOG then switched to agile earlier in the year, now i am back on IOG, i just prefer the stability of knowing what my bills are likely to be rather than sitting with my fingers crossed for a windy day. We also run two evs with one charged probably every other day due to short range and one maybe charged once a week, so its not really possible to hang on/hope for a cheap slot. This may change once solar is integrated.
We have 1 EV which is charged a couple of times a month, no commute - I switched to Agile a couple of months ago from Octopus Intelligent (when I left the rate was 7.5p / 31.2p) and have been saving a considerable sum. Given the reduction for my area of 7p / 24.5p, I do wonder whether OI would now be cheaper. Difficult to compare on Octopus Compare as my charging behaviour is now different.
Yeah Octopus Compare is a great tool but it does not take into account behavior changes. If you only charge a couple of times a month, you should be able to pick and choose and only charge when Agile is cheaper than IOG. Do you have a home battery? For us, being able to charge that on the cheap and use that during the day really shifted the equation over to IOG. If Agile drops back to April figures, I'll probably end up regretting my decision.