EV tariffs...

beardymac

Hiya. We're getting a electric car in a month or so (not a Tesla sadly) and wondered if anyone had any recommendations for energy providers/tariffs?
With three adults working from home during the day, and electric underfloor heating in the kitchen, and two device addicted kids when home from school, I want to get something that will balance electricity cost nicely. Had a look on the CheapEnergyClub but guess I don't know what I'm looking for particularly as don't know how having an EV will change our usage.
In case it helps, current dual fuel bill is £115 pcm.

Any thoughts gratefully received!

Gerry1

Welcome to the forum.

Unfortunately your energy saving and your comparison methodology aren't on sound footings.  Expensive underfloor electric heating is a poor choice when you have gas, and the DD is fairly meaningless.  The DD is only a top up of a kitty that may or may not be sufficient to pay the bills, and many parameters can vary (property size, property type, insulation, location, temperate / tropical preference etc).

Find out your annual electricity consumption in kWh from actual meter readings.  If you don't have Economy 7 you'll have to guesstimate the amount used during the cheap rate period.

Then work out the extra kWh the EV will use, based on your annual mileage and the car's overall fuel efficiency (miles per kWh). Add this to your existing results to give you the new day / night annual kWh figures.  Bung them into Citizens Advice and 'Which? Switch' comparison sites and see what you get for E7 dual fuel, then repeat for separate suppliers.  Single rate might be cheaper if your mileage is low, especially with underfloor heating, so don't make too many assumptions.

Some suppliers such as Octopus offer lower kWh rates but for shorter periods, typically 4 or 5 hours.

https://www.zap-map.com/charge-points/ev-energy-tariffs/

BaZza81

I was in the same situation during the lockdown. We got 2 EV cars, 1 Tesla (all bought with Tesla Shares 500% up). 
Avoid EV based tariffs, go based on cheapest/ customer service. 

matelodave

You need to work out how you use your leccy now (adn when) and compare it with how careful you might get if you get an off-peak tariff where the cheap stuff is available in the wee small hours but it might be significantly more expensive during the day and evening.

You'd need to try and shift as much consumption to the cheaper rate times ( and that includes retraining the rest of the family as well). You also need to work out how much energy this car will be consuming.

 If you don't do all that many miles then it might not use as much leccy as you think - I don't know but I've heard that you get around 3-4miles per kwh so a daily commute of 20 miles each way = about 13kwh. Possibly less if you mostly work from home.

One other point is the charging rate - if you are charging from a 13a socket then the best you'll get is around 3.5kw per hour, so a cheap five hour charge will manage approx 17.5kwh however get a 7kw charger installed and you should get 35kwh during the cheap period which may be more appropriate on an EV type tariff.

niktheguru

Great question. Gerry has given you some great advice/starting points.
What tariff are you currently on with what supplier?
As is often said, duel fuel is usually not the cheapest. It will most likely be cheaper to separate your gas and electricity to get the best prices (use citizens advice switching tool or cheap energy club for example, do manual switches, dont use an autoswitcher)

When it comes to EV use it will depend upon the number of miles you do per month. Will you be solely charging it at home? How many times a week do you think you'll plug it in. Can you charge at night or will your charge during the day?
The way I work it out is I look at the size of the battery in my car, so in mine its around 37KW, which gives me around 100-120miles per charge (depending on conditions, heating etc etc) - I charge my car approx 2 times a week. So thats adding about 296KW per month to my monthly use.

What you then need to do is add that to your current annual usage and work out how much that will increase your electricity costs on your current deal, vs the cheapest flat unit rate on the market.
Then you need to think about whether something like octopus go will be better for you. This is where you have a night time low rate and a usual day time rate. For this you will need a smart meter.(cant get one of these TOU tariffs without one) One thing to bear in mind is that these TOU tariffs wont be on the price comparison website so you need to do the sums yourself.
Be aware that the unit daytime rate is slightly higher than the cheapest daytime rate with other suppliers. In the london area it is 14.5p/kwh. Then the night time rate (that lasts 4 hours) is 5p/kwh. This will potentially save you a lot of money if you charge your car at night in those low rate hours. (you can also do other high elec things during those times e.g. washing machine/dishwasher/dryer, to save money)

If you are otherwise a very high user of daytime electricity it may be worth just going on the cheapest unit rate tariff.
If you are a moderate daytime user and will charge your car at night, its definitely worth looking at octopus go as a tariff. 
(Removed by Forum Team)

niktheguru

BaZza81 said:

I was in the same situation during the lockdown. We got 2 EV cars, 1 Tesla (all bought with Tesla Shares 500% up). 
Avoid EV based tariffs, go based on cheapest/ customer service. 

