💡🐙 Bulb and ex-Bulb Octo customer chat

Enjoyed the narrative, but that sure was a long sentence :astonished::grin:

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Aim to please or just too lazy to grammar :joy:

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@simonb how did you manage to get a nest? I’ve got one, but it’s the 1st generation which I got free with npower including installation.

@nanos this practice is true and correct - I myself never understood why suppliers use estimated reads, especially when the customer has provided one. The only reason they must do it, is because a lot of customers don’t actually provide a reading for COS (change of supply) and each company needs to close and then open an account.

You won’t loose out on money as if your old supplier closed on a higher reading, then your reads will need to catch up with your new supplier.

Bulb put their prices up from 19th April

The price of wholesale energy has increased, and is now 31% higher than in September due to the extra cold weather we’ve experienced. This means we have to change our prices to reflect the true cost of energy.

Not sure I quite understand this bit though! Pretty sure every winter there’s usually a high demand which mean prices go up. Now if they’d emailed at the end of Autumn to say, blah blah historically it’ll cost more so prices are going up to cover this then fair enough.

It doesn’t quite wash with me with spring and summer arriving, surely the wholesale cost goes down :thinking: or am I missing something critical out of my thinking?

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I wonder how the prices compare to Octopus now…

Apart from Standing Charge Bulb are very slightly lower. SC is £0.06 higher with Bulb. R-

I can’t say you’re wrong, but given the choice I’d rather pay more per kW in summer when I use less, than in winter when I use more.

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Ah, staying with :bulb: then

Just started a switch to :octopus:

Was always moving to them at some point in the future so might as well do it now as the prices are pretty much similar now with the incoming increase.

If I leave bulb for octopus it’ll only be when I’m able to switch to agile. It requires agreeing to a smart meter installation and they’re unable to provide me with one.

I don’t see how agile would work for me. I don’t leave appliances running unsupervised since the self-combusting washer and dishwasher saga. I don’t have a drive to charge an electric car but my oven is electric. In what circumstances does agile make sense?

For me, I tend to work from home through the night, where the rates are very cheap. So I’m more often than not using most over night. With the exception of perhaps the refrigerator and my home network/server, no appliances or devices are usually using electricity during the peak hours.

The Agile tariff, in theory, should save me a lot of money. By my math, up to 40% per month.

For me it will be charging my sons wheelchair and bi-pap machine once we get the latter, even at 50% for my sons wheelchair it’s seems to take at least 6hrs to be fully charged and is brand new.

Agile was created for IFFIT and WiFi enabled appliances IMO :joy:, granted its not going to be used with a fridge freezer or cooker, but dishwasher, tumble dryer and washing machine I assume you could create a recipe to start working when the pricing is x

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I switched to :octopus: from :bulb: for agile but need to wait for :octopus: to start installing smart meters again, I would rather :octopus: change it than :bulb: then switch cos there will always be issues with old and new mtr reads :joy:

Did they stop installing? They did ours 1-2 months ago?

Use Smart-plugs and the Reactive Energy service. RE is not necessarily going for the cheapest Agile pricing, but definitely going for the reduced carbon timing. I’ve connected the dishwasher to it and the combination of Agile/Reactive/Smart-plug switches on the DW at the least carbon-intensive time. Usually 3am’ish, so thankfully our DW is quiet :sleeping_bed:

MrsW wants to retain a level of manual urgency over the washer/dryer though, but at least I can tell her when is the least expensive 2-hour slot during the day to start it, thanks to the Octopus Watch app, which details the cost of each 30 minute timeslot and calculates when best to start a machine which runs for 2 hours.

I swapped to :octopus: end Jan added myself to smart meter wait list as they said not installing during COVID, I was to have :bulb: install the smart meters on 22nd but decide would switch then get :octopus: to sort

We are a bit limited to space with adding a timer plug style as the dishwasher already sticks out a bit far :joy:

The smart-plugs are smaller than you’d think, but if they’re physically not going to work, then you could use an inexpensive 2-or-4 way mains extension lead to run under/to the side of the dishwasher, plug the smart-plug into that and then plug the DW into the smart-plug.

I’m now way down the rabbit-hole of using electricity mega-efficiently, which with a family of 4 is quite the challenge. Eliminating obstacles is the reward!

plus cheaper bills as a by-product…

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