Octopus Query

Hi folks,

I have 12 x 405W solar panels and a 9.6kw battery.

I have been on Octopus Flux for around 6 months. Unfortunately, my smart meter has stopped communicating. This happened before and I waited 9 months for an engineer (who never came) and it magically fixed itself. It was a complete pain in the ass! So frustrating as it's happened just before the weather gets better and flux would come into it's own.

The comms have stopped working again two days ago, and I phoned Octopus today. They tried to do a power cycle remotely but couldn't. They said this will keep happening because I live in the scottish borders and there's nothing they can do (great!).

My question is, they suggested moving to Octopus tracker and Octopus fixed rate, as they don't require such regular meter readings/data.

I would really appreciate folks thoughts on moving to these tariffs (would be great if anyone with a similar set up and experience of those tariffs could give me a stear)....would it be a big difference from Flux? So I can make an informed decision.

Thanks folks.

Hi thats so frustrating

• I found Octopus support great when you pm them in twitter ;-)
  Flux is great - and perfect for the summer months and a bit of surplus, how are they calculating your current bill at moment without it communicating, also the location thing doesnt sound right, they had it working for half a year and now something has stopped that, sounds like its on them.

Not sure what the export rate for fixed, but its pretty competitive so a good halfway place to be while they sort your account

Charlie

Scottishcammy Octopus tracker will need continuous smart meter connection as the prices change daily, so without a working smart meter you won't be able to go on this. 15p export rate however

Scottishcammy I suspect if Octopus don't get half hourly readings they'll charge you about 27p per unit which is significantly higher than the lower Flux rate.
Have a look at the historical values for Tracker: https://energy-stats.uk/octopus-tracker-southern-scotland/
You'll find that in the last year the tracker price has almost always been below 27p, but past performance is no guarantee for the future.
The 15p fixed export rate is ok - but not as tempting as the Flux rates as you know.

SJB Might want to check up on that, my flexible rate went from 27p to 29p at some point this year but not sure when.

Cdent Octopus tracker will need continuous smart meter connection as the prices change daily, so without a working smart meter you won't be able to go on this.

I don't think that's the case. Without daily readings, they apply standard modelling (based on temperature etc) to map usage over the billing period to each day, and (I think) they then charge each days usage at the corresponding tracker rate. (There's disagreement on this point - we talked about it on another thread recently.)
I don't think Octopus would have suggested it if it needed reliable smartmeter readings.

I assume both would give you access to the outgoing fixed rate of 15p/kWh.

Scottishcammy What does it say about your meter if you put your import MPAN into https://homebrew.n3rgy.com/

Vestas

Hi, it says

DCC response not available

<Response [400]>

Scottishcammy Sounds like your meter is properly offline 🙁

So.....

Immediately after I posted this, this morning, I complained to a manager at their energy services and said I was giving them an ultimatum...sort out an engineer immediately or I'll be leaving Octopus...I just wasn't prepared to go through the same nightmare again.

Low and behold, the manager put me on hold, and came back on to tell me she'd managed to get an engineer, who would be out today to power cycle the meter / take a look at it, having been told there were no engineers available as far forwrd as their boking system could look (4 weeks).

Well, I've waited in all day, cancelling a day out with the wife...but I'm sure you won't be surprised when I tell you they didn't turn up. :-(

Was just on the phone to Octopus energy services just now to check the engineer was still coming as it's getting late in the day, and they confirmed the engineer had been cancelled as they now couldn't make it. Never even phoned me to tell me, total waste of my day waiting in.
I'm fair fed up!

I've asked for the same manager to phone me tomorrow morning, but I'd really like to tell them to stick it, change suppliers and try and get whoever the new supplier's engineers are out to sort the meter/power cycle it.

Trouble is, what supplier gives as good rates, export, etc. or tariffs as good as Octopus.

Fed up!

Scottishcammy Doesn't surprise me at all - I got the DNO to restart our meter (new-build estate so they're round putting in new meters as houses are built), n3rgy had all the missing data 6 days before Octopus and despite the fact a f/w update was pending on the meter which the restart installed, Octopus are trying to make out it was signal loss/DCCs fault.....

