New Feature: Plunge Pricing History
One unique feature of the Octopus Agile tariff is that prices can go negative at certain times. This is a true reflection of the wholesale energy rates, and can happen at times where demand is particularly low or supply is high. For a large energy supplier it is usually cheaper to sell electricity at a loss for a short period of time than it is to, say, shut down an entire power plant. This sounds great right? Getting paid to use electricity! But is it just hype or does it happen quite often?
I've been a subscriber to Octopus Energy's Agile tariff for some time now, and anecdotally I can say it happens fairly frequently. I wanted to provide something better than an anecdote though, so have now created a special Plunge Pricing History page, which shows heatmaps with the number of hours with free or negative electricity prices.
You can click on individual days to see detail of the prices. I've also added a table with some key statistics, showing plunge pricing duration for the current year and month. In future I hope to create a mailing list so you can be alerted to upcoming plunge pricing events.
Plunge pricing is more common at night or in the middle of the day, and happens more frequently on weekends. I've not found any meaningful patterns - for instance October 2023 had a whopping 11 days with plunge pricing, but then there was only a single day of plunge pricing in November 2023. This variability continues, with December 2023 having a respectable 8 days with plunge pricing, but only 3 days in January 2024 so far...
Switch to Octopus and keep an eye out on the latest agile prices to see if you too could be paid to use electricity!
