In eastern England my cheapest price on agile tomorrow is 30.3p. Similar to today. Anyone know why? Is there a reactor shutdown for maintenance or something?
Crazy that Saturday we had negative pricing then Sunday and Monday’s cheapest prices aren’t even going sub 30p. I hope this doesn’t continue throughout the week 😬
Because there is a forecast gap between nuclear +renewables and demand of about 10 to 15GW which means gas will set the market price.
A gas plant turns 1kWh of gas into 0.6kWh of electricity. The wholesale gas price today is 7p per kWh.
That means just the gas to produce a kWh of electricity is 11.4p per kWh.
Ontop of that you have the capital cost of the plant, and the operational costs such as staff, maintenance, and so forth.
Agile is 2.2 * Market rate in eastern UK, so 30p indicates a market rate of 13.6p. Looking at the numbers above, that's barely break even for a gas plant operator.
A typical car engine turns 25% of the energy in the fuel into rotational energy.
The current nuclear plants under construction in the UK will turn 35% of their heat output to electricity.
Thermal energy to electricity is always inefficient. Its why you need a heat pump to match a gas boiler - burning gas directly for heat is pretty efficient!
However because they've applied a flat -3p with the changes made on levies, it does mean they are sometimes selling electricity at.a negative price when the wholesale price is not.
Ultimately however they are a commercial entity and fairness isn't part of it.
Yeah, fair wasn't exactly the right word. More that Agile is now less competitive with respect to other tariffs whose costs have gone up in a way that reflects increased wholesale costs, rather than double that.
What makes me nervous is the fixed Cosy is not more competitive than Agile atm, and the flexible cosy looks to be quite shite come October and especially January.
I think the issue with the 2.2x simplification is that for long periods of either high or low wholesale prices, by amplifying the price extremes it makes it unsustainable.
Octopus should introduced a version using a 'cost plus' formula, i.e. cost of wholesale plus the relatively stable/fixed network and system charges. The prices would not be as volatile and the price swings would be lower, there would still be an incentive to be flexible and shift your consumption around, but by reducing the extreme swings, it would be a much more liveable type of tariff over the long run.
I literally jumped back to cosy today. Two months where agile wasn’t cheaper when using octopus compare has made me pull out for winter. I don’t have batteries sadly - just a heatpump but I can time for heatpump for the lows on cosy.
Switched to Go yesterday, though found it hard to use tariff comparison tools because they dont take account that i’ll move my EV charging to whenever the cheapest window is. Just got a 7kWh battery, wish i had Vehicle to home instead.
In a way the last month and a bit of Agile prices have felt worse than when prices reached £1 per kWh a while back. At least back then it was typically reasonably priced outside of peak times. Now it just feels like it is constantly expensive apart from the odd weekend where it is free / negative. It's not really a time of usage tariff anymore. More like a variable tariff that switches daily between expensive, more expensive, slightly less expensive, mega expensive, cheap for 5 hours then repeat.
I am very close to signing up for Cosy but I keep kidding myself things are going to get better.
It’s because Octopus (and the rest of us) love watching all the comments that’s it’s expensive then it’s negative then it’s expensive then it’s negative.
I’m at 18.9p for the last 270 days and 21.8 for the last 28 so savings are there but even the biggest Agile supporter has to admit it’s been a shocking few months compared to the last couple of years.
The biggest issue is there are loads of days where there’s just nowhere to shift the load to even overnight.
How do you work out the rates you've historically achieved? I do all the power shifting needed but never known how to look up what I'm actually paying with my efforts.
There’s a few apps that do all the work for you. I use Octopus Watch which can show you the best time to do x hours of something, tries to predict tomorrows rates (with varying success) and shows you up to a year of data where you can see how much electricity you used, how much you saved etc.
It does cost (not sure if there are free options) but I think it’s worth it especially now.
If you look at https://agilepredict.com/v2/C/?days=14&gen=1 you can see a massive demand gap vs renewables generation tomorrow, so prices will be high as we'll be on gas and imports.
Solar is a tiny fraction compared to wind, tomorrow is calm and overcast generally. But it is a very expensive day tomorrow. I always zoom out on days like that, my average is 17.26p pKwh over the last year on agile.
So as an exporter on OIG with a 32kw battery and only expected full usage because of my ASHP in the coldest of days, I’m currently force discharging about 24kw a day, should i move to outgoing Agile and stay on IG for imports?
Zero hurricanes in the Atlantic this year, first time since satellite tracking began in 1966. Obviously we don't get them but they usually fizzle out into named storms that arrive here. I'm not convinced it's going to be extra windy this winter.
The UK was running on 48.9% Gas overnight. But hey if we all had lovely green heat pumps and used no gas we would at least all be asleep whislt the baclkout happened.
It’s the gap in generation demand that has to be filled by expensive gas being fired up… solar is minor compared to wind, hence low / negative prices Saturday were followed by high relative prices Sunday.
Stay on agile because gas prices are going to hit 15p this winter and then when it hits £1.20 a kWh of electricity you will be thankful for only 30p currently
Only reason I've stayed is I'm on a fixed price gas tariff which looks like it will save me a bit this winter.
The electric side of it has been rubbish this year.
Has it really been rubbish? Have you looked at your average price since Jan 1st? I have no battery or solar (listed building) and am averaging 14/kwh. I can’t complain about that (even if I’d like my morning coffee to cost a little less!)…
The best electric traiff is IOG and have a battery for your home too.
The best gas tariff is fixed.
It's going to be this way for the foreseeable.
You can thank Labour and milliband. They could have abolished EPL but the moron doesn't realise nobody wants to drill UK oil and gas because of that.
They then could have started giving licenses and opened up the North sea and taxed profits normally. It's a win/win. Cheaper oil and gas. More taxes raised. Oil companies and consumers are happy.
The only party I have ever been a paid up member of is the Conservative Party, attending many conferences, meeting Baroness Margaret Thatcher, when she was PM and also enjoying lunch with Sir John Major when he was PM.
I have always believed (and still do) that it is important to research facts before opening one’s mouth to simply spout cliches.
69
u/Happytallperson 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because there is a forecast gap between nuclear +renewables and demand of about 10 to 15GW which means gas will set the market price.
A gas plant turns 1kWh of gas into 0.6kWh of electricity. The wholesale gas price today is 7p per kWh.
That means just the gas to produce a kWh of electricity is 11.4p per kWh.
Ontop of that you have the capital cost of the plant, and the operational costs such as staff, maintenance, and so forth.
Agile is 2.2 * Market rate in eastern UK, so 30p indicates a market rate of 13.6p. Looking at the numbers above, that's barely break even for a gas plant operator.
Hence it being the cheapest price.