Overwhelmed by Tariff Options (Solar 3844 kWh/Y and scalable Battery 14.5kWh) due October

CreditWings

I humbly ask for guidance. I can build a passable spreadsheet. I understand the bell curve for generation over the year. We use approx 4400 kWh of electricity a year and I have a PHEV. Just on using the energy we generate, store and use alone, I know we'll save £2500+ with the way the prices are headed.

What I can't begin to wrap my head around is the amount of tariff options available for charging my batteries in the winter when cheap rates are available, and exporting excess solar and so on. There's too many options. I have lots of smart meter data available from Octopus, but don't know where to begin working out if to go for:

Agile/Fixed Outgoing, Intelligent, Go - and that's just Octopus. Is there a tool somewhere to figure this out?

Apologies in advance, I know there's similar posts to this but the information seems to be changing so rapidly.

Thank you if you can provide anything helpful.

QrizB

With Octopus, you essentially have two choices:

• An EV tariff for import, plus their 4.1p/kWh SEG tariff for export; or
• Another import tariff, plus either Outgoing Fixed (7.5p/kWh) or Outgoing Agile (variable, but currently over 20p/kWh).

Which option works out best depends on your balance of import-vs-export, and on how much of your import you can use during the cheap rate period of their EV tariff.

You could even consider taking the EV tariff plus SEG for the winter months, then a not-EV tariff plus Outgoing Agile in the summer ones.

I'm a lot less familiar with other suppliers' EV tariff offerings but I'm not sure there are many that are currently taking new customers. EDF had some interesting options but they were all dual-fuel and their gas tariffs weren't particularly attractive.

CreditWings

There's any number of assumptions in these estimations, including being able to charge the battery fully overnight on a cheap EV tariff. But I think the principle comes down to, excess vs shortfall. I have a lot of shortfall and not much excess, so it looks like the cheap EV tariff is the way to go. Agile doesn't seem to have the same benefit until I'm significantly overproducing.