Is there somewhere that you can download an Excel with the price history by time and day for the last year? I’ve Found the info on different sites but is all by individual day.  Import and export.

Is it Currencies or Stocks? If so, these are built in these days and you can access historical data using formulas.

If not, you can use Power Query to scrape data from websites into excel and manipulate from there.
RM.

Download Historical Pricing Data

Sorry octopus agile – electricity prices

@simon_g thanks – I can see September 2023. Can you get other months? Ideally trying to get a feel for a year or more.

Are you downloading the CSVs? For London I get incoming back to Feb 2018 and outgoing back to May 2019.

This link is for the West Midlands but you can select any region from “Download Data” in the header, you can get CSV files for Agile electricity, and Tracker electricity and gas.

My Smart Energy – Download Data – West Midlands

Thing is the prices have been all over the place since Corona. So not sure what you’ll learn for the future by looking at data from the last few years. They plunged at the start of corona, then went sky high in late2021, now they seem to be starting to return to normal pattern (although not down to the same rates as 2019) ie significantly cheaper at night than during day. late2021 to mid2023 the price was just at max cap rate all the time even during the night, it seemed to me.

In terms of looking at patterns I’d be inclined to look back at 2018/19, Altho I doubt the actual prices will go back down to those levels, I think we might return to bigger gaps between day and night rates.

What you are doing is trying to steer the boat by looking at the wake.  If you can load shift your consumption to outside peak hours octopus agile should be ok.  We’re retired so easy for us.

I’m going to give agile a go when my what meters are fitted. I need to make sure they connect to the network as the electricity meter is in the cellar. If it works I think I’ll be able to use a few cheap KW of electric when it’s cheap or negatively priced for heating.

I have looked through last year’s data and did see a fair few days where a KW of power was around 50p all day over winter.

I’ll aim to report back if I do swap over to agile next month.

@simon_g – you’re right I think the problem was I looked using a mobile device and it was truncating it.

@shinton – you’re also right.  I suppose I was thinking that the plunge pricing is presumably driven by excess wind and solar and so over the course of a year it might give some indication of what could be expected.

I’m trying to figure out if it is worth switching to agile, over my current flux tariff and getting a high current electric heater that I would use when the price of electric drops to 0 or below gas. Usage would be spring / autumn I think, assuming that in winter there wouldn’t be much plunge pricing.

I’ve a small 4kwh battery and some panels so can use that to help load shift.

I don’t have batteries or solar. But I do have some electric heaters and WiFi plugs!

https://agile.octopushome.net/historical-data

I’ve just moved off Agile onto Tracker. Just couldn’t shift enough to cheap slots to mitigate the expensive bit between 4pm and 7pm every day. Which, incidentally, seemed to be creeping up to nearer 9pm most days.

If you’ve got a battery, then it’s likely doable, but otherwise Tracker might be a better bet.

the plunge pricing is presumably driven by excess wind and solar and so over the course of a year it might give some indication of what could be expected

An interesting hypothesis. Is Agile is the tariff that changes every 30 minutes according to wholesale prices? Might be worth grabbing solar and wind and wholesale gas prices to see how these correlate and in what proportion.

Is there something weird about U.K. wholesale electricity prices and how the price is defined? I vaguely recall that the price is not truly market-defined.

OFGEM’s site has plots on price but I didn’t dig deep into how the market works, only that there’s a sort of Markov approach to what the price for the next half hour will be. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-data-and-research/data-portal/wholesale-market-indicators

Good luck. Protons For Breakfast on WordPress has done various analyses of energy pricing. These might offer some inspiration. In excel as well.

Average price per kWh for us based on usage since we switched to Agile:
September 20.13p
August 18.68p
July 18.64p
June 16.64p
May 20.63p
April 24.62p
March 26.47p

Current standing charge is 44.72p/day

We didn’t really get into the load shifting until around May as the main reason for going Agile was Mrs S PHEV which has a range of 30m.

Interesting numbers there Shinton….. thanks.

Just got my smart meter fitted (thanks to the old one going out of certification, not because I actually wanted one!) and I’m now looking at Agile as an alternative to being on the Tracker.

Kids have basically left home so 4-6 is pretty low usage and I have solar but no batteries.

I’d like to run some electric UFH overnight at cheap rates if possible as that’s probably our biggest single consumption device.

Just seen that my account is now linked to my meter so I can see when I’m using how much power – let the nerding begin!

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Whilst past performance is no guide to the future it looks as if there aren’t that many occasions when elec is cheaper than gas on agile.

The weight up then becomes when solar yields fall does the benefit of lower prices on agile mean it is better value than flux.

Agile looks like it might be quite a lot of hassle to do if using a battery to load shift.

Using gas central heating I would have to heat up all the water in the system which might take 30 minutes and 15kw of gas,  then the lowest my boiler will modulate down to is 8kw an hour.

I will use my gas central heating occasionally.

I want to pre heat my house with electricity when prices are low. If 1kw of electricity costs me a few pence using a few KW wouldn’t be expensive.

I can load shift easily as well. Might get me out of the house at peak hours for some exercise?

Whilst past performance is no guide to the future it looks as if there aren’t that many occasions when elec is cheaper than gas on agile.

