Octopus Agile review: why I left the tariff that can PAY YOU to use electricity

electric cars have opened the door to an array of innovative and cheaper electricity tariffs the most popular is arguably octopus agile the energy tariff that can pay you to use electricity sounds great right well despite all the rave reviews from ev drivers online i've actually just left octopus agile and changed back to octopus go before i explain why though make sure you click the subscribe button down below so you will see all our future videos appear in your youtube home screen [Music] contrary to popular belief that evs will unbalance the grid and cause supply issues they can actually help balance demand and supply we will explain how that happens another time but one of the benefits has been a raft of new and innovative energy tariffs to help incentivize homeowners to shift energy usage outside the hours when demand is at its highest to achieve this many energy suppliers offer cheaper electricity prices overnight which means one flat rate during the day and another cheaper flat rate over the night many ev owners have taken advantage of tariffs just like this perhaps the most well-known energy supplier in this area is octopus energy it has a hugely popular tariff called octopus go which has a flat rate of around 14 pence per kilowatt hour during the day and then between the hours of 12 30 a.m and 4 30 a.m this price drops down to five pence per kilowatt hour so you can see the attraction for ev drivers to charge between those hours however it is another innovative tariff from octopus that has grabbed all the headlines and that's agile agile takes a radically different approach to pricing you see instead of flat rates octopus agile pricing fluctuates throughout the day in fact the prices change every 30 minutes the clue is in the name really it's an agile tariff that corresponds more directly with wholesale prices and what's happening in the grid put very simply if wholesale prices go down then so does your electricity cost if the wholesale price is higher than your electricity price goes up to and you usually see this increase between the peak hours of 4 pm and 7 pm in other words when everyone else is using electricity this is to encourage customers to use as much energy as possible outside of those peak hours when it's likely the electricity generation is more carbon intensive i.e when wind farms and other renewables are being supplemented by coal or other power plants now the headline grabbing feature of octopus agile is that prices can go so low that sometimes you can actually be paid to use electricity and electric car owners can be paid to charge their vehicles you can find more information online about this but take it from me it's true and it does happen and it's great when it does imagine getting paid to fill up your car with petrol i switched from my octopus go tariff to agile in december 2019. me and my girlfriend live on our own and it was quite easy to switch our energy usage outside of those peak hours of 4 p.m to 7 p.m when the price is typically around 35 pence per kilowatt hour on agile so quite expensive between those hours so we gave it a go or should that be agile anyway fast forward a year and it's been an up and down relationship with octopus agile for us so much so we've decided to revert back to octopus go and here's the reason why there have been highs well in fact lows in the form of very cheap electricity during spring and summer of this year it was common to get prices as low as 1 pence per kilowatt hour during the night and even during the day at weekends and yes sometimes it was even free or we got paid to use that electricity but they have also been lows when the electricity price would go as high as 35 pence per kilowatt hour now we were expecting this octopus makes this very clear during the sign up process so we weren't too surprised and these high prices are often during you guessed it those peak usage hours are 4 p.m to 7 p.m so you might be asking why was it such a problem for us well what we were surprised by was just how inconvenient we found it again that is an octopus's fault we knew what we were getting into and we wanted to experience agile over the course of a year and we're really glad we tried it but in the end it just didn't work for us and our lifestyle the cheap pricing that is achievable although not guaranteed was outweighed by the inconvenience of doing things like waiting until seven o'clock at night to put the oven on in order to avoid those high prices during the peak hours i'm not ashamed to say that i just got fed up of doing it there were many times when i didn't want to wait until 7pm to start cooking my tea it would mean we ended up eating much later than planned and it's just not what we wanted to do that's just personal preference sometimes i want to cook and eat when i'm hungry and having to wait around to switch the oven on made me even more hungry it may sound small or petty but that's just one example in the end we decided we didn't want to organize our daily life around the price of electricity i'm happy to charge my car overnight but that is both cheaper and more convenient and it doesn't get in the way of what i want to do even so the cost of charging your car is only one factor when it comes to choosing and using an electricity tariff you also need to factor in your lifestyle and how much you're prepared to adjust it to fit your energy tariff do the benefits of the cheaper pricing outweigh any lifestyle changes you have to make and if you're prepared to make them if you live on your own or with your partner and you have no issues shifting your energy usage outside of the most expensive hours on agile again around 4 to 7 pm then you might find it really does work for you equally if you have solar generation at home or battery storage which allows you to store the energy when it's at its cheapest and then use that cheap energy from the battery instead of pulling from the grid when prices are high then a tariff like octopus agile is a really attractive option if you have a family where the practicalities don't really fit with agile then it's possibly better to choose something much simpler who would be prepared to wait to sterilize those baby bottles or put the family dinner on after 7pm in order to avoid those 35 pence per kilowatt hour prices personally i wouldn't i love the innovation that is happening in the energy sector currently and i think it's likely more energy suppliers will offer something like octopus agile we enjoyed trying agile for a year but it got to the point where the novelty of cheap or free energy wore off and was outweighed by all the faf ultimately ev's car charging and your home energy tariff need to work for you and you alone it's you who will be driving the car charging it and using your oven tv dishwasher and so on at home for its part octopus has been brilliant we love what it stands for as a company the customer service is great plus they quickly switched us back over to octopus go without any fuss i can highly recommend them if you're with octopus currently you could even trial agile for a period of time to see how you get on it's certainly worth speaking to octopus customer service about you can always switch back to a simpler tariff if you don't find it works for you my advice though would be to do your research see what tariffs are out there think about how it would work with your lifestyle and go from there we actually have a simple comparison tool on our website to help you do just this now to keep things simple it will only show you how much it will cost to charge your electric vehicle on different energy tariffs using only their off peak rate so you still need to think about your overall electricity usage at home but hopefully our tool gives you an idea of car charging costs and is a good starting point for you if you have any questions leave them in the comment section down below equally if you want to share your energy tariff advice or experience then also leave a comment it could really help someone else who is doing their research right now i hope sharing my own experience has been helpful if it has been please consider giving this video a like and leaving a nice comment down below otherwise see you next time [Music]

Channel: Smart Home Charge

Views: 34,410

Keywords: electric cars, electric vehicles, EV news, emobility, smart home charge, ev charging, car charging, ev reviews, electric car reviews, ev energy tariffs, octopus agile, octopus energy, octopus go, energy tariff advice, octopus agile review, octopus review, octopus agile tariff, energy tariffs explained, energy tariffs for electric vehicles, ev energy tariff guide, electric car tariff, ev tariff, octopus energy comparison, octopus energy referral, octopus go vs agile

Id: 6Q1Ej3y329Y

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020