My Octopus Agile & Go Tariff comparison / analysis website

TrystanLea · 2020-03-17T10:13:55.947Z

Fantastic, I will take a look at pysolar, it would be interesting to see the correlation between

irridation x (100 - cloud cover)

and your solar gen feed over time, how well does it predict your solar output generally?

Perhaps (120 - cloud cover) as panels will still likely generate something during 100% cloud cover?..

Bill.Thomson · 2020-03-17T18:49:14.340Z

TrystanLea:

as panels will still likely generate something during 100% cloud cover?

They usually do, but it depends on the thickness of the cloud deck.

Here’s a screen cap of my PV system output:

image887×465 29.6 KB

and here’s a couple of pics of the current sky conditions:

Looking East:

DSC033661920×1080 737 KB

Looking West:

DSC033671920×1080 734 KB

I’ve also seen zero PV output on days where the sky appears as it does in the two photos above.

TrystanLea · 2020-03-18T18:09:32.035Z

Good example, not too dissimilar weather to here today

Zarch · 2020-03-27T16:12:41.696Z

More low, low, low pricing tomorrow.

image1187×751 35 KB

borpin · 2020-03-27T17:10:45.599Z

Switch done. Of course all meter installs are stalled now…

borpin · 2020-04-02T20:25:40.870Z

4 posts were split to a new topic: DarkSky API access to be closed by Apple

borpin · 2020-04-02T21:51:43.908Z

Finally got a solution working for a local dashboard to go on my tablet with today’s Octopus Agile pricing.

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Using Home Assistant and the Node-Red, InfluxDB and Grafana add-ons (really there is no easier way to install all 3 so they work seamlessly together).

The graph shows a rolling 24Hr so far left bar is the current price. When it gets beyond half 10 at night you start to see a blank area to the right as the new data does not come out until about 16:30 but that is fine for my purposes. It is easy for the rest of the household to understand when it will be cheap.

This is a Node-Red dashboard as I could not get HADashboard to authenticate and let me show the Grafana Graph.

[edit]
I added more detail on the HA community post

Bill.Thomson · 2020-04-02T22:57:03.688Z

borpin:

When it gets beyond half 10 at night you start to see a blank area to the right as the new data does not come out until about 16:30

Grafana has a time window selection called today so far.
Have you tried that?

borpin · 2020-04-03T06:13:04.944Z

Bill.Thomson:

Grafana has a time window selection called today so far .

No I haven’t, but when the new pricing comes out, it fills the rest of the next 24Hrs up which is what I want - it tells you when the next cheapest period is (max 24hrs out) so I use now to now+1d which works well.

The other trick is to add a refresh to the URL.

Zarch · 2020-04-03T06:23:47.036Z

borpin:

now+1d

You can also do things like now+1d/d
The /d limits just to the end of that day… rather than going all 24hrs?

borpin · 2020-04-03T06:25:23.417Z

Zarch:

rather than going all 24hrs?

Going all 24hrs keeps the size of the graph constant otherwise I suspect it will want to resize all the time. Instinctively you also know how far away the next cheapest period is.

Zarch · 2020-04-04T16:11:57.908Z

I have no words for tomorrow afternoon!!!

image1189×751 35.1 KB

Zarch · 2020-04-06T09:48:20.415Z

The number one question asked of me when there are Agile price plunges…

How many price plunges have there been?

How frequent are they?

Well ask no more…

Energy Stats UK

Agile Price Plunges - Energy Stats UK

Agile Price Plunge Negative Pricing charts. See when Octopus Agile Tariff paid your for electricity.

Est. reading time: 1 minute

Zarch · 2020-04-19T15:25:57.741Z

More fun pricing tomorrow.

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borpin · 2020-04-19T15:58:57.067Z

There was a bit on the BBC about the challenges NG have with the reduced load. What surprises me is that we are still often getting 2GW from France. Has this been forward purchased?

I do so wish I was on Agile

haffle · 2020-05-26T15:44:44.007Z

Zarch:

I think if you have an EV then Go seems to win hands down with its fixed 5p for 4 hours each and every day.

If you have Solar PV and/or maybe a battery that can get you over the 4pm to 7pm period then I think Agile could well be the cheaper option?

Hi @Zarch; I have been on the Go tariff for 3 months now, and I have just reviewed what I spent compared to what it would have been had I been on Agile. £86.85 as opposed to £92.24 - so not a huge saving (5.8%), but that could be improved upon if I switched use to match Agile’s peaks and troughs each day.

I have an EV, PV and a storage battery; we cook via oil, so it is easy to avoid the evening spike.

How easy do you find it to change charging times etc each day? I’m not even sure I would know how to add the flexibility to the battery charging times.

If I could bump the saving up to 10%, fag packet maths suggest I might only save ~£20 a year, and so am not convinced that adding complexity is the best thing for me to do…

ghayne · 2020-05-28T16:59:33.424Z

Great stuff @Zarch, I have just discovered this thread. We had a SMETS2 installed last September and I bought a Hildebrand IHD/CAD about a month ago and @JaneatGlow told me about the Agile tariff during my request for MQTT data from Hildebrand. I reckon we can save quite a bit a month. Your site is a goldmine of information, excellent! Is the referral code still active?

Zarch · 2020-05-28T18:00:14.660Z

If you’re already in Go and you want compare actuals for Go, you can use OctoComparison.

https://octopuscomparison.netlify.app/

I think if you can avoid 4pm to 7pm using PV and battery you have to save money. especially filling up the battery cheaply on days when there isn’t enough PV.

But, if its only going to be £20/year, is it really worth all the hassle?

I’ve got a Lux battery so there is a automatic tool to charge based on Agile pricing, so its dead easy for me.

GitHub

GitHub - celsworth/octolux: LuxPower / Octopus Time-of-Use tariff integration

LuxPower / Octopus Time-of-Use tariff integration. Contribute to celsworth/octolux development by creating an account on GitHub.

Hope this helps.

Zarch · 2020-05-28T18:02:05.096Z

Hi Garry,

Thanks for the month.

If you need historical data you can grab it via

Energy Stats UK

Download Historical Pricing Data - Energy Stats UK

Download free historical Octopus Energy Agile and Agile Outgoing energy tariff data going back to February 2018.

Est. reading time: 2 minutes

In CSV format.

Hope this helps?

Cheers, Mick
PS. yes, referral code still works… £50 of free credit if you sign up using it.

shaunuk · 2020-06-14T13:26:41.927Z

We just switched to agile. The missis said that won’t work we cook at that time. And this is true. I suggested using the slow cooker during the day or I bbq every evening after work