Is there a good time to change energy tariff?

Cambrosia

With the energy price cap situation I have been told it is a terrible idea to change your tariff as you are not protected by the cap.

One issue I have though is I recently got myself a Plug-in Hybrid and so would like to charge my car at home, however to get the most saving from this I would need to swap to a special "EV" tariff which gives me substantially cheaper energy at night (about 10p per khw).

I am currently with Bulb, soon to be Octopus, and I would rather keep the price cap. So I was wondering, is there an optimum time where you can swap tariffs? For example if I swap in March would I then be covered by the April price cap change or do I just lose the cap altogether? Or is this a question for my energy supplier.

MattMattMattUK

Cambrosia said:

With the energy price cap situation I have been told it is a terrible idea to change your tariff as you are not protected by the cap.

It depends what tariff you sign up for, if you sign up for a fix then you are not protected, but almost no providers are offering those at the moment anyway.

Cambrosia said:

One issue I have though is I recently got myself a Plug-in Hybrid and so would like to charge my car at home, however to get the most saving from this I would need to swap to a special "EV" tariff which gives me substantially cheaper energy at night (about 10p per khw).

I am currently with Bulb, soon to be Octopus, and I would rather keep the price cap. So I was wondering, is there an optimum time where you can swap tariffs? For example if I swap in March would I then be covered by the April price cap change or do I just lose the cap altogether? Or is this a question for my energy supplier.

Octopus Go or Intelligent Octopus will be the best options once you have rolled over, you will have the cheap night rate, but a higher day rate so you need to work out of the usage pattern will benefit you. If you can charge at work for free, with only occasional charging at home then the EV tariffs will likely not work out cheaper for you, charging every day at home and especially if you can switch some additional usage at home over to the discount window then you will likely be able to make considerable savings. 

Cambrosia

Thanks. Yes sadly on a variable as you say.

Thanks for the advice. I will wait till we get fully onboarded with octopus then and look at the energy usage of a month not charging compared to a month of charging to see if the EV tariff would net more savings.