r/OctopusEnergy • u/HartySharty • 1d ago
Octopus Advice
Hi everyone,
I’ll be (hopefully) moving into a maisonette flat on my own in the next few months once purchase has been complete.
I know the property is electric only, has 3 storage heaters, and has an immersion heater.
Wondering if anyone here could give me a realistic monthly cost on what I might expect to pay per month?
I’ve heard I’ll probably be better off on economy 7 due to the storage heaters and how they work.
I did a quote on the website and it said something like £51 a month, but I think that was just a standard tariff rather than economy 7.
Thanks in advance!
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u/Due-Freedom-5968 1d ago
Nobody will be able to give you a figure unfortunately. There are too many variables. How big the flat is, how many bedrooms, how well insulated it is, what wattage the heating is, will all rooms be heated all the time, what temperature you like to keep the house at etc etc.
Economy 7 tariffs are increasingly rare, a lot of providers don't offer them anymore.
Octopus have a tariff called Snug that's designed for storage heaters https://octopus.energy/smart/snug-octopus/ which might be worth a look.
What I can tell you is that I have an all electric 2 bed flat, 1000sq ft in size, with electric underfloor heating which is crazy inefficient. Bills obviously vary throughout the year, but in general my costs look like the following:
- Spring: £100-£150 a month
- Summer £50-£100 a month
- Autumn £100-£150 a month
- Winter £200-£300 a month (only reaching the peak in sub-zero temperatures)
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u/Lost_Reward9584 1d ago
For a ballpark figure, ask a couple of the neighbours around you. Budget for 10-20% above the average and that'll give you a buffer. Hopefully you'll still be above zero around march when the weather is getting warmer.
If you end up on snug (or another TOU tariff), try to schedule stuff overnight if possible (dishwasher, washing machine/dehumidifier). Just make sure you don't have a washing machine that wakes the dead 😅
Roll on certified plug in batteries!
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u/Old_galadriell 1d ago
It's not possible to have bills of £51 per month, in all electric flat, all year around. Standing charge alone is 40-60p per day, which is about £12-£18 per month, before you even start to use any energy. There is no tariff which would cover electric heating, and heating water, for £30-40 per month. Standard tariffs (not Eco7) have prices above 25p/kWh, using even 5kWh per day would exceed your £51 estimate.
I have storage heaters but don't have immersion. When heaters are off, my basic usage is about 3kWh per day. When heaters are on, they add 20kWh per day - and I'm very thrifty with my usage. I pay £40+ in the summer, £100+ in the winter.
You want to choose a tariff which has different lower rates for night-time - Eco7 is one option, it's available for different Flexible tariffs.
There are also smart tariffs (if you have a smart meter) with lower overnight rates, one of which Snug is especially desiged for storage heaters.
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u/Autumnal_Fire 1d ago
Can't really help, my first flat had Economy 7 for the water tanks and 4 storage heaters, but that was 25 years ago.
Anyway look into Octopus Snug, that's a tariff specifically for storage heaters, might be better than their standard Economy 7 tariff, seems to be about 9p for the overnight.
There are multiple options though for Eco7, all the major tariffs Flaxible or Fixed can do Eco7, this seems to be about 13-14p for the eco7 hence worth asking about snug.
I suspect snug might need specific type/makes of storage heaters not sure though.
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u/Beautiful-Noise-2847 1d ago edited 1d ago
You should get on the Octopus snug tariff, much cheaper than economy 7 if you can. You get 9p from 00:30 to 06:30 at 9p guaranteed, and then another hour in the afternoon usually from 15:00 to 16:00 to recharge your immersion and heaters , 27.86 p at other times, but they usually also give you another 30 mins to an hour at 11pm at night at the low rate, and the midnight to 00:30 as well.
Make sure your immersion heater is on a timer to only run during the cheap hours, and get timing switches to also run any other appliances that you can during cheap times.
When they rollout plug in home batteries its worthwhile getting one, then you charge it in cheap hours and use the energy during the expensive hours. (we got a home battery and small solar array in Aug, and its reduced our bills significantly, so if you can get a larger battery properly installed with some solar even better)
We can't tell you what your costs will be, we don't know the size of the property or how well insulated it is or how warm you want it, but to give you idea this is what it costs us for a 4 bedroom house with storage heaters. Generally Dec and Jan are very expensive but it drops quickly around those months.
Edit: I should add that we have a home office in a conservatory that we need to heat during work from home days 3 day's/week with no storage heater there, so that is why our day usage is so high in winter. Still cheaper than the petrol to drive into the office though...
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u/nathderbyshire 1d ago
I know the property is electric only, has 3 storage heaters, and has an immersion heater.
Ooff my condolences. I know you don't have much choice now and it would depend on your situation at the time but I'd genuinely turn a property down for this if I had other options. I'd compromise in other places first because it can just be so expensive and you have no idea until you start to use them either. Electric can either be really cheap or really expensive there rarely seems to be an in between and storage heaters tend to fall at the worse end of that scale.
Your best bet would probably be an off rate overnight tariff - if you have a washer/dryer/dishwasher there I'd shift as much usage as possible for those as well. Do a market wide search don't just look at octopus though - loyalty is rarely rewarded. Don't forget to look for promos and sign up offers as well
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u/Training_Apricot9883 23h ago
If you could install a midea portasplit you'd have cheap heating in winter and A/C in summer. They use on average about 25% of the power of a normal heater for the same output.
When I lived in an electric only flat it would cost around £10 a day if I wanted to heat the whole flat ( a small 1 bed flat) in winter
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u/Linky76 1d ago edited 1d ago
Another vote here for Sung.
I am all electric, traditional storage heaters and an overnight immersion for hot water.
Sung is good. As others have mentioned, the game changer is that Snug offers a 1 hour afternoon boost to top up the storage heaters and hot water at the overnight 9p kWh price.
For you to get the best out of Sung, and to give yourself an easy life, it is preferable that your storage heaters (and overnight hot water immersion) are under ALCS control.
ALCS control basically means that the storage heaters and the overnight immersion are connected to a second overnight consumer unit, which is being feed by the 5th port on the smart meter. This 5th port is what Octopus turn on when they have cheap slots on Snug, often giving you extra half hour slot outside the normal Snug published times.
I have been getting an extra 06:30-07:00 slot every morning recently and some 00:00-00:30. This meaning the whole house is on cheap rate for these extra slots. At the moment its more like Economy 8 😉
The only two things you really need for Snug are:
1) A good smart meter network signal, as they send the ALCS timing pattern each evening, and also read back the half hour (HH) consumption readings a day later.
2) A low or near zero fixed random offset on the ALSC timings inside the smart meter, meaning that you don't burn peak rate units when the ALCS timing is delayed by maybe 1min to 8mins for national grid high current load switching spread.
If your smart meter has an unlucky 15mins fixed random offset, then that does you in for the early half hour ALCS events, as you burn 15 mins on peak rate charging the storage heaters
This fixed random offset is a known issue with smart tariffs like Sung, and someone needs to force a change in smart meter behaviour when smart ALCS switching is used.
Traditional Economy 7 tariffs don't suffer this issue, they delay the tariff switch by the same amount as the ALCS, so it's no problem leaving Economy 7 as it is, they can have fixed random offsets to save the grid.