Impressed with your tesla shares return!! 
I wouldn't necessarily agree with the avoid EV based tariffs. I would avoid most of them which have over inflated day time unit rates, such as edf who bump theirs up to 20p/kwh in the day time. However for now the octopus day rates on octopus go are very competitive with most providers at CURRENT prices. Sure maybe a year ago this was different. I'm still paying 10.5p/kwh with symbio at the moment, but that is due to go up to 13.5p from next month. If you compare 13.5p to 14.5p that really isn't that much when you have an EV. Say you use 6000kwh a year, thats an extra £60 annually, but then if you factor in the amount you will save charging your vehicle at 5p/kwh  you'd need to do an extra 750KW to break even. Thats about 2250 miles. So any miles on top of that you'll be making a saving (but if you include the £50 referral incentive, actually you only need to do 375 miles in your EV before it will make you a saving)

When/if electric prices go down again then choosing just the cheapest unit will probably be better again, but i don't see that happening for sometime. If octopus decide to increase their day rate on go then that may also wipe out this saving.

Also, have a think about what charger you'd get at home. Its worth investing in a 7kw/h charger. I personally have a podpoint. It was relatively cheap when i got it and does the job, but prob wouldn't get one again if I could do it all again, mainly due to the fact that it isn't particularly smart. Yes it has an app where i can see how much i've charged and how long its been connected, but you can't actually control your charge from it. (i.e stop and start times etc)
I'd prob get a zapii if I could get one again, they're very good pieces of kit. Avoid rolecs as they're cheap but have a tendency to go wrong. Some other chargers like the rolec and BP chargemaster also need earth rods installed. The anderson is a beautiful charger but WAY overpriced.
Sorry, now i'm just talking too much!

LauraT123

It sounds like you might be a good fit for Octopus Agile tariff. You'll need a smart meter, but it should work out cheaper if you're at home all day and you can mostly avoid the easy things like putting on the dishwasher, washing machine and charging your car between 4-7pm. Some of the EV tariffs have expensive day rates and standing charges that don't sound like they will suit your family. There's a list of all of the EV tariffs on the Power My EV website. None of the price comparisons will offer them to you, even the Citizen's Advice one. Enjoy the EV!

niktheguru

Agile is worth looking at but be very careful at the moment as its not as cheap as it has been in the past. If you use energy between 4-7, it is usually charged around 25-35p/kwh, so if you have young kids or eat your dinner between those hours you'll be paying higher rates. That in the past was offset by extremely low rates in the night time hours and competitive rates off peak, but in the last couple of months those low rates weren't amazingly low. Though i do note in the last 24hrs it went down to 4p/kwh over night for an hour at its lowers, but that was the first time in a week.

You need to be very interested and proactive to benefit from agile, that and be flexible to move your usage away from the peak hours of 4-7pm, if youre willing to do that you will make savings. If you cant because of family circumstances and you prefer not to look at what times of day the energy is cheapest it may be too much hassle!

matelodave

You might find this interesting - you can view and download historical data which might give you some idea of whether you could adjust your consumption profile to suit. https://www.energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile/

LauraT123

I'd agree that since January (mostly because of Brexit I hear) there have been higher prices, hopefully this will improve soon. You can switch away for free if it doesn't suit you. Agile definitely has to become part of your routine, but it's always the same hours to avoid and you don't have to shift mealtimes to save money, just delay the dishwasher. If you only do short trips in your car you can decide on the best night to charge it and won't need 4 hours off-peak every night anyway. We love knowing because of the price that we are getting the greenest energy - especially when you get paid to use wind energy that would have gone to waste!

MWT

LauraT123 said:

I'd agree that since January (mostly because of Brexit I hear) there have been higher prices...

Mostly down to 3 gas power stations shutting down due to business failure and a number of nuclear power stations being off line for maintenance.

That coupled with a general lack of wind and sunshine matched with high demand is enough to explain it without reaching for Brexit