Agile or Go?

[dan_b]

After the initial heady months of regular plunge events and generally very low prices during 2020, Agile pricing has steadily crept back up in 2021 as demand increased, but also renewable generation was rather less solid and indeed nuclear pretty much gave up the ghost.

I decided last month to switch back to Go - has anybody else stuck it out or jumped back to Go?

Or are there other suppliers out there now doing similar things who might be worth trying?

[Joeboy]

Just requested to move from Agile to Go. Will need meters changed out first as not updating since 6th Feb.

Agile pricing isn't at the moment and for quite a while.

[Tinbum]

I'm wondering if it's going to be a mistake to be on these tariffs soon as people move to battery storage and electric cars. So far I've had 2 cancelled appointments to have a smart meter installed due to lack of availability.

[Stinsy]

I’ve been waiting more than a year for my smart meter. Before I thought it would take so long I did quite a bit of research here where my findings:

- Go is better than Agile because:
- You can set-and-forget all your timers.
- You get a cheap period every day.
- No mid-afternoon peak to contend with.

I found this very disappointing because I was looking forward the the excitement of negative or around-zero pricing and could already feel the smug satisfaction from charging my house batteries, ev, and powering g resistive heaters when the North Sea wind farms got going overnight in winter.

The reality is that the “plunge periods” are just too infrequent and the peaks too frequent.

2020 was a funny old year with many more plunge events than could be expected normally, because in the first “lockdown” industrial electricity consumers shut down completely. So “agile” customers did better than they should normally expect to.

[Inskip75]

Still on Agile and usage so little in summer months that not really bothered - like the excitement of Agile but not had much recently!!
May think about changing to Go as we head towards winter.

[Joeboy]

The lad who came to the house a couple of weeks back to change out the comms unit told me a horrendous story about the hotchpotch that makes up the smart network and the amount of potential failure points in it. When he spoke to the control centre they had comms to the the replacement unit but our house was not on the national register. I think we've been keystroked back in Feb and they can't get us back on. I've requested that they strip it all out and begin again.

On the upside the lad did leave a nice new IHD.

[nowty]

Its "GO" all the way for me, price plunges on Agile too infrequent and the Covid effect of increasing them is now over. The min price of Agile overnight is frequently 8p or 10p, verses the guaranteed 5p slot every day.

I suspect over the long term with people like me with big battery banks, they are going to either have a fair use policy, like you can only have half of your total monthly import on the cheap rate or increase the standing charge to about 100p a day or so.

There was another company a few years back, had a 0p economy 7 slot, but the standing charge was 100p a day and you could not use more than a quarter of your power at cheap rate so was practically no use to anyone.

[Joeboy]

I have been in touch with Octopus today by phone. Apparently there are no appointments released for NE Scotland in the last 6 weeks or so. Making a cup of tea and the penny dropped that I was in Agile against my will now so thought i'd have a rant.

Didn't have a rant at all but sought clarification on the scenario where a smart meter is not supplying figures back to base. At that time you are not on Agile or Go, you are instead on a standard tariff which is a relief in 35p+ kWh days of Agile. One to bear in mind if you have a failure...

While speaking to the guy at Octopus it turns out that after the faulty comms module was changed out and all communications on this change being logged that Octopus were trying to communicate with the old comms module. They are now commissioning the new comms module from their end and hope this will solve the problem, fingers crossed....

[Zarch]

As I tweeted about yesterday, i'd snap up the current Go pricing whilst you can.

Gas prices are as high as they've been in years, so with 50% of electricity coming from Gas when there is minimal wind and solar the electricity price is high.

Aside from a few plunges, Agile lows have barely gone below 10p in the past 4 months.
https://dashboards.energy-stats.uk/d/y9 ... 7480400236

I've just stuck with Agile as i've been generating and storing all summer. I probably should move to Go.
But having championed Agile for so long on the site and on Twitter, it'll feel like giving up on it!!

Although saying that, if we get a windy autumn and winter, it may well outperform standard tariffs.

You watch, they'll be some wind in the next few days and everyone will be like what!?!?!?

[Joeboy]

I felt that way too (undefined loyalty). That's done with now! I am pushing to have this meter comms fault repaired so I can power match my storage heaters/batteries/EV charging via Go against the Graig Fatha WT personal output and knock the props right out from under my gas us on the GCH system come Winter.