Frugal Friday…

Remember I said a while ago that I would pop up every now and again with one of these posts when something notable occurred to me to write about? Well, here we are - and it’s going to be another one on the subject of energy! 

After writing in my recent post about a year in the house on the subject of having to get used to not needing to load-shift electricity use to make the best use of a time-of-use tariff,  we promptly upped and jumped straight back onto one again! Not Economy 7 this time - with gas for our heating and hot water these days that would not be good for us at all, but instead one of the smart tariffs that our supplier (Octopus) offers. It’s called Agile - and we’ve really thrown ourselves in at the deep end here  as on Agile the unit price of your electricity changes literally every 30 minutes! 

The idea of Agile is that it directly ties your electricity prices to the wholesale rates - so when energy is at its cheapest to the suppliers it is also cheapest for the customer. This encourages those on the tariff to use more energy when the grid is greenest, and as little as possible when the draw from the grid is at its heaviest - usually 4pm - 7pm. On occasions when more energy is being generated than can be consumed, we can even be paid to use electricity, not something  you get on too many tariffs these days!  

The 30 minute changes are a lot to get your head around - you need to be prepared to plan use of things like the dishwasher and washing machine to make the best use of the tariff.  It’s worth it though - I got a full load of bedding washed and tumble dried the other night for pretty much nothing! It can also be a bit “roundabouts and swings” - while Sunday’s use averaged at around  16p/kWh, Mondays was very slightly above the current capped rate for our area thanks to an apparently rare day with relatively high rates all day. Meanwhile we woke on Wednesday morning to 3.5kWh used for a grand cost of 8p -  towels washed and tumble dried and the dishwasher run as well - but low and negative pricing meaning the lot cost us less than our usual overnight base load. 

Snapshot showing the prices in the early hours of 16/10/24

Looking at the average prices is the way to go for sure - that and working out minor changes that will have a decent result. On Tuesday evening for example had I cooked my tea at 6.45pm I would have been using electricity at 35p/kWh - holding off just 20 minutes dropped that unit price to under 20p, AND meant I was using energy when the grid was under less pressure, too. There will undoubtedly be times when we do opt to use the energy at the higher price, but there will be a lot more when we don’t I suspect! 

So you might be thinking “this sounds great - where do I sign?”  by now - but beware, it really isn’t as simple as that! For a start there is always a possibility that rates can shoot up - there is a cap but it is set at £1/kWh - and while it looks unlikely to happen, it’s important to accept that it could happen.  The mitigation on the concerns about that is that if there did look like being a point where it seemed the tariff was going to suddenly get very expensive for more than a short period, jumping back to the standard variable tariff should be easy and quick.  As said before, this is not a “set and forget” tariff either - you really need to be willing to get stuck in, plan use of appliances etc. on that note, having appliances that you can set on timers is also useful. On my experience so far if you could just shift use to the “standard” off peak times you would make a small saving. If you did that and avoided use during the peak time slot almost completely that saving would be slightly larger, but the best gains are to be made by really choosing to run as much as possible when prices are at their lowest. In short you need to be wiling to adapt your lifestyle a bit - and probably also be someone who likes a bit of a challenge! It’s not one to jump in to on a whim - I’ve been keeping my eye on the Agile prices for about the last 6 months, and MrEH has been in on the act for the past couple of months prior to us making the decision, too.  I have also been following the chat about it on the MSE Forum, as well. Only when we felt we had sufficient information to make a solid decision did we decide to take the plunge. We will now be keeping a super-close eye on our costs, in fact MrEH is planning to work on a bit of  spreadsheet to help with this! 

If you did decide that a switch to Octopus with a view to considering Agile might be for you (or even just a switch to one of their other tariffs) then what I can offer you is a referral code which would gain you as an incoming customer £50 energy credit, and as the referring customer I get £50 too, so win/win there. This post is in no way an advert for Octopus by the way, but we have been with them for a while, including making use of their “move home” service to carry our energy account straight to the new house last year - that went so smoothly we never had to even register with the deemed supplier here - the switch had happened by the time we got the keys! Overall we have been really pleased with them - when we have had cause to contact their customer services problems have been dealt with swiftly and efficiently, usually a good test of an energy supplier. If you did want to join Octopus using my code then clicking on this link will take you to their website and share the code too: https://share.octopus.energy/topaz-macaw-702 

I’ll report back when we have a few months of solid Agile use under our belts and let you know what we think at that stage, and any more pros and cons I have found. 

Robyn

One year on….

 Astonishing to think we have been in our house for an entire year now. I’m sure MrEH would not admit to any such thing, but I certainly still find myself wandering round it thinking “how on EARTH do we get to live somewhere like this?!”

Northern lights from the garden - 10-10-24

There have been differences large and small to get used to - a water meter and smart meters for energy (all excellent). Having to deal with things like getting a boiler serviced (long term readers may recall that our flat was all-electric, with a mix of types of storage heaters which only need attention when they go wrong, so central heating is still a novelty!) and even more outlandish, needing a chimney sweep! One of the biggest day to day changes relates back to the change in energy types - having spent the previous 20 years load-shifting to use as much overnight as possible due to our Economy 7 electricity set-up, it still feels extremely odd to notice after tea that the dishwasher is full, and just put it on there and then, or to make good use of a nice sunny Friday by getting all the washing done! 

Washing is another area where the house is such an advantage over the flat too - of course there we did have some outside drying space  by way of a lovely old wooden pulley rack on the balcony - extra useful because it was both under cover and open to the air, so useable at almost all times of year! Here though we have a whole whirligig line to fill - meaning I can do several washes on a “good drying day” and get the whole lot dry and ready to put away by that same evening. It also of course reduces the amount of damp washing hanging around the house when the weather is good, although we still have our trusty airer and dehumidifier for periods of less favourable conditions! That also gives an advantage on energy use too - and I’m certainly making less use of the “dryer” part of our washer-dryer. 

It’s tricky to really compare energy use as obviously going from a set-up which had only a teeny amount of gas use (just for the cooker) to one where gas is our primary energy source - providing room heating and hot water.  Also having only had one winter in this house - and a relative warm one at that - it’s been a steep learning curve not only around the best use of the thermostat and radiators, correct settings and timings etc, but also just how the house behaves in terms of heat retention, how fast it warms up etc. 

It will come as no real surprise I imagine that the biggest change of all is having the garden - something which we have wanted for so long, and yet gives us more joy than we could really have even begun to imagine. I’ve documented our efforts and results through the summer in the “in the garden” posts - with one more of those to come for this year I suspect. Small things though - like being able to simply wander outside with my first brew of the morning on a warmer summer weekend and sit in our very own quiet peaceful space. Of course we used to do that on the balcony too, but the garden is different somehow. Knowing that the things we grow, nobody will come along and weed killer them just because they can (that was a spectacular low point of having our outdoor space at the mercy of our local council!) or indeed just dig the up and steal them! (a former neighbour!) Hearing tales from our old neighbours of life in the flats certainly underlines to us what a good move we made, too. 

Possibly the final small joy is the simple thing of being just slightly further along the road from where we were before. We now occasionally head out when MrEH finishes work on a Friday evening to pop to one of our local pubs - not impossible before, but the 10 minute longer walk certainly made it a less attractive option. Being just that fraction over to the station as well for trips out and about.  Of course the flip side of that is being a little further from other things, but handily the advantages far outweigh the negatives! 

Robyn