There has been discussion here lately about 'time of use' tariffs, that
allow making use of off-peak periods of electricity generation throughout
the day. However they aren't so great if you have a 'conventional' usage
profile. As the recent Texas event showed, they are also risky if they're
purely based on the wholesale cost of electricity with no price cap.

However there is another way. Buy a futures contract for one year's worth
of electricity. That way you've fixed the rate for your consumption and
aren't subject to peak market pricing, but can time the market to pick the
best forward price. Due to the way the market is regulated the downside of
a bad contract is limited - you can always exit for a £30 fee.

There is a supplier who does this - Symbio Energy - although they don't
describe it like this. They issue roughly one tariff a week, that as far as
I can tell is a relatively thin veneer that roughly tracks the 1 year
forward price of electricity - over time the quotes from Symbio direct seem to
roughly correlate with the 1y forward price charts from he
https://www.apolloenergy.co.uk/news/market-analysis
(for any supplier about 8p/kWh is fixed costs not related to the wholesale
price)

Of course all suppliers who offer fixed tariffs which can be seen as forward
price speculation, but often they're on a much coarser (every 3 months or
whatever) granularity, and they're less exposed to market prices because
those suppliers take a bigger chunk of profit.

Another nice thing about this is there's no switching around - just sign up
for a new deal when your current one is up. (their default tariff is a bit
unattractive if you forget though)

Looking at the charts, Symbio actually compares fairly well to TOU tariffs
unless you can shift most of your consumption to the night or the summer,
which many of us can't.

Theo