@chickenbig

So what is the half-life of a coder? 😋 When can they be deemed safe to handle? 🙄 🙄 

Those on old Octopus Tracker will be moved to the new Tracker on 15th Feb 2024... will be a fixed 12 month term.. approx 2.3p more expensive than old tracker. Still a great deal and I'll stick with it

@tim441 for roughly the same amount of kilowatts as the previous year in December. We were almost 50% cheaper using the tracker tarriff. I am not keen enough to get agile to work.  I like the flat rate throughout the day.

@Jeff, what's your take on tariffs coming down this spring/summer?

@editor 

The price cap will fall on 1st April, the wholesale price of gas is about what it was 2 years ago... The price is based on costs up to 15th Feb so most costs are backed in already now. It doesn't really matter too much what happens between now and 15th Feb now for the cap.

The wholesale price of gas shows no sign of going up. We still have a lot of electricity powered by gas.

Octopus are saying they haven't been buying forward electricity this cheap for a couple of years

Also the Market Stabilisation Charge (MSC) finishes on 31 March where suppliers have to pay your previous supplier if you switch.

Obviously depends on what sort of tariff you want. A time of use, type of use, tracker, fixed. I expect we will see more choice.

For basic fixed tarrif for example Brtish Gas even let you switch from one of their current fixed rates to an even cheaper fixed rate if they release one, with no exit fee. Scottish Power offered this option for years and I regularly flipped.

What happens with the standing charge may make a difference later in the year. Scrapping the the standing charge may hit some heat pump owners who use relatively high amounts of electricity for example.

@jeff I guess it’s going to take a while if we’re ever going see tariffs under 20p per kWh again.

Posted by: @editor

↑

@jeff I guess it’s going to take a while if we’re ever going see tariffs under 20p per kWh again.

I don't think we will ever see 20p now for a regular tariff

All the focus on offers will be on other tariff but the majority of households will never have solar or batteries from what I can see. About 4% of homes have solar and many of these are very small setups.

Inflation generally has pushed up prices for good in a lot of areas around electricity.

Scrapping the standing charge would push  costs back onto unit rates (some Infrastructure costs were pushed onto standing charges from unit rates just before prices spiked after lockdown).

We may see some costs shifted from electricity to gas but this will only be short lived in many cases as they will have to shift back to electricity at some point like the Warm Home Discount funding. Just like EVs are starting to pay road tax and EVs will have to cover road pricing at some stage.

its interesting to note that Agile and Tracker prices have been consistently far under SVT - even weekdays and during cold spells and when wind was not blowing etc

Average Agile
Dec 2024 17.7p
Jan 2024 17.5p
Feb 2024 12.7p

so taking into account longer term gas prices there is a very real possibility of sub 20p Fixed contracts in coming months once they unwind older contracts and take on new contracts?

I guess Octopus Fixed Export at 15p may come under threat and we could see that lowered at some point too 

You can't just average Agile. The SVT calculation allows for the fact that people on the SVT nearly always use more electricity during peak times when electricity is more expensive. That includes people like me on many days.

Comparing average Agile and SVT doesn't work unfortunately but does give an indication of the direction of travel in rates, just like wholesale gas 

The SVT does now react quicker as it updates every quarter rather than every 6 months so changes in wholesale prices feed through quicker.

The projections get close to 20p. A lot depends on how much suppliers want to spend on customer acquisition on fixed rate offers under the SVT.

https://www.cornwall-insight.com/predictions-and-insights-into-the-default-tariff-cap/

A world recession would also cause fall.....

Posted by: @tim441

↑

its interesting to note that Agile and Tracker prices have been consistently far under SVT - even weekdays and during cold spells and when wind was not blowing etc

Average Agile
Dec 2024 17.7p
Jan 2024 17.5p
Feb 2024 12.7p

so taking into account longer term gas prices there is a very real possibility of sub 20p Fixed contracts in coming months once they unwind older contracts and take on new contracts?

I guess Octopus Fixed Export at 15p may come under threat and we could see that lowered at some point too 

I agree with @jeff about what is and isn't included in SVT tariffs to make comparison with Agile difficult. However, I'd also add that even averaging Agile as you have done is not a true reflection of cost because of the (probably obvious) fact of one's usage not being split evenly throughout the 24 hour period. I looked back at my Octopus bills and saw that despite my solar panels and battery offsetting the peak price usage (we generated 63kWh in December and 175kWh in January) our actual average price per kWh after removing the standing charges was 19.3p for December and 20.88p for January. That's not so far away from the averages you quoted but still significantly higher and I'd expect non-solar PV customers to see slightly higher still.

Nonetheless, these prices are still dramatically cheaper than the 43p (ish) per kWh we were seeing under an SVT before we switched to Agile.

the principles are much the same if using the Tracker prices - which uses Daily wholesale prices. 

Octopus have rejigged the calcs for Tracker that have increased the rates - bringing them closer to Agile for someone that does not timeshift usage.

Over the last year my real world comparison:

@majordennisbloodnok Then there are situations like a nerd with sufficient battery capacity and time to scrutinise the daily Agile rates, pick out the cheapest half hours that would suffice to ensure the battery is fully charged; then taking those times and programming the Tesla app to follow that regime, cover the daily consumption. Of course, the nerd needs to factor in the approximately 10% round trip losses and the investment in the battery storage in the first place…. Currently I’m on Cosy as my poor sight precludes me from being a true nerd 😉 Regards, Toodles.