Octopus Energy - agile tariff

[IanIreland]

I will shortly be having solar panels fitted along with some batteries. I Then plan to switch to Octopus energy's agile tariff.
I have seen a couple of threads where people have been experimenting with scripts and Node-Red to read data from Octopus.

I'm not a programmer :-(

Has anybody achieved a solution, they would be willing to share, to get live cost data from Octopus into HomeSeer?

My aim is to control devices such as high energy users when the price drops below a particular threshold.

[jon00]

Are you sure it is worth switching to the Agile tariff at the moment?

From their website: "Currently, soaring global gas prices have pushed wholesale prices to record highs: they've increased over 400% since the start of 2021. This means Agile's prices are consistently high right now, and it's likely you'll save more money by sticking to a standard variable or fixed tariff throughout the Winter."

[IanIreland]

Are you sure it is worth switching to the Agile tariff at the moment?

From their website: "Currently, soaring global gas prices have pushed wholesale prices to record highs: they've increased over 400% since the start of 2021. This means Agile's prices are consistently high right now, and it's likely you'll save more money by sticking to a standard variable or fixed tariff throughout the Winter."

No - but keeping an eye on it. I believe they are looking at other new tariffs as well! If I can get the data then hopefully a script can be amended for other tariffs.

Pulling in the agile data will help make the decision :-)

[jon00]

I may be switching to Octopus when they (hopefully) take over my supplier (💡) later this year. May have more of an interest then!

[IanIreland]

I may be switching to Octopus when they (hopefully) take over my supplier (💡) later this year. May have more of an interest then!

I was switched when the supplier I was with went bust!

[SteveMSJ]

I will shortly be having solar panels fitted along with some batteries. I Then plan to switch to Octopus energy's agile tariff.
I have seen a couple of threads where people have been experimenting with scripts and Node-Red to read data from Octopus.

I'm not a programmer :-(

Has anybody achieved a solution, they would be willing to share, to get live cost data from Octopus into HomeSeer?

My aim is to control devices such as high energy users when the price drops below a particular threshold.

Hi Ian,

No help on the Agile Tariff from me, at the moment. I have considered it but until the current energy crisis is over I don't think it is worth it, even if available. I am currently on a fixed rate deal with Octopus which is significantly less than the price cap with a year left to run.

I have an hS4 plug-in, in it's early stages, but rather than communicating with Octopus I am using the GeoTogether API that my Octopus smart meters send real time information to via the Trio II display that Octopus provided. This does include the price you are paying in addition to the current Electricity and Gas power, as well as historical data for the last day, week and month. It's in early Alpha just providing current power and meter readings in HS4. I will develop it further once I have run for a period of time to establish proof of concept.

Steve

[jon00]

Good stuff Steve!

Actually, my Datascraper script can probably get the half-hour readings for the next day in a number of devices. If you want, I can try it tomorrow and post the config required?

[SteveMSJ]

Good stuff Steve!

Actually, my Datascraper script can probably get the half-hour readings for the next day in a number of devices. If you want, I can try it tomorrow and post the config required?

I suspect that is the basics of what will be needed to make use of the agile tariff.

I think there are other opportunities coming that Octopus will be participating in that are similar to agile but might be simpler and more worthwhile in the current energy climate. I believe the National Grid are going to start offering rebates through the likes of Octopus, for reducing your energy use during the peak periods. Similar to agile you will be notified the day before. It seems to be based on reduction on your normal energy use during the period they notify you of. It might lead to the counterproductive action of trying to increase your use during peak periods on days there are no rebates so your reduction on days that there are rebates is higher!

will have to see what transpires.

Steve

[jon00]

I switched to an EV tariff (but no Electric Car) as it worked out cheaper over a week if you used the dishwasher/washing Machine/Tumble Dryer during the night. Same sort of idea as the National Grid is trying to achieve.

Just did a quick test with Datascraper showing the first 10 Agile Rates in devices:

[nickgosling]

I am really interested in this thread. I have just had delivered (although) not installed a small solar array (3kw) and 10kwh of batteries. On average we use about 15-18Kwh of Elec per day. My ideal solution is to have the panels produce the majority of our base load throughout the day, charge the batteries when the agile tariff is lower than 10p/kwh and then use the batteries while prices are high. I was looking at switching to octopus GO to get the guaranteed 10ppKwh overnight to charge the batteries but you need an electric car and a car charger to switch to that tariff and at the moment I can't justify the expense.

Although I cant offer any real experience on how to achieve this I thought I'd add to the discussion to keep an eye on this thread. If I can help with anything then I will of course do that.

[nickgosling]

Having looked at the IFTTT integration it looks like if you (ME and IanIreland) cant write the code. We could integrate a virtual switch for when the prices are low and have events run dependent on that virtual switch.

[IanIreland]

Actually, my Datascraper script can probably get the half-hour readings for the next day in a number of devices. If you want, I can try it tomorrow and post the config required?

I would be interested in that.

[jon00]

I was waiting for Ian to come back but I did finish the configuration for my Datascraper script to populate devices with all the Agile rates over 24 hours. I even created a small script to also populate the lowest and highest rates for the period.

[IanIreland]

jon00 Will you be putting the script on your server?

[jon00]

No, just download my Datascaper script from my site and install as per the documentation.

In the attached zip, copy Jon00Datascraper.ini to your config folder replacing the existing (this assumes you don't use it for anything else).

Copy OctopusHighLow.vb in the zip to your scripts directory.

Then create an event as shown below.

You should run it once a day at 10:00PM to ensure you always get a device list covering the next day time periods but you it will also get the list anytime after 4:00PM when it is updated for the next day. Doing so would lose the remaining times/costs for the current day in the virtual devices.

Note: If you try this for the first time BEFORE (around 4:00PM), you won't get any results as the URL query is asking for tomorrow's data which has not been published.



files.zip