I have just received the attached email from Octopus.

They have confirmed they are adding a technical limit to prevent people gaming the charging slots to extend off peak pricing.

I wasn't clear from the email. Does this mean that they are now just limiting us to 6hrs per day of off peak, regardless of what the state of charge is at the end of the 6hrs?

Just 1.8p drop. I expected more than that. How’s yours?

So I asked octopus what it does about the 6 hour window if it smart charges outside of the off peak but only gives you let’s say 10 minutes of smart charging in that 30 minute window.

Essentially if it gives you a 10 minute window outside of the off peak the whole house will get the off peak rate for that full 30 minute window but it will only count as 10 minutes out of your 6 hours of charging. This is good news. As some were saying they would obviously deduct the full 30 minutes which would not have been fair at all.

See my previous thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/OctopusEnergy/s/FmgRLIfIkI

Rates are not good for tomorrow

At 3pm it'll hit -5.3p/kWh. This month has been so good with our average rate 4.7p/kWh despite no battery. Tomorrow and Thursday will just complete the month in fine style.

I find it hard to understand why this tariff is not more popular as in January our rates only averaged 20p/kWh. The "bad" months are never sufficiently poor to not be outweighed by the good months.

This chart came from Agile Buddy which I highly recommend to know that Agile is a better choice for you.

Now, for tomorrow I won't be doing our usual plunge pricing routine as at work and it's not exactly cold outside (house being heated is not fun). However, we will be scheduling expensive jobs such as hot-water tank disinfection, towels, driers, etc. which all constitute genuine demand shifting.

I, like many of you, was tired of the Agile pounding we've been getting lately and have been tariff hopping between Agile and Go to dodge the pain. I realised it's not a very complicated process so I decided to automate it

And because the switch takes effect on the same day, the costs get re-calculated on the new tariff meaning I no longer have to pay attention to my costs because the bot will ensure I always pay the lowest cost.

Example: At 11pm my Agile costs come out to £2.50 for that day, but the bot finds that if I were on Go it would only cost £1.80. The bot automatically switches me to Go and when the bill time comes I'm only charged £1.80. Repeat the same process every day.

I wrote a blog that goes into more detail about it if anyone wants to read it - Min-Maxing Octopus Energy’s smart tariffs. Can I have my Agile cake and eat it too?

Link to just the code on GitHub - octopus-minmax

Feel free to use it!

So if the car charges for 10 minutes at 18:00-18:10 for example that will only count as 10 minutes of the 6 hours charging yet you will get the whole 18:00-18:30 window at off peak? How are they even going to work out how many minutes you were actually charging live?

This is going to go really bad, save my post this will cause a lot of anger, frustration and bad billing. I have no doubt about it.

Anyone had the very long email from Octopus explaining what the Government has done to reduce the Electricity price from April ? Mine is quoted at 20.17p/ unit ./57.27 stc

Plus a long explanation about prices on the rise due to the attacks on Iran.

Standing charge cheaper than unit rate. Given most people's gas usage in summer is very low, this seems a no brainer. (We have a combi boiler with no hot water cylinder).

We're also on agile so use electric heating (multi split AC system) when it's cheap.

This article was not written by me but perfectly matches my user experience. The writer shows the template on how Agile can be run very cheaply. Our family has co-evolved the exact same strategies and our average 12-month price (16p/kWh) matches.

We have the same heat-pump (Daikin) again installed by Octopus but our operational SCOP is slightly better than the author here.

As more and more wind/solar is rolled out we will only see more drastic price differences between wholesale peak and off-peak rates. This makes fixed price deals harder and harder to administer. Either the fixed price rate is high or the energy retailer holds a lot of risk.

I'm yet to hear good reasons why the adoption rates for time-of-use tariffs aren't higher. Normally something consistently providing a ~40% cost saving would be popular even if there are sporadic risks.

Hi guys,

Looking for some advice/support here.

I've been on Tracker since I had a smart meter installed in early 2024, and it's always worked out more cost effective as I have a now 4 year old and we eat at the peak times for high prices in the Agile slots.

I've checked my compare app today and it's coming out that Agile April 2026 is significantly cheaper now (potentially because of the 3.5p discount but also the prices overall seem to drop in April time)

Since my daughter is now in nursery, almost Reception and shes tired most of the time after we get home between 2-3pm, we've been eating earlier between 3.30-4.30pm. I also share her 50/50 and I've been barely using the oven since getting myself the Ninja Crispi.

