Why the obsession with intelligent octopus? Why not agile?

[orrery]

Have IOG, with solar and battery. I charge the car overnight at 7.5p.
The house runs on the battery, charged from 7.5p units or from solar.
I import peak rate units only when I have a power demand that the two inverters can't meet.
Overall, my costs of importing from the grid is averaging 7.6p per unit, less the free leccy from the solar.

[M777KES]

Try the Octopus Compare app.
This allows you to look at the past day/week/month and compare what you would have paid.
Looking at the bottom line is a no-brainer for me to switch to Agile.
NOTE: I don't have solar or battery to add to the mix.

[Aragorn]

Yeah octopus compare is handy:

Sorry cant see how to make the image smaller. As you can see from the graph though, days when i charge IO is typically ahead, days with no charging Agile is ahead, but overall IO wins out.

[Deleted User 2446]

You can’t compare agile like this very well.

I’m not sure exactly how it compares, but if it’s comparing half hour prices for when intelligent charged to the agile price, this won’t always be the cheapest way of charging and could have been lower.

If it’s using the average price per day, equally this won’t be right.

Agile changes how you charge slightly - it’s much more beneficial to add smaller amount more often at the cheapest periods, leaving headroom or (20%) for a full charge if exceptionally cheap day.

Here is our usage…

[Aragorn]

As always, it depends. Octopus Compare can only look at historical data and ofcourse you might have done things differently if you were on a different tariff.

One issue with agile is you end up having to nanny it, or put some effort into something like Home assistant to pull the agile data and arrange stuff around the agile prices. It also depends on you having the flexibility to load shift household loads around.

We put 35-40kwh into the car 5 times a week. Being able to just plug the car in and not worry about it is a huge benefit. Others might only be putting that amount on once a week, and can afford to wait around for cheap slots etc.

Back before IO existed I used agile for a while. It served me well then, using it without any smarts and just having the car on a timer to charge in the middle of the night.

[Deleted User 2446]

Agree with this. Pros and cons for sure.

I would say that the comparisons over the last month or so is before UK solar adds to the benefit of agile prices in the next few months… which won’t be reflected in OI unless they lower rates dramatically which I doubt.

I just see lots of talk generally of OI being the cheapest option generally, and solar also being a massive save.

For us, the zappi handles the charging with agile and nothing else is load shifted. We tried other apps and systems to try and improve other bits, but quickly found it way more effort than it’s worth so just do everything else outside of EV charging with 0 consideration to the current price at all.





To me neither stack up.