Melbourne petrol price cycle analysis

massafiri on 24/02/2014 - 00:40

Hey Ozbargainers,

If you are anything like me, you drive past the petrol station thinking "give it another day", in the hope to save a few more cents on the price per litre, but only finding it to skyrocket the next day.

A few years back, I remember when the petrol price cycle was so simple… fill up Tuesday, price goes up Wednesday.
Now, I can never seem to remember what day the price went up, and how long to hold out till filling up.

I started to note the petrol prices across a few petrol stations I go by each day for a month.
I used that data to do some very basic trending analysis, and started to predict when the best day was to fill up.

I managed to predict 2 out of 3 cycles correctly. Measuring success is difficult, as Petrol stations seem to be individually fluctuating their prices now (as apposed to the older days where they seemed to all work together).
My findings concluded that the current petrol cycle was approximately 9.5 days for Melbourne metro fuel.

In lieu of my predictions, I started this Facebook Page to remind myself and my friends when the best time to fill up may be. I'm sharing it today to hopefully start a fuel watching community - hopefully broadening from Melbourne to Australia-wide.

I'll be updating the page with predictions for the upcoming Melbourne Cycles - please feel free to follow if this is something you're interested in.

Thank you.

Automotive

Comments

  • retiredfeline on 24/02/2014 - 02:02
    +4

    You know that the ACCC maintains time series charts for all the major cities on their website?

  • xyron on 24/02/2014 - 09:29
    +1

    Indeed, I just use the ACCC website to determine when the cheapest day is (usually 9 days after the price peaks).

    Been sitting around $1.41 per litre at the cheapest servos in adelaide at the moment, been making a habit of filling up every time i see my fuel gauge dip from full :p

  • massafiri on 24/02/2014 - 13:21

    Yea I knew about this ACCC page, however it only gives dates in the past. The aim was to predict which day would be the cheapest in the future.

    • retiredfeline on 24/02/2014 - 13:28
      +1

      I'd like to see a website with a time machine that can give you dates in the future. :) You can eyeball the curve on the ACCC website and predict a few days ahead. Things to aware are that the ACCC numbers are one day behind; trying for the trough is more risky and anyway it flattens out a bit at the trough so you aren't losing that much; and weekends and holidays will disrupt the curve. Coolies also used to disrupt the curve but not so much now.

    • [Deactivated] on 24/02/2014 - 23:16

      I don't have a facebook account but I was trying to view your facebook site. Have you considered opening it up to non facebook members to view?

  • [Deactivated] on 24/02/2014 - 13:26

    I use the ACCC site for Melbourne and also look at the gradient of the graph as well as how many days there have been in previous cycles.

    ACCC only has about 30 days of data available so I've been keeping my own graph for the last few months based on the figures from the ACCC graphs.

    I thought the length of the cycle might go down this year due to the reduction of high value fuel vouchers but I haven't seen any changes yet.

    Does anyone know why the peak of the Melbourne cycle stayed up high for several days before it dropped. Usually there is a slow rise to the high point and then it drops sharply for a few days. This time it got to 159 or so and hovered there for a few days.

    • eug on 24/02/2014 - 13:31
      +2

      Does anyone know why the peak of the Melbourne cycle stayed up high for several days before it dropped.

      Easy, the oil company execs wanted to buy a new car.

  • Almost Banned on 24/02/2014 - 13:27
    +5

    You guys need to all move to Perth (or get your states to adopt our system).
    From 2pm (maybe 2:30) tomorrow's petrol prices must be fixed and posted on the Fuelwatch website so you always know if you need to fill up today or are better off waiting until tomorrow.
    Its quite handy.

    • Aydin on 24/02/2014 - 13:37

      It seems that the WA govt is always ahead of the other state govt's.

    • massafiri on 25/02/2014 - 08:34

      I remember when melbourne was like this. Tuesday was, usually, the cheapest day to fill up.

  • massafiri on 27/06/2014 - 15:23

    Hey All,

    Just came back to this project - from what I can see Melbourne is experiencing a 18-22 day cycle depending on where you live and your service station (which is a huge jump from the ~10 days from last year, possibly due to data and location differences)

    From this, my prediction for the next "cheap" days will be between 3rd of July and the 7th of July.
    More than likely the last cheap day will be after the 7th of July. But I always like to play it safe and estimate a day or so earlier.

    Again, the price boards change quite differently depending on where you live.

    • [Deactivated] on 27/06/2014 - 19:32

      The cycle we're in at the moment seems quite crazy. There was a week where the ACCC graph was quite flat at the bottom of the cycle. Things went up after that but are taking a long time to go down again. I bought at the bottom of the cycle around 140 but I'm going to have to go out and get some at 150 this weekend. I'll probably only get $20 worth or so and then do a big fill when it gets down to the bottom of the cycle again.

      • massafiri on 01/07/2014 - 09:52

        http://imgur.com/JCCND1I

        Yep, from the data that I am collection shows some very odd price trends.

        I would hold out for a few more days before going to the bowser.
        Generally the graph goes flat and that's the best indication of the "lowest" price in the cycle.

    • duxa on 01/07/2014 - 12:19

      Hi,

      I run http://petrolspy.com.au/ so I have no choice but to follow petrol prices. I think your observation is quite right. ULP price goes up to 160 then slowly comes down to 140 where it stays for a few days and then one day it suddenly goes from 140 to 160. While on the way down the price can change up to three times a day on a single servo.

      There is a company called Informed Sources that runs motormouth. All the major fuel retailers are exchanging prices through their system (and that's why motormouth has them) and that's how retailers "decide" what the price is around your area. It would be illegal to exchange prices directly so they use a third party for that and the Informed Sources is currently under investigation by ACCC for doing this.

      I need to get a few other things done first but we will be adding price trends in the future

      • massafiri on 03/07/2014 - 15:08

        Nice!

        Do you get many hits/downloads?

        • duxa on 03/07/2014 - 15:46

          thanks! Yes, downloads are going strong but there is still a lot of work to do!

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