OT: meter needs replacing.......

handy. That will help with the hugely increased insurance premiums that EV's seem to require these days.

There certainly are, you can save quite a lot on your energy bill, doing nothing more than having smart meters fitted...

Just before Christmas, I moved onto the Tracker tariff. That is a tariff based on the day-to-day cost of wholesale energy. Which meant, the cost to me varied from one day, to the next, but set for the full 24 hours.Cost, to me, was a little more than 50% of the cap cost. It's not quite as good at the moment, but still 25% cheaper than the cap - still a massive saving.

Other smart tariffs, change hour by hour, sometimes, they might even be negative, as in they pay you to use energy. Handy if you have an electric car, and/or can adjust when you use power.

There is nothing gimmicky about it. The idea is to persuade consumers, to use more when the is surplus, use less when there is a shortfall/generation is more expensive.

Cost of generation, varies hour by hour, cheapest when the wind blows, cheapest when there is surplus capacity. Generation is an expensive business, especially so, generation to meet the peaks in demand. Reducing those peaks, saves millions, with consumers benefitting in cost saving.

Not true, I do not have any of those things, and my savings are between

Exactly[*]. On days when it's sunny or windy, electricity is cheaper. It's like having solar panels without having to pay the installation cost - down the road is a solar farm so when they generate a lot I get it cheap. It's not 'free' like it would be if I owned the panels, but it's a lot cheaper for them to install in a field than on my small roof, so their cost of generation is less than mine would be.

Theo

Though judging by how infrequently "that" Octopus tariff (was it called Agile?) now charges a negative amount per kWh, I presume there isn't much surplus around?

The Tracker is also cheaper, because the customer is accepting some of the risk of sudden, increasing wholesale costs, which the supplier would normally have to insure themselves against, by higher prices.

It has always been attractive, with big savings always to be made, since it was first offered. Only once, and very briefly, was the Tracker more expensive than the cap rate. I, like many others, have saved hundreds, during the months I have been on the tracker. Even if the Tracker should rise for a long period, over the cap - with a phone call, I can be back on the cap, within 14 days at most.

Having a surplus, depends upon not as much being needed, when lots is being generated by wind.

The cap at the moment, local to me is 23.36p. Today, for the entire 24 hours, I will be paying 17.52p, tomorrow it will be even cheaper at

While ever it is less than the cap, I am winning. In all the months since I moved over to the Tracker, it has never once exceeded the cap, not even come close to it - so what's not to like.

The oncoming winter?

Europe is providing shedloads of electricity to Ukraine as the Russians are destroying Ukraine’s energy generation. In the Doldrums Days of winter’s blocking highs, and therefore little wind or solar power generated in Europe, five gets ten that agile/tracker won’t be mentioned much.

The thing is that doldrum days are relatively few, maybe a few weeks across a winter. The other times things can get energetically windy, which means the price is very low.

If Tracker is more expensive on doldrum days, that may well be compensated for the days when it's cheap due to wind.

Looking at it across the last year:

The past is no guide to the future, investments can go down as well as up, don't gamble what you can't afford to lose, etc etc. But that's the data we have.

Theo

Also you still have to pay for transmission, billing, admin, green levies, etc. So wholesale may be negative but those things mean you're still paying overheads even if the electricity is free.

Theo

The winter just past was uncharacteristic in that it indeed had few doldrum days. However, the winter previous to that had three separate two-week periods of low wind output, accompanied by the usual low solar output. Gas outperformed wind by at circa 15GW during those times. AFAICR the three periods were in Nov/Dec, Jan, and Feb/Mar. I’m guessing that agile/tracker prices would have been very high during those times.

That would be an interesting exercise to do on the winter of 22-23, from which I fully expect a totally different outcome

But the data you have doesn’t cover a more representative winter period.

For anyone who blithely thinks that battery storage is the answer to winter’s doldrum days, just do the calculation of how many TWh of battery storage would be required to cover just one of those periods of the 22/23 winter. Then ask how that is going to be recharged before the next doldrum period, as there is very little surplus electricity around. In effect, three such battery farms would be required, to be recharged during the summer. The costs, borne by the plebs, would be huge, and doubtless put on the daily standing charge that we all pay.

Oh for the happy days before renewables came along.

Well, yes ... but the negative prices they used to emphasise when agile launched don't happen so often now, given that wind/solar capacity have been increasing and coal decreasing, it still implies there's not much surplus, doesn't it?

The "shape" of electricity use throughout the day/week has flattened out, now it's more or less a sine wave of 1/86400 Hz, not much difference between weekday/weekend, no tea-time bulge, no 9'o'clock bulge, obviously the seasons still have an effect.

I just checked my E-on tariffs, and they estimate that their first Tracker tariff would save me £9 per year. Their better Tracker tariff would elevate me to a huge £12 per year savings, i.e. £1 per month. Now, the property in question is often unoccupied, and I also wonder how accessible the 'Smart' meter readings would be when I am away. I don't have a 'smartphone', so I don't do 'apps', although I can use my Samsung tablet, if that would enable remote access. At the moment, staying with E-on and using their Tracker, which is their cheapest offer to me, is not worth the hassle and potential problems that I read about all the time for people who switch to 'smart' meters. I certainly don't see many posts by people complaining about their old-school meters' readings.

Granted, the octopus tracker option is not gimmicky, it turns buying electricity into the same sort of exercise as buying petrol.

What I meant as gimmicks were the half-price on sunday afternoon offers that other suppliers have. They just feel like the result of a board meeting asking "how can we invent a tariff that requires customers to have a smart meter, but costs us sod all?"

We will have to wait and see, generally the cost falls with better wind generation, but if the Tracker does consistently rise above the cap, we can swap quickly and easily to the cap cost.

Sounds like one of those gambling strategies where 999 times out of a thousand, you win or break even, but if you lose you *could* lose big?

At least they're transparent about how they set prices, I'm ignoring regional variations and extra decimal places, to summarise it as retail = wholesale * 1.2 + 10p

Doesn't the OFGEM cap only apply if you're on the supplier's standard variable tariff?

Neither of which I'd consider worthwhile vs the risk that their estimate turns out to be wrong.