Energy Suppliers, Suppliers of Energy. Gas / Electric

Not sure why you’d want to, they make things easier and enable access to cheap time of use tariffs... but if you want to, you’ll have to contact your energy provider. They’re the only ones who could do it, if it’s possible.

Its not a brand new house, just a "new" house.

Anyone taken one of the 12m fixes offered by octopus etc? Looks like the rate has gone up a bit since I first checked from the MSE email. Bit annoying. Will still be cheaper then my tariff but may wait for the July fall and see what’s offered then.

Oh and before anyone else gets in there: my Octopus Energy Referral code: https://share.octopus.energy/noble-lion-647

Rates will probably be quite volatile for a bit, wholesale prices around this time of year are generally at their lowest and will begin rising again as we head towards winter.

Current thinking is that next two caps in October and Jan will see a rise, I think I’ve seen Martin Lewis suggest if you can get a 12m fixed deal at or near the current price cap or £1650 ish (not the £1550ish July cap) then you’ll probably be quids in on the long run.

I think a few suppliers are now offering 12m fixed at around the £1600-1700 mark (average household), but also worth seeing whst your current provider is offering existing customers as that could be the cheapest option.

If you don’t mind taking a risk, OFGEM announced they are minded to remove the current ban on acquisition only tariffs in October (to be confirmed following consultation), so in October we may see greater price differentials than we do now

Why?

A friend of mine has managed it due to some potential electrosensitivity (juries out on that one) but it was a fight.

I'm coming to the end of a 12m fix with Octopus. Planning to move to their teacher tariff TBH, which would have been significantly cheaper over that time.

I'm not a fan of them tbh and going my todays exchange with OVO which told me they dont make the meters anymore and cant be changed then 20 secs later said they could be changed and then the boy hung up. This could be painful.

BTW I'm not a customer of OVO

What’s the consensus on fixing now?
Have been offered a new deal from Octopus for gas/electricity at:

Electricity standing charge 38.724p (no change) 23.528p p/unit
Gas standing charge 29.978p (no change) 5.549p p/unit

Saving about £100 a year, fix this now or wait?
We don’t have an EV and I can’t see my partner having the time or inclination to go for the agile contract and save money by using energy at different times.
Annual consumption of 1600 kWh average about £110 a month over the year.

Anyone looking for an Octopus referral.

https://share.octopus.energy/grey-snail-101

Had an Octopus Home Mini delivered yesterday after our IHD was blown up by a power surge and I'm really impressed.

It's tiny, pink and super easy to setup (plug it in, scan a bar code on your phone, give it your WiFi password) and it works with the Home Assistant Octopus integration, so I can now check energy usage and cost from my Home Assistant dashboard and automate all the things. Only minor gripe is the live usage updates every minute when an IHD or Home Pro update in real time.

The Home Assistant integration knows if there's a saving sesh going on and if it's a greener day (but not if there's free electricity yet, as far as I can see). You can also display stuff like how many Octopoints you've got, if you've got any spins of the wheel left etc. but you end up with a LOT of visible entities so I've hidden these. They're still there behind the scenes though, so I can still do stuff like create an automation which sends a notification to my phone every time I've got a wheel spin. Also the default entity names are very user unfriendly so I had to translate them all into plain English!

As we've very much gone down the smart home route what will be a lot more useful is automatically switching things off when there's a savings session or if the price of lekky ramps up (we're on the tracker tariff).

I had been wondering about fixing but we'd then lose the variability of the tracker tariff and if your home can adjust it's demand based on variable tariff prices it seems to make more sense to stick, especially as there's no point in us having Agile.

All being well we should have a heat pump and MVHR system which can also be connected to Home Assistant soon, so we'll be living in the future!

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What a time to be alive etc

Hopefully if all this shit works we still will be :P

The er, 'barriers to entry' are concerning though.

Is Octopus considered better than Ovo?

Yes.

Just used your code thank you and here is mine for the next person https://share.octopus.energy/eager-crane-498

I've just taken a punt and price fixed with Octopus. Anyone else fixed?

What is the energy price cap and how much are gas and electricity bills going up?

Yep did it last month with EON Next…was SVR before. Cost me an extra £7 per month to fix it

Yes, last month as it was advised to on all the money saving places, it’s about to go up very soon (I think)

Just fixed for 12m with octopus. Switching tariffs genuinely was about 3 clicks. Quality service.

Anyone actually won anything on the Octopus spinny wheel thing?

Yep. I won 1p once. Then when I joined the Octoplus rewards thing, you get points not cash. basically get 8 points every spin. 8pts is worth 1p when redeemed as credit for your account. Octoplus has other benefits too

I won 800 points this month, first time I've ever had anything other than 8 points on the spins. Had a bundle of points on the energy saving hours, mainly as my meter wasn't working at the time.

Absolutely zip

I'm still on the Octopus tracker, should I be fixing?

Apologies for outsourcing my financial legwork.