Octopus Tracker Prices

[loveawineloveacrisp]

Electricity daily prices seem to be on the up, and are well above the standard variable rate at the minute. Has anyone switched to a better deal recently?

I'm on it and a bit concerned about today's rate. That said I think it is worth sticking with as the savings are made over the longer term apparently. There's a useful subreddit for Octopus Energy where lots of people are discussing this. Their suggestion is to save energy intensive things for the lower cost days (not always possible, but generally I can do that myself).

www.reddit.com/r/OctopusEnergy/

Following as I'm also on Flexible Octopus...

Tomorrow's rate is even higher than today's. I need to do some washing but holding out for a lower rate!

Copied from reddit which might help some people:

We basically have zero wind at the moment due to a high pressure system, zero solar because it's winter, and half our nukes are currently offline for maintenance or refuelling, so this is the price of being completely reliant on CCGT..
Yikes!

FWIW; for everyone considering panic switching. You want to look at the averages over time, Gastracker.uk shows the last 90 day average at 21.59p for me. If you include the lower standing charge on the Tracker tariff; and the fact that we can (and I do!) load shift some demands (e.g washing machine) to cheaper days. I'm still definitely in the green overall

It hasn't even occurred to me to check the rate each day... clearly I need to be more on the ball!

This is what put me off this tariff as it seems easy to wipe out savings with a small number of expensive days because when they are expensive, they are very expensive.

They do it for gas too don't they? So it would cost an absolute fortune to have the heating on, on the coldest days when you need it the most.

Although I did wonder if it was possible to be on the flexible tariff for most of the year and switch to the standard version between about November and February. Or is it an annual contract arrangement?

@Bjorkdidit I’m on gas tracker which doesn’t fluctuate as much as electric tracker, it’s been slightly above the fixed deals on offer for a few weeks but over the whole year it’s been mostly below. Last year November and December were the highest then it dropped significantly in January, I’ve definitely saved over all. That said they have changed the formula for new customers and my fixed term ends in February so I’ll reassess then and compare the fixed price with the new tracker prices. You can leave the tariff at any time but then you aren’t allowed back onto it for 9 months.

Thanks for the Reddit link - helpful. Hopefully it's a temporary spike.

It’s going down tomorrow 😀. My app says 21.9

Excellent!

hooray, I can do some washing and stick the dishwasher on!

Electricity spiking a lot again tomorrow. Has anyone made the leap away from the tracker tariff yet? I think I'm going to. Fed up of having to track the rates every day now.

I opted for a fix tariff with octopus, signed up the other day but the switch won’t happen for another 5 weeks or so (I thought it would be quicker than that) . The price increases have become more frequent now on the tracker, so I think now is a good time to go. Today the electricity is 42.8p per KWh 🫣

I'm on Octopus Tracker and use the Octoprice website to track my usage where it links to my meter. I use it to decide eg whether to do laundry today (17p) or tomorrow when rates are 22p.

I'm saving quite a bit compared to fixed rate. Agile looks even better but I don't think I can control the rest of the family to minimise electric use 4-7pm.