But for those of us without gas then it may make more sense.

I’ve just set up IFTTT to send me  message when the cost falls below 5p/Kwh – I’m going to monitor it for now, but the Agile comparison page is showing that I would be saving just over £1/day on Agile.  And that’s with a helping hand from the solar – I expect that saving to grow as PV production reduces.

My main interest is running the electric UFH in the kitchen only when the price is right (<5p maybe) as the Warmup wifi connected thermostat allows IFTTT integration (I already use it to soak up spare PV generation in the summer).  The floor would work like a storage heater…. charge it up on cheap power and it would then release it during the day.

I know it wouldn’t be that often but I think it may be worth it.  I could also push a few other things into overnight use and, who knows, we may even get an electric car!

Anyway, studying the data over the next few weeks will be interesting.

Sharkbait, have you got a battery with the solar? Companies like GivEnergy do kit that works intelligently with Agile, topping up the battery at the cheapest tariff times and switching the house over to the battery at peak tariff times. So possibly might supplement PV, worth investigating.

Sharkbait, have you got a battery with the solar?

No, just 4Kwp of PV but at the old FIT rate so I’m not messing with it.  After 3 days data the Agile comparision page is showing I’d be 29% better off on Agile.

@sharkbait Where do you download your usage by time of day?

 After 3 days data the Agile comparision page is showing I’d be 29% better off on Agile.

After the last 3 days I’ve not had to import anything been plenty sun.   wait till a calm dull 3 days  in February.

Where do you download your usage by time of day

It’s on my octopus account…. broken down into half hour segments

I keep tabs on Agile with an app on my (android) phone. OctopusWatch is probably the best and gives you a notification summary at 4pm every day of the prices for tomorrow. OctopusTariff probably the simplest.

A fair bit of this afternoon is <4p/kWh ……. blimey!

The more I think about it the more I’m tempted to give Agile a try.  Avoiding the 4-7pm peak rate shouldn’t be too difficult and running the electric UFH on very cheap rates could be good.

Can always go back if it’s not working out.

You could go on Tracker if Agile’s not working for you, as bensales did above. Tracker is a daily single price and is calculated as an average of Agile prices, I believe. My Tracker v1 price today is 15.05p/kwh (Yorks/incl.vat)

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Just seen that my account is now linked to my meter so I can see when I’m using how much power – let the nerding begin!

Put your name down for an Octopus Home Mini. You’ll then get live readings in your account.

Put your name down for an Octopus Home Mini.

Just done so…. couldn’t find it before!

#manlook

Been trying the Octo-aid app but I think it’s ios only, seems good for checking that your tariff is the best for your usage.

Agile saves us plenty just charging the car when it’s cheaper and doing washing / drying / dishwasher out of the peak 4-7pm period. And that’s with gas heating and hot water.

I’m watching the agile prices and awaiting my smart meter being fitted next week.

The electricity meter will be in a cellar so I’m not certain if it will get a signal to the outside.  Do smart meters have a signal booster option?

I feel as if I could be sitting in a sightly warmer house at the moment if I could use some cheaper electricity.

Do smart meters have a signal booster option?

I believe there’s a north /south divide, I’m not sure where the line is drawn tho.
The contract for providing smart meter Comms in the North is arqiva and is radio Comms based. There’s no way to boost the signal at the smart meter as far as I’m aware. Some places like around fylingdales on North York Moors is a black spot.

The contract for South is Telefonica and is Tele Comms based (possibly 2g). I think they can install booster Ariels in your house and there is something like a mesh or grid that forms when lots of homes around you get smart meters. So there are a couple of possibilities.

I’m watching the agile prices and awaiting my smart meter being fitted next week

Although you can go back if agile isn’t for you I’m still spending a couple of weeks comparing prices for my actual use before jumping in.

I believe there’s a north /south divide

I’m in the north, slightly north of Manchester. I’ll report back in a week…

@retrorick BTW I’m in the North (arqiva radio Comms) and have a really poor TV signal which requires the addition of a TV antenna booster box to work, my house is tucked into a hillside. When my smart meter was installed in early 2020 it didn’t communicate, the signal was too weak it seemed (I wasn’t surprised TBH) and so I made a few calls to octopus about it asking them to sort it. The smart meter didn’t work for many months possibly a year and then one day they contacted me and said it was communicating (I’ve no idea how this happened, possibly no smart meters locally were working so arqiva were forced to update their local infrastructure, who knows tbh). Anyway it’s all now working, so if yours doesn’t work initially, it might get sorted in a few weeks/months/years by one means or another.

Thanks for the antenna info B.A.Nana. it gives me some hope.

I hope it works for you. I gave up hope straight away because of my weak TV signal, but they fixed it somehow at their end (after several months).

Thanks for the antenna info B.A.Nana. it gives me some hope.

Just to be clear, there’s no antenna solution for us in the North. As far as I understand it.

On the subject of smart meters I have now learnt that our old, but working fine, plasma TV uses 7x more power than our [bigger] LED TV!
(350w vs 50w)

I know this shouldn’t really come as a surprise but it’s not until you see the current power consumption on the meter that it really sinks in.  I have to admit that I was a bit anti-smart meters until last week when we were forced into having one – I was wrong!