Thanks for that HH. Food for thought. Originally I had hoped our last car would have had another year of life in it allowing us to move and all the shifting things that accompany and follow that before needing replacing, but it had begun suffering badly and it was more a matter of fingers crossed that it would make it till we were over here and had a better market from which to find a replacement, with all dine in quite a hurry and a couple of months before we seriously thought about solar and decided to go for it.
It seems I will be doing almost the opposite journey to yours (though ferry at Dover-Calais), so we might pass somewhere at some point. Here’s hoping the extreme heat and the wildfires will have gone, and not replaced by extreme rainfall. I’ll mentally wave on the way!
Yes, EM link aside, they are very good cars. One of my colleagues test drove the 3 last weekend and was very impressed. Are you going that way or still looking ?
Likely going that way. It’s roomy, drives super well, not too chunky on the road or bloated, ie saloon shape and can do country lanes without hassle, it’s relatively light (hence the handling and performance) has superb range… meets my criteria of going to my brother in Switzerland with likely two stops, possibly three in winter or a very hot day, with plenty of headroom (and one of those is the Chunnel) and not totally silly money and looks good!
We’re still running the house off solar, but a few dull days have made me think it’s time to explore things for winter so I’ve fixed the gas for 12 months and swapped over to Octopus Flux.
Flux import switched immediately, but export seems to take a bit longer…
Why that should be, given we already have export Octopus, is anyone’s guess, but once that is in place, I’ll put our PW3 into savings mode and let the machines takeover.
My calculations (using Gary Does Solar’s Solarazma toolset) don’t show Flux to be a very good winter tariff - quite the opposite in fact. It’s a combined import/export tariff with only 3 hour windows for lower price import/higher price export.
If you have a lowish export limit like mine (6kW) you won’t find it saves you much money. If you have an EV then a specific EV tariff with Agile Outgoing (or fixed Outgoing if you are less adventurous) will do far better. However, your exact setup will determine which tariff is best.
I wanted to switch my export from fixed Outgoing to Agile Outgoing. I was told it would take 1 to 2 weeks as they would have to (re-)check all of the documents I submitted back in February when I switched from E.ON. I didn’t buy that ‘excuse’. After 2 weeks I complained and was switched there and then!
Btw it ought to be possible to switch tariffs in the app, but it only offered limited import tariffs.
Thanks for that. We don’t have a lot of other options at the moment so Flux looked a good way to start. Agile is not available and we don’t have an EV yet. There’s no penalty for switching to another tariff if need be.
With no EV, Agile for import might be worth it with a smart battery/solar system. I hadn’t heard it wasn’t currently available. I know that Intelligent Octopus Flux is still paused to new customers. I’ve heard that you can get Octopus Go without an EV, so maybe ask about that.
Failing that, maybe EDF are worth a look. Although switching supplier is more painful than they make out, particularly for export tariffs.
Sorry, I meant Intelligent Flux is paused. Too many tariffs
Yes, I was tempted just to go with Octopus Go as you just need to have an EV charger, no proof of EV ownership needed. We’d get the cheap overnight import but wanted to give Flux a try and see how that goes. We’ll stick with Octopus for now and then see where the land lies next year.
Flux makes more sense if you can fully take advantage of the high export rate 16:00-19:00. So plenty of battery and Solar can make it attractive. The relatively high import rate 02:00-05:00 may be enough to fully charge your battery overnight, but on low sun (winter) days you might not be able export much and still be able to power your house. Gary’s toolset makes it pretty easy to see what would work best for each situation.
well as of last week talking to Octopus levied me I dont need a charger either for Octopus Go.. I was going to switch - my charger and EV will be ready around Jan next year.
However the customer services rep checked my usage pattern and noted I was not getting the EV until next year so she advised I would be worse off switching to Go now - so I remained on Octopus E7. Intelligent Go which is better rates absolutely need communication with your car/charger and you have 7 days I was told to allow the communication after the Tarif is enabled.
Compared to Go, E7 slightly more expensive on the cheap rate - but the cheap rate is for longer, the on peak rate is notably less less and the standing charge is less (In East Anglia) than Go. So Go makes sense when you have an EV that is regularly charged but currently not otherwise over E7 for my bettery and panel setup
We dont use an air sourced heat pump, and we have a 10kWh battery.
One thing I find quite irritating with Octopus Energy is that although we have had Outgoing Octopus up and running and working for three months now, I have had to contact them a few days into each month to get them to actually apply the built up credit to my monthly energy account. Have I misunderstood how this is supposed to work?
With a number of energy companies you do not need to be a customer to export to them…….though it’s normally a poor rate. So they credit the bank account rather than the account you have with them for supply. Perhaps that is the issue
Hello David. No, you haven’t misunderstood. At the end of each billing period, they should charge your account for import and credit you for export.
I had your issue in the winter, as we were exporting more than they expected at that time of year, so the credit was caught by a system flag as potentially wrong. They said that once spring arrived the credits would just apply. Since March it has worked absolutely fine. I’d ask them to check setting me to see if something has been set incorrectly.
This seems typical of the sort of issues that often crop up with Octopus. I suspect their IT is a bit flaky but I’ve always found them willing to help when you phone them.
No it’s not that. Twice after I reminded them, they did credit my energy account each time and the first time they told me it would happen automatically in future. So I have written a “disappointed” letter and asked them if there is anything I need to do so they can make it automatic in future.
I moved to Octopus from E.ON in mid Feb this year. It took until late July for the auto crediting of my export to get sorted. They say it was down to a disagreement between E.ON and Octopus over my meter readings. Sounds rubbish to me. I supplied both with pictures of my meter readings, both import and export, on switchover day. Still, it’s all sorted now except that E.ON still owe me £3.94!
