I have no idea why it didn't spread more widely, I guess like yourself people didnt look that hard, and I only knew about it specifically when I searched octopus.
I don't think it came up on price comparisons which is where most people went for their deals. So I am not surprised it wasn't more widely known, if the sum total of your annual search was fire up a price comparison and click the top entry with no further effort.
It was very innovative in regards pricing.
Sounds like it was actually innovative if it was the first of it's type to be offered. I'm actually with Octopus at the moment on a fixed price contract. I looked at price comparison sites but also went direct through a few companies to see what they showed not all suppliers showed up in comparison sites, particularly some of the renewable only ones which I was interested in. From memory I never saw that agile tariff, even going to Octopus directly only offered me a couple of fixed rates (I picked a 2 year fixed contract). It needs to be advertised more widely if the electricity sector is going to realise the predicted benefits from smart meters. Given how long they've been around now and what a key part of the sell for smart meters variable pricing was, seems odd other suppliers haven't got their own versions. I'm sceptical it would have been worth me going for even if I had been offered it though, unless the maximum peak pricing was only slightly higher than my fixed rate I don't think enough of my usage is flexible enough to move on an agile basis, at least not without a much larger financial incentive.
I guess my key point of contention here is that if rates like that are supposed to be a key benefit of smart meters, then so far the electricity industry has almost completely failed to actually use it or make it attractive for consumers.
Innovation is change. People like, often need, to budget.
Kind of sounds like the opposite point of view to agile pricing being an innovation... Might well both benefit different groups of people. Still, for me I don't really see charging a fixed monthly fee as an innovation.
The mechanism for working out the pricing and timing of the DDs is designed to stop you going into arrears. You can't actually switch most of the time when your in arrears, did you know that?
I didn't, but would imagine that was the case. Doesn't justify energy companies consistently taking more money than they need purely to scam an interest free loan out of people. Surely you could simply pay off any arrears before switching...
I agree somewhat on the meters being thrown out that were perfectly good. But your they may die faster bit just seems to want to find a negative, yet again, common theme. They could just as likely last longer...
Good to agree on the waste from old dumb meters being wastefully removed. Guess you're right they could last longer, we'll see. Can only hope they've been designed for longevity.
Im not sure if you are aware but there is an energy cost crisis happening. Loads of people I know are starting to pay LOTS of attention to the displays now, setting daily budgets etc. They are simply a tool, you wont gain anything individually if you dont modify behaviour, they are one tool available to assist you in doing so.
Yes I am aware, guess that's good for them if people are able to make use of the usage tracking. They should be allowed to install a smart meter if they want to. That still leaves years and years where the smart meters were hard-sold to people who won't benefit and they haven't been doing anything, and I can't help thinking you could achieve the same things in reducing usage with a simple leaflet telling people how much power different things tend to use. You make it sound like I could somehow gain by plugging in the display and watching the numbers tick up, but I'm really not sure how - as long as you have some kind of sense that running lighting, electronics, and appliances uses power and by not using them as much you can save power I'm not sure what seeing the numbers would add to me personally (noting that you could always just pop in the cupboard and track daily usage if you really wanted). Unless you're running the washing machine for fun and decide it's not worth £1 to clean your 1 pair of socks or whatever.
The benefits for individuals will be less about them directly and more about us all overall. Its a bit like covid testing where the individual was kind of irrelevant, but they needed lots of people to test to see the trends etc
A lot of the current benefit of smart meters is that, its part of the grid strategy, they need to know things like useage patterns and how they can be influenced (like the test done to refund people who used less energy in set windows)
Given how long smart meters have been around now I'd be expecting some pretty good data to have been produced by now... Haven't heard of anything though. You could get very good data on usage patterns by doing studies on specific households to test out different incentives. If we were all getting paid to use less energy in certain periods and it was proven to have an effect, and allowed grid capacity to be reduced thereby saving everyone money, then that would be great. I've heard nothing about a scheme to pay me for using less energy at certain times though.
As said previously its no expense to you, wish people would actually pay attention and / or not dream stuff up.
It is an expense to everyone though - there is no line item on your bill for 'smart meters', but the cost is added to everyone's bill regardless of whether they benefit from charging their house battery and EV at night on an agile tariff or not.
Your not convinced by agile, I get it, you cant think outside the box enough to imagine a simple situation, like pensioners at home all day, who should be able to move most of their heavy energy outside the window that costs more than standard methods to the majority of the day when its cheaper.
Right now its not really very good, when I looked a couple of years ago, about 21 out of the 24 hours a day was lower than standard, but the three or so hours were significantly more like double the unit cost.
I don't think it takes thinking outside the box to imagine scenarios where it might be beneficial, I'm just sceptical that it would significantly benefit me or many other users.
I didnt have good enough data available, but it looked like it would be around cost neutral for us at that point, with the ability by not switching the dishwasher on for example between 5-8 to probably make a big diff.
There were times it was low pennies a unit, or even negative (pretty infrequently), literally being paid to use energy (turn everything on asap!) But really people who have a decent base load, running fish tanks, ponds, servers, crypto mining, maybe working shifts etc etc etc all could potentially have benefitted. But it came with some risk, the pricing was volatile, and as said many times, a LOT of people like to budget their energy and not have it vary by season, cold snap etc
Tbf it would be very interesting to see a breakdown of agile pricing vs fixed pricing vs economy 7 style pricing for different use cases. If there was some data showing that I would have saved money by being on an agile tariff even with some minor changes like putting the washing machine on at 8 rather than 6 or whatever, then that would be interesting to see.
