A plugin that connects to the UK Energy Provider Octopus Energy & their Agile Tariff
Octopus Energy is a UK Energy Supplier that offers a number of Tariff's that appeal to Electric Vehicle (EV) owners, as well as those who may be able to shape their consumption by managing demand through home automation. This plugin was initially built to asses the viability of the Agile Tariff for my personal use. You will find more information at https://octopus.energy as well as their API (which this plugin uses) at https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/
The Agile Tariff is especially interesting as it offers a new electricity rate every 30 minutes, based on the then current wholesale rate for that 30 minute period. This "Plunge Pricing" results in a much lower kWh price for electricity for times outside of the 16:00 to 19:00 peak. You carry the risk if the price is higher during this period, but get the benefit when it falls lower. A price cap applies of 35p per kWh, and for example the average today is 5.292p. the minimum 1.764p and the maximum 19.656p. This compares with the fixed rate from my current supplier which is 15.4p. and again for today apart from 3 Hours the Agile rate would be below what I currently pay.
The really interesting thing is that this can also result in negative pricing, typically at times for example when it is windy but during a period of low demand (UK has a reasonable amount of wind turbine capacity). At these times they will actually pay you to consume energy, these are relatively rare but it does mean you can charge you EV to store what will still be very cheap energy, even when the price is not negative. I will be using this to trigger charging my EV, using another plugin that can start and stop charging (Indigo has plugin's for a number of EV's, including in my case an I-Pace).
The plugin does not require you to make a switch to Octopus, to use it you can simply enter your postcode as the prices vary by region in the UK. The plugin will create a device that will show the current kWh price for you location, the daily standing charge, the maximum, minimum and average rates. All these device states can be graphed if you use one of the graphing plugins, you can trigger based on those values or thresholds. If you can measure your whole house demand (even manually using your smart meter in House display) you can project your savings.
This is a very early version, I have to optimise the update procedure as it is currently making too many API calls but this does not present a problem but is inelegant (the API is not throttled and the call rate is not excessive). I intend to switch when I can in the current situation, and I will then incorporate the consumption data. My goal with this will be to track actual historical cost for each 30 minute period, this will only be possible for the previous 24 Hours as Octopus do not publish consumption data real time. This would be possible now if you have a energy monitor, but I do not. The plugin has the configuration UI to enter your API Key, and for future logging capabilites. These are not currently used, only your Postcode. Error detection is limited, so please use this at your own risk and consider it a alpha version.
Comments and feedback extremely welcome, I am also issue tracking in the GitHub repository. Once I am happy I will push to the plugin store.
Documentation at https://github.com/neilkplugins/Octopus ... lugin/wiki
When I do switch I will share my referal code here, and we could both get a £50 credit should you choose to switch to Octopus. Any I get will be donated to the Children's Oncology Suites at the Royal Berkshire Hospital's Lion Ward.