Cheapest Electricity per Kw & is Economy 7 worth it?

skipfeeney

Hi,

I am current paying 13p per Kw via Eon with the E.ON Go Online 1 Year v1 deal. I am purchasing an electric car (24kw) and not sure if switching to Economy 7 is worth it. I can't seem to find the costs per kw of Economy 7- it doesn't seen to be listed?

Does anyone know what the cheapest supplier is per kw?

Thanks

[Deleted User]

You just need to go to any switching site and pretend that you currently have an economy 7 meter by selecting it when asked the question. The switching sites do not know anything about the type of meter you have.

Then run a comparison, of course you will need to use a supplier like e.on as your current tariff with an economy 7 tariff as your current tariff to get the site to work.

There is no cheapest supplier for everyone, it depends on where you live and your energy use.

Try the Citizens Advice site as it asks very few questions and doesn't store any information about you.
https://energycompare.citizensadvice.org.uk/

System

skipfeeney wrote: »

Hi,

I am current paying 13p per Kw via Eon with the E.ON Go Online 1 Year v1 deal. I am purchasing an electric car (24kw) and not sure if switching to Economy 7 is worth it. I can't seem to find the costs per kw of Economy 7- it doesn't seen to be listed?

Does anyone know what the cheapest supplier is per kw?

Thanks

Forget about the unit price for the moment and work out how many times you expect to charge the car at home. From this calculate your expected extra usage in kWhs/year. I have had an EV for three years and the maths do not work for me. The downside of E7 is that you pay more per kW for non overnight consumption.

matelodave

You also have to remember to go out at midnight to plug the car in unless you put it on a timer. You only get the off peak rate between around midnight and 0700 (or 0100 and 0800 in the summer) so you've got to be fairly dedicated.

As Hengus says your daytime leccy will cost alot more than off-peak and more than a single rate tariff so you've got to do your sums.

If you have to charge the vehcle every night you'll probably average out around 12-14kwh (unless you've got a lot of longish journeys), so on your present tariff of 13p = around £2 a night, if you got an off peak rate of around 7p/kwh = about £1 a night. However your daily rate could be 16-18p so you could end up paying a lot more when other stuff is on, unless you can heat your hot water and do the washing, dishwashing and tumble drying etc during the off peak period. You'd also be paying peak rate to charge the car if the overnight charge was inadequate - say you discharge the car and need to charge it before midnight.

System

A further thought. To complicate EV matters further, some suppliers offer incentives to EV owners. For example, Ecotricity offers a number of free charges on its Electric Highway and Ovo has a tariff that pays the annual Polar subscription. Other suppliers give a cash discount. It is not as simple as how much to charge overnight. Welcome to the confused World of EV ownership. EVs are great but the supporting infrastructure is still pretty basic.

https://www.ovoenergy.com/ev-everywhere-v4?ds_rl=1248515&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI85X-q5jc2AIVCZ4bCh1POw25EAAYASAAEgI7nPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&utm_expid=.Dl-UTxUwSZagAA3P3ADxhA.1&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.uk%2F

NineDeuce

Economy 7 is designed for storage heating systems.

skipfeeney

Thanks everyone. All really good information!

My OH will be mainly using the car everyday accept weekends to do roughly 40 miles. She gets home from work at 11:30pm, sometimes later and then does the school run at 8:30am. So the car will be mainly charged at these times which is why I thought about Economy 7.

40 miles is roughly half the range of the Nissan Leaf (24kw model) model so I am guessing it needs roughly 50% top up a night. Does that mean 12kw will be used?

Thanks

System

skipfeeney wrote: »

40 miles is roughly half the range of the Nissan Leaf (24kw model) model so I am guessing it needs roughly 50% top up a night. Does that mean 12kw will be used?

Thanks

You need to read up on EV range. My EV will do between 90 and 100 miles on a nice summer’s day. This time of the year when it is wet and cold, I am lucky to get 65 miles between charges. If your OH likes a warm car etc, then this also reduces the range. Pre-conditioning the battery helps on a cold morning but I am not sure that the Leaf has this facility.

To answer your specific question, not all the charge in an EV battery is available to the end user. This is to help with battery life. You will need to look at the manual to see how much of the battery is needed for a full charge. You would be well advised to post Leaf-specific questions here:

Www.speakev.com

EachPenny

NineDeuce wrote: »

Economy 7 is designed for storage heating systems.

No. Economy 7 is designed for people who use a significant proportion of their electricity at night - one form of night time consumption being storage heaters, but not the only one.

footyguy

EachPenny wrote: »

No. Economy 7 is designed for people who use a significant proportion of their electricity at night - one form of night time consumption being storage heaters, but not the only one.

Actually is was designed by the industry to dispose of excess electricity during a period of low consumption (i.e. early hours of the morning)

They calculated it was more economical, or simply made it more feasible, to generate and sell this electricity at a lower price, than it was to vary generation output.

They concluded 50% of something was better than 100% of nothing.

It was for the consumer and associated market suppliers to work out how to best take advantage of this low priced energy. NSH were one obvious development.

For me, I have gas central heating, no electric car, and use relatively low amounts of low rate electricity (about 20-25% when 7/24 is almost 30%), yet I have benefitted in almost every year of the last 20 by being on E7.

Admittedly it depends on area, and supplier tariff.
But Iresa are siad to be one of the cheapest suppliers for electricity, and whilst this is their old Flex4 tariff (I think they are now on Flex 5), you will see that in the majority of areas E7 unit prices (even the day units) are less than single rate unit prices.

http://www.iresa.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/IresaEnergyTariffs.pdf

NineDeuce

EachPenny wrote: »

No. Economy 7 is designed for people who use a significant proportion of their electricity at night - one form of night time consumption being storage heaters, but not the only one.

Well yeah, but what other common instances can you think of where people use large amounts of electricity at night?