Octopus have updated their description of their Agile tariff for those interested, in case you haven't seen it. 

Goes into much more detail now about how they work out the pricing and the complexity to make it viable in their opinion for sufficient domestic customers in the current market. 

Some of the complexity will go when the Energy Price Guarantee comes to an end next year. 

https://octopus.energy/blog/agile-pricing-explained/

Posted by: @ronin92

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The wholesale electricity price is the price offered by the marginal generator which is usually from gas in UK.  While that is the price of the marginal kWh, it does not indicate how much more is available at that price.  That the DFS has been invoked indicates that NG ESO thinks spare generation capacity is too tight for comfort (presumably because gas generation is already fully committed?) and they deem a demand reduction to be better/more feasible than invoking other sources of generation.

The DFS price curve shows how much generators want to "bribe" their customers with to reduce consumption to meet the DFS call.  Guess what?  We require a lot more to move us than the average utility company.  I can already hear the cries of "Greedy consumers!" (not).  The auction for DFS response is based on "pay by bid" rather than "pay on clear".  The accepted bids are the cheapest required to meet the demand reduction asked for under DFS.  There may have been companies that asked for more but they don't appear on the chart.  The companies that bid lower offered your cooperation more cheaply than those that bid higher - so yes, different consumers are being paid differently for the same reduction.

You can see what ESO asked for yesterday and today, what companies responded with and the the individual accepted bids for each half-hourly service period (see here; DFS utilisation report).  I note my utility had accepted by ESO, multiple tranches priced between £3-£6/kWh.  It may also explain why my utility only invited me 2 hours before the event - I think they must have been tracking uptake to determine when they had just enough customers accepting to meet their committed reduction and I typically have rather low usage over that period.

P.S.  DFS cost around £700K for each half-hour today, ~400+K yesterday.

I was offered the Tuesday DFS just an hour after the Monday one finished. Hugo sent a text message, email and push alert on the Hugo app. Hugo were clearly keen to encourage people. Interesting the different approaches companies took in terms of pricing and contacting customers. 

Posted by: @derek-m

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Posted by: @ronin92

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From tweet by EnAppSys, the price curve for tonight (Tuesday):-

-- Attachment is not available --

At the moment the wholesale electricity price shown on the grid.iamkate.com website is £120 / MWh, Octopus is offering Agile user's the same at £330.30 / MWh, so I wonder which power generating company is so kindly offering to balance the grid at the bargain price of £6000 / MWh. 🙄 

These companies should be named and shamed, and made to justify their prices. 😡 

 

The Octopus Agile price is 2.2 times the wholesale price plus between 11p and 14p per kWh between the peak 4pm to 7pm period. Capped at 100p inc vat.

Then currently capped again due to the Energy Price Guarantee. 

It turns out Octopus have an API for reading the times of future (and past) 'saving sessions', as well as the points you've earned.  I hacked up a quick bit of Python to extract it:
https://github.com/caliston/octopus-saving-sessions

Tempted to hook that into adjusting my ASHP thermostat (bank up the temperature a while before the session, drop the thermostat during the session, return it to normal afterwards).

Session 3 was Monday

We got £17.20 from the one on the 23rd (Octopus). Just turned the ASHP off for an hour and had the battery on (though the vast majority of the savings would have been from the ASHP being off). That's quite a lot of money for basically no effort or downside on our part.

Winter Cashback Alert 5! Event tomorrow Monday 30th January 2023 between 9am to 10am. Event registration is open with Hugo 

£3 per kWh

The morning ones are the least lucrative for me, partly because I'm usually already at work, and partly because the battery storage probably still has juice left, so we have very low usage anyway. Still signed up though, why not.

Posted by: @scrchngwsl

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The morning ones are the least lucrative for me, partly because I'm usually already at work, and partly because the battery storage probably still has juice left, so we have very low usage anyway. Still signed up though, why not.

It is an interesting choice of time slot given last Monday and Tuesday were the first "live events" when supply vs demand was deemed to be relatively tight and this looks more like the previous trial events. 

@jeff Yes, it was a test >>link<<.  Domestic uptake was reduced as you'd expect given the time.