How to getthe best out of Octopus Flux

Just had an email from Octopus.

Hi,

My name is Alex, and I look after all things related to EV charging at Octopus. I noticed your home’s energy patterns look uncannily like that of a typical electric car owner. So, it got me wondering, do you drive an Electric Vehicle?
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Nice to see them being proactive, but perhaps they don't won't to pay me so much once the sun comes out more :cry:
 
reef said:
Has anyone had their updated Flux prices yet?

It seems likely the export rate outside of the 4-7pm period will drop below the 15p rate of the standard outgoing fixed. In summer unless you charge up at 2-5am and export or force discharge lots during the peak period then it seems it wouldn't make as much sense to be on Flux now?
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Only had the new gas tariff prices, not electric yet.

Will have to see what rates it brings, surely they adjust out going fixed as well, for new sign ups presuming that's a fixed price.
 
I'll lose out as well, although cheaper gas prices will save a little bit.

Standing charge: 45.56p goes up to 54.831p, at least that's only a £33.84 rise per year.

Import:

Peak 41.134p down to 35.409p (I never use peak)
Flux 17.629p down to 15.175p
Day rate 29.381 down to 25.292p

Export:

Peak 30.134p goes down to 25.94p
Day rate 18.381p goes down to 15.652p

At least cheap rate import is slightly less than day export rate still.
 
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My April gas and electric bill.

6-May-Energy-Statement.jpg
 
It worked very well for me, I've been on it since April 2023. I stayed on Flux through the winter, but there would have been cheaper options.

As you say prices reducing has decreased total export value, especially as export has reduced more than import costs.
 
Just got my July electric rates, as per usual export rates drop more than import rates.

Import Flux rate has dropped 1.3p, whilst export flux rate has dropped 2.22p.

That's good news that the day rate hasn't dropped, I hadn't noticed that, ad least that's some good news regards export rates.
 
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YTD electric and gas costs is £95.31, except due to metering issues I haven't had electric import and export for July yet, so may be closer to zero.

The biggest hurdle to going negative this year is the big drop in export rates, last April I was getting 36.85p per kWh exported at peak, and 23.18p off peak, that's now 23.723p peak and 15.652p off peak, import rates have not dropped as much.
 
Thanks, hopefully its just a blip, but given the problems I've had its frustrating, and it always takes so much effort to get it sorted. We are in the middle of a built up area, so really shouldn't have any communication issues with smart meters, although this time the gas readings were getting through, so the issue was between the electric meter and its attached coms hub.

Getting it sorted has taken many weeks, and many phone calls. All the times I explained import and export data was missing, and asked for a manual request for smart data after they started working again (they were out 25 July to 7 August), none of the Octopus staff requested the export data, only the import data, even when I asked if they had all the half hourly readings, they said yes. I then phoned again and specifically asked if they had requested export data - no they hadn't, and its a separate request.
 
@The_One

With an 8kW inverter and 29kWh of storage I struggle through the winter, perhaps struggle isn't the correct word, but an 8kW inverter can only charge the batteries at most 24kWh in three hours. I get plenty in the batteries to see me through the day, but there is not much to export in the peak period to try and offset costs, that's the struggle part. There's also very little excess solar to export during the day, Thursday (5.09kWh) and Friday (7.31kWh) reminded me how bad winter is, the batteries just discharged all day long, with solar not even covering baseloads apart from now and again.

I do wonder if something like Agile would be better for me, but its more complicated to take advantage of, and then I may have issues swapping back to Flux in the summer, anyway another 6.5kWp of panels coming on line soon, so that should help quite a bit.
 
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