Back in Q3 2021 I moved from the Octopus Agile tariff to Octopus Tesla. It’s been a very cheap 18 months (£30 pcm, including home car charging and heating). Octopus are ending the Tesla tariff, or maybe Tesla is, and replacing it with Octopus Flux: Octopus tesla (powerwall) tariff. I can see the value for Octopus - Tesla is no longer the only/main battery player and the brand reputation is somewhat tarnished by the owner.
Sadly the Flux rates are nowhere near as good as the Tesla tariff (my import/export rates are currently the same!). I’ll get to enjoy my current rates until Q3, but after that will need to switch.
Has anyone switched to Flux already? Have you put any automation in place to help with costs? Have you seen any other suppliers doing similar tariffs?
Without betraying too many confidences,Tesla are completeing the process of becoming an energy company in the UK. Octopus got wind of this and terminated their arrangements. Tesla are energy suppliers in a lot of other markets. This is not about several thousand Powerwall users but hundreds of thousands Tesla EV drivers. What ever comes in place of the old Tesla Energy Plan will be off the back of this. Before the ending of arrangements my TEP tariff was going to increase to around 24.5p from 11.16p. We will have to wait for the launch of the new TEP to see what rates it offers.
Have moved on to Flux as due to other committments I do not have the time to analyse current Agile rates where we live until late June. Also remember Agile doesn’t give an advantageous export Tariff. You are stuck with 4p/kWh at Octopus.
Fortunately the ensuing period is relatively low use as the heat pump will be doing very little. We also have a legacy solar thermal system which will cover most hot water requirements during this time.
Flux rates are not brilliant, especially if you have an EV. The night time 3 hour cheap slot is not that cheap at 20.26p. We have 27kWh of battery storage so can bridge the evening peak and export back to the grid at 16p/kWh profit. Don’t have handle yet on the weekly net cost.
Unless the new TEP is significantly cheaper, it is unclear what the best option will be. Having more renewable toys than Hamleys always felt whilst TEP was a good financial option, but a little concerned the batteries were getting a hammering whilst not getting maximum use of all equipment.
Due to large credit on my account from overpaying for gas (result of no boiler for CH), can afford to let the Flux tariff run for a while. The Tesla Powerwall battery has software to optimise Time of Use Tariffs. It also learns your consumption pattern and knows your PV output. It then works out whether to charge from the Grid or rely on the Solar PV to do this. It then ensures it can cover the evening peak from the battery or batteries.
By the time the next heating season starts, there is a good chance I may be on a different tariff. Other suppliers are entering the market.
Thanks, that’s really useful! It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out. We bought a bit of a Ripple wind farm, I’ve no idea how that’ll work, but hopefully well.
Are there any plans to develop the ToU app into something a bit more advanced that can track multi-price tariffs like Flux? I jumped off Go and onto Flux this week as my west facing solar output is starting to ramp up.
I notice on the Flux website that they’ll need the MCS certificate to be able to proceed. Which makes it a no-go if you’ve done your own install, for example solar - which is not unusual.