Vestas
So frustrating, isn't it? When I get one of their emails after they've buggered something up with 'love and power' in it, it makes me want to scream!
Forget the stupid tag lines, just do your job!! :-)

Scottishcammy You have my sympathy - I've found Octopus extremely frustrating recently (they decided to replace a working Smart Meter, missed an appointment, took 7 weeks complete the set up of the new meter and wanted to charge me extra for the day before and after the meter swap).

Scottishcammy I tried the n3rgy site for my own meter number and also got a 400 error.

When I entered my postcode and house number it worked OK. Turns out I was putting the meter number in wrongly, its the 13 digit number on the bottom of the box on your bill. Not the S 2 811 1 at the top, etc, just the long number on the bottom row.

Anyway, showed my meter is working OK, but it said:

Firmware Certified: 19/07/2022
Firmware Age: 2 [16161720] (number of newer versions available)

Should I be worried about this? Shouldn’t the firmware be auto updating?

Just to tag on to this, I had my bill from Octopus for 1-29th February. I have solar and a home battery. The bill showed the gas and electricity cost for the month but there was no mention of export from my solar install. I emailed them and had the reply:

_Export credit is credited to your account balance. So anything you generate, will top up your account credit.

I hope this helps._
There was no mention of when it would be credited.
Can anyone who has solar and has been with Octopus for a while explain what to expect with regard to billing ( I'm on Agile import and fixed 15p export )

Tenkaykev your bill should show the import and then the export one page after another. Meter readings, the amount to be credited, etc. Mine is all in the same bill. If yours isn’t then get octopus to investigate

On your online account you should see the import and export kWh one after another in the ‘my energy’ section

Tenkaykev I think it took a couple of months before my statements synced up. For a while, I got a separate statement for the export.

Thanks very much DD and geoffreycoan
No credits for export on any bill or itemisation, just the import.
I notice this on the Octopus submit reading page: Are both serial numbers supposed to be identical?

Tenkaykev Possibly... there are two different sets of numbers involved. One is the actual (physical) smartmeter, which measures both import and export. And the other is the MPANs, which are sort of logical meters linked to a physical meter? Maybe? Anyway, that's how I think of it. My electricity meter number is of a similar form: two digits, then a letter, then more digits. So it's plausible that what you are seeing is the physical meter number. The MPANs are longer sequences of just numbers (around 13 digits or so..?)

A useful tool is https://energy.guylipman.com/sm/getstarting?source=octopus which can access your Octopus account. That shows both MPAN and meter numbers.

Tenkaykev What you are seeing there is the physical meter number, which will be identical. I see the same on mine.

As @DD says, there’s then a logical MPAN meter number which is a long string of numbers underneath that and there will be two of these for your import and export.

It looks like your export account is setup but its not billing. If you go into ‘my energy’ do you see consumption for your import and export? Import usually arrives next day, export can take a bit longer to arrive in the account

I went online and downloaded my bills as as I find it easier to read the hardcopy.
I only got my export meter set up in early December last year and I was credited with export between 8th - 31st December. Since then I've just had monthly bills itemising gas and electricity usage, the latest dated 7th Feb to 5th March with electricity billed to 29th February. I've had no export credited. If I go to " My Energy on the Octopus site I can see that the export data is there. the latest being yesterday.
The email from Octopus said that export is credited to your balance but didn't answer the question I asked as to how it works. I'll contact them again and ask for exactly when it is credited, I'd expected it to be shown on the monthly bill and offset consumption costs, as it is I'm being charged for everything I import and running down my balance.

Tenkaykev I'd just email them and say you've not an export statement since December. Once they sort that out, that may trigger the credit payments.

DD
Yes, I've done that, hopefully have things sorted in the near future. What has been really useful is the " Octo Aid " app, it reads the Octopus meter data and among other things lets you see consumption split into Import / Export. There's the facility to enter custom dates and have the results displayed as kWh or cost £.
Thanks to all who offered advice 👍