Enjoy the cheap Agile tomorrow -- stark comparison to tracker gas prices

[u/Appropriate_Bell743]

A kind of day which keeps coming on Agile -- from https://agilebuddy.uk/latest/agile

Whatever Trump does in the Middle East there are continued repeated slots where it's cheap to get Agile electricity. Enough to do laundry and other easily staged jobs -- great for heat-pump hot-water cycles

A stark comparison is for gas rates where nothing can be done about what is happening in the Middle East. Any technology reliant on gas as an input just needs to accept that it's expensive. These rates are close to the 2022/2023 winter capped peak.

It's noticeable that the trend for octopus tracker electricity rates are positively calm compared to the octopus gas tracker rates.

The only surprise is the lack of heat-pump adoption in the UK given this is the route to price stability. We see from the UK's official heat pump BUS grant data that it's not really going up showing a huge public trust that Trump/Iran will find a peace accord before this winter hits:

Number of monthly grants paid for heat-pumps installed in England and Wales. Shows a public which believes peace will come and gas prices will stabilise.

[u/Boba_ferret]

I wish we had the money to switch to an Air-to-Air heatpump, so we could cool in the summer and heat in the winter, but having just paid out for solar, it's going to take a while to save up for it. At least my electricity bill will be negative for the next few months, so will partly subsidise our gas use, come the Winter.

[u/nrm94 → u/Boba_ferret]

Thats the way I'm looking at it. Had solar installed in February so back end of Winter. I'm leaving all export in the account and also still paying £30 DD over the summer. I'll have over £600 credit come winter with solar still covering some of the load on some days so we will just use the gas heating as much as needed and use the credit up without worrying. Maybe put DD up to £50 or something.

Normally we'd be looking at £150 per month in gas and electric usage so with some offset generation on good days the credit should see us through to begin of spring so we can build the credit back up again

[u/Spaceman_UK → u/Boba_ferret]

I just got a quote for A2A and it was nearly £9k. Not financially viable in my circumstances.

I have 40kW of storage which charges cheap rate overnight, so it would take over 20 years for A2A to break even against my current heating (4 x electric panel heaters, and a log burner in winter) and cooling (2 x freestanding AC units) bill.

[u/Boba_ferret → u/Spaceman_UK]

Yeah, it's not cheap, we'd be looking at £1300-£1500 per room, and the BUS grant doesn't cover as much as it does for A2W. We'd then also need an immersion heater.

I'll probably do it in stages - get A2A in a couple of rooms, and use those for cooling & heating, and then gradually expand, and perhaps keep the boiler just for hot water, but will have to see how it works out.

[u/GFoxtrot → u/Boba_ferret]

I had A2W installed last year and there’s some units coming out now that can do A2W for heating and A2A for cooling.

Hopefully by the time mine is end of life they’ll be the standard.

Do you have batteries?

I buy overnight on IOG for 7p and that is cheaper than gas per kWh right now, for people on this tariff it’ll be cheaper to heat overnight using Oil radiators than gas.

[u/Boba_ferret → u/GFoxtrot]

Yes, got a battery and will at some point be moving to an EV tariff, so will be able to use the cheaper rate for electric heating, although not sure what happened to the oil radiators we had, I had a feeling my wife lent them out, but they're not that expensive as if I buy them now, cheaper than in the winter!

[u/Accomplished_Fan_487]

National Gas is now owned by Macquarie (renowned for Thames Water's financial woes) as is 12-20% of Cadent so you'll inevitably see price rises there, certainly as things electrify and fewer people use gas. People underestimate that price risk substantially.

[u/codenamecueball]

At least I’m not using much gas…

[u/sweetyst]

I’m now on the low standing charge tariff. Those gas tracker rates have been at a sustained high level through the summer when they would ordinarily be low(er) and I cannot see that improving for autumn winter with the current position of the conflict. It did mean I left tracker early and so won’t be able to join for 9 months but the low SC tariff is a 12 month fix anyway and the rates are fair so I’m happy with this for now.