Has anyone found good comparison site for smart EV tariffs?

lohr500

As per the title. Just wondering if anyone has found a good comparison site to keep an eye on smart tariffs aimed at home EV (Electric Vehicle) charging. There seem to be new EV tariffs being rolled out on a fairly regular basis, but many of the energy comparison sites don't facilitate searching for them.

[Deleted User]

Look at Octopus Go Faster: 25p standing charge and 16.97p/kWh peak and 5.5p/kWh Offpeak (for 5 hours).

A simple comparison tool wouldn’t work as most EV owners also load shift their other usage. BEIS is trialling a new tool at the moment to compare historical annual usage along with when it was used to identify the cheapest tariffs. Clearly, for this to work, the consumer needs at least a year of HH usage data.

lohr500

Thanks Dolor. I had already looked at Octopus Go and Go Faster.

Ideally I need around 6.5 hours of off peak overnight daily to heat up our electric AGA storage oven. The car will charge within a 5 hour window. I did some calculations comparing the Octopus Go Faster tariff to the EDF GoElectric 96 that we recently switched to and we could save by switching to Octopus, even allowing for the fact that some of the AGA reheating would run into the peak tariff rate. But the EDF tariff is fixed to March 2023 and gives off peak rates from 10pm to 7am daily and all day through the weekend. In the end I decided the extra flexibility and long fixed period were worth paying a small premium for in the short term. 

But always interested to keep an eye on any new tariff's being rolled out as it could make sense to switch again. 

Petriix

It's very difficult to compare such tariffs because it's impossible to accurately model the proportion of your demand that you could switch to the off peak period. You really need to make your own spreadsheet and guess the proportion of peak usage for both your home and the EV.

From a fairly cursory glance, most EV tariffs are pretty extortionate when you consider the overall annual cost of your total energy consumption. Go/faster seem better than the rest by a significant margin but would still cost more than my single rate and low standing charge. I'm a fairly low user though and I have a significant portion of my usage which cannot be switched to the night time.

[Deleted User]

A number of Octopus customers have had the opportunity to have a play with this innovative tariff comparison tool produced on behalf of BEIS.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/smart-meter-enabled-tariffs-comparison-project-smarter-tariffs-smarter-comparisons/smarter-tariffs-smarter-comparisons-project-winning-bid

The challenge here for the owners of Ofgem-approved comparison sites who wish to design their own tools is that for them to be used with actual smart meter usage data, they will have to become accredited DCC Users or partner with an organisation that already holds DCC accreditation. The tool pulls the last 12 months of data from the smart meter in 30 minute usage periods which is then used to produce a comparison of available time-of-use tariffs.

UnclaimedEnergy

Your best bet is probably looking at Zap Map - https://www.zap-map.com/charge-points/ev-energy-tariffs/

They don't have any live links though and some of the rates provided may be out of date. However it at least gives you a list of suppliers who offer an EV specific model.

lohr500

Thanks for all the replies so far.

dgp1000

It’s doable but you’ll have to do it yourself. I’ve managed to compare Bulb’s Smart Tariff with Octopus’ Agile.

You need your HHly data which you can get from here https://data.n3rgy.com/consumer/home. It only goes back 90 days but that should be enough - it was for me!! You can get historic Agile tariffs from here https://www.energy-stats.uk/download-historical-pricing-data/. It’s then just a question of playing around with a spreadsheet.

I save about £85 a year against Bulb’s Vari-Fair tariff and the Octopus Agile cost was significantly more so I haven’t swapped. 

The real issue I’ve found is there seems to be no list of Time of Use tariffs. I don’t have an EV so don’t really need an EV specific tariff. 

Hope this helps.

[Deleted User]

dgp1000 said:

It’s doable but you’ll have to do it yourself. I’ve managed to compare Bulb’s Smart Tariff with Octopus’ Agile.

You need your HHly data which you can get from here https://data.n3rgy.com/consumer/home. It only goes back 90 days but that should be enough - it was for me!! You can get historic Agile tariffs from here https://www.energy-stats.uk/download-historical-pricing-data/. It’s then just a question of playing around with a spreadsheet.

I save about £85 a year against Bulb’s Vari-Fair tariff and the Octopus Agile cost was significantly more so I haven’t swapped. 

The real issue I’ve found is there seems to be no list of Time of Use tariffs. I don’t have an EV so don’t really need an EV specific tariff. 

Hope this helps.

Agile - as Victor Meldrew says - you can’t be serious! Agile is not an EV tariff. Octopus has raised the peak unit costs on its Go and Go Faster EV tariffs yesterday by over 50%.