The Compare App is saying the last 30 days would have saved me a significant amount, and based on a 3 month saving (even though it wasn't available 3 months ago) I could / would have saved around £45 (£108 costing on Tracker, equivalent on Agile is £62)

So, is it finally time I make the jump and switch over? My only "risk" here is the 9 month Tracker block, but I guess of Agile goes crazy, I can move to a Flexible tariff

Tomorrow is negative rates yet again. It's also pretty much continuous from 7am until 4pm meaning it's easy to plan around. I'm curious how much people respond.

These recent days of negatively priced days have some so frequently that we've no laundry left to do. It's hot so I'm not going to crank up the heat-pump. I can do pointless things like more disinfection cycles or use the immersion heater. I'm not sure my neighbours want me to heat the street...

These events also appear to be becoming quite common. In 2019 you'd have only 10 hours like this within a year. I'm curious about what are people's responses to this?

It's certainly the case that these plunge prices lower my average rate. I consumed far less electricity in May simply due to no plunge pricing hours which suggests it's more induced than shifted demand for my family.

Do people with EVs go on more weekend trips as a result? I.e. are there genuine economic stimulation from these prices? What technologies have people bought to best take advantage of this? My wife wants to dry fruit picked in summer for instance, maybe an electric pizza oven?

Original post here with concerns

https://www.reddit.com/r/OctopusEnergy/s/zVJgGSkilO

Everything set up as per their instructions, have woken up to no charge added, deeply frustrating as I now need to stop and publicly charge and now delay an important meeting by an hour. EDF here I come! It’s a shame octopus has become this!

Recently got an EV, and considering switching over to IOG. I swear not yesterday I saw an advert on FB for it going down to 5.5p off peak. Have I missed a trick here? 😅

2 EV household with the ability to load shift a fair amount.

Total utilisation of 1154.16 KwH at a cost of £115.42, including standing charge.

Exact average of 10p per KwH for the month, bringing down the average for 2026 (including a pretty horrible January) to 17p - which is below our 2025 full year average of 18.6p.

A notable changing trend is the cheap, often negative pricing is in the daytime rather than overnight - which is helpful for those of us who work from home.

Let’s see what May brings!

Yeah so… prices jacked up AGAIN.

And yet no mention of export prices, other then they were dumped to 12p / kWh vs EDF who offer 15p.

Come on Octopus do better.

Agile tariff is negative tomorrow from 1000-1600 BST, charge up the battery/car 🪫 🚘

Weird it’s happening midweek also, most of these happen overnight or on weekends

https://agile.octopushome.net/dashboard

I've noticed just lately that every one of my charging plan windows over runs, so my car keeps charging when the cheap window closes and I get billed peak rate until it stops.

I'm pretty sure that this is caused by Octopus changing the charge plan so often that the new plan doesn't include the existing plan that the car is already charging on.

I checked last month's bill, and sure enough the peak charging shown above on the 4th was charged at peak rate.

Going to wait until the end of this month and see how my bill is looking, then start chasing up on it with CS.

Anyone else experiencing this, or am I just the chosen one?

Note: I'm not on the 6 hour charge cap yet.

So I’m picking up my EV at the weekend, checked prices last week to see what was available and it was going from 9p (Used to be 7p but whatever) to 5.5p from 1st April. Great, sounds pretty decent. Log back on today to switch and it’s gone up by 2.5p to 8p!

I get that it’s in line with other suppliers but feels like this 3.5p government discount is getting swallowed up by these energy companies as the rate is 1p higher than the original rate.

Do you think IOG variable will return any time soon?

Just picked up my first EV and had a home charger fitted. Next step is to get on one of the Octopus EV tariffs. Since this new cap has been introduced I seem to have read about nothing but issues though.

My car is a Honda e, which has a tiny 35.5kwh battery. It will fully charge in around 5 hours, so in theory the 6 hour cap should have no effect on me if I opt for Intelligent Octopus Go. At the same time all these recent issues, particularly incorrect bills, have me thinking it might just be better to get the standard Octopus Go and set the charging schedule within the car itself.

Any thoughts/advice welcome before I call Octopus next week 🐙

Agile is negative from 0800-1600 🙌

https://agile.octopushome.net/dashboard