Advice on EV tariff with 2 EVs

FreeBear

dunstonh said:

silvercar said:

Reed_Richards said:

bristolleedsfan said:

DougMLancs said:

There’s also Octopus Go which is tech agnostic. They’ve just upped it to a 5hr window and dropped the rate to 8.5p/kWh

Eon Next Drive 7hr window at 6.9p per kWh 

This applies to your entire house so you could be charging one car with the 7 kW charger (that I presume you have) whilst simultaneously charging the other car more slowly with a "granny charger" at 2.35 kW.

Yes, we have a 7Kwh podpoint charger. Always worried about fusing the whole house if I draw so much for so long, I know in theory it’s fine.

As long as your house fuse is sufficient, you should be fine.  When our podpoint was installed, the pre-installation visit required us to upgrade it from 60 to 100amp before they would install it.      We charge on the podpoint whilst the dishwasher is on at cheap rate and more importantly, the 30amp AGA.  Plus, we are going to get some batteries installed to charge overnight.

We haven't gone to a car tariff as the AGA needs the 7 hours and 4 or 5 hours isn't enough.

Had an Ohme charger installed earlier in the year, and didn't have to have the main fuse (60A) upgraded, but then I don't have an AGA. Meter tails are also 16mm² which would also need to be upgraded if the fuse had been changed.

Not everyone will need a bigger main fuse.

Not switched to an EV tariff as the charger gets very little use, so I'm happy to stick with Octopus Tracker.

I wouldn't recommend an Ohme charger - Their customer service really sucks and took them best part of a month to do a system reset and multiple emails to answer the same questions. There is also an ongoing subscription fee after year 3 to pay for the cloud connectivity (currently £2 per month).

pete-20-11

I think some (perhaps all?) EV chargers monitor the power at the mains tails - so they can back off the charge a bit if other things are power hungry. 

dunstonh

Had an Ohme charger installed earlier in the year, and didn't have to have the main fuse (60A) upgraded, but then I don't have an AGA. Meter tails are also 16mm² which would also need to be upgraded if the fuse had been changed.

It was along the lines that if the AGA is drawing 30amp and the car charger is similar, then 60amp is not enough.   80 would have been but if they are going to install a new amp, we may as well move to 100.  I preferred to play it safe. 

With the granny charger being limited anyway, you would have scope for now but I never felt comfortable with the granny charger.  All those pictures of melted plugs and cables niggle at you even when you know your system is ok.

I wouldn't recommend an Ohme charger - Their customer service really sucks and took them best part of a month to do a system reset and multiple emails to answer the same questions. There is also an ongoing subscription fee after year 3 to pay for the cloud connectivity (currently £2 per month).

I get frustrated with podpoint sometimes.   If it loses the wifi signal, it will start the charging cycle.    The charging times you set are stored on their server rather than on your charger.    The only way to prevent that is to have the car charging timer set.   However, our previous car would lose the settings periodically (possibly when the app updated or was no longer running in the background).    So, it would start charging at the day rate.   

silvercar

dunstonh said:

Had an Ohme charger installed earlier in the year, and didn't have to have the main fuse (60A) upgraded, but then I don't have an AGA. Meter tails are also 16mm² which would also need to be upgraded if the fuse had been changed.

It was along the lines that if the AGA is drawing 30amp and the car charger is similar, then 60amp is not enough.   80 would have been but if they are going to install a new amp, we may as well move to 100.  I preferred to play it safe. 

With the granny charger being limited anyway, you would have scope for now but I never felt comfortable with the granny charger.  All those pictures of melted plugs and cables niggle at you even when you know your system is ok.

I wouldn't recommend an Ohme charger - Their customer service really sucks and took them best part of a month to do a system reset and multiple emails to answer the same questions. There is also an ongoing subscription fee after year 3 to pay for the cloud connectivity (currently £2 per month).

I get frustrated with podpoint sometimes.   If it loses the wifi signal, it will start the charging cycle.    The charging times you set are stored on their server rather than on your charger.    The only way to prevent that is to have the car charging timer set.   However, our previous car would lose the settings periodically (possibly when the app updated or was no longer running in the background).    So, it would start charging at the day rate.   

We set the times via the OVO anytime app or occasionally via the Tesla, so we haven’t had that problem.

Also niggled by the melting plug pictures, especially as we would be leaving it on all night.

I’ve decided on a fixed rate with OVO, so car 1 keeps the low rate and car 2 will only be used when car 1 is unavailable.

Jinglish

New rates from July…



If you can get onto Intelligent then you get extra time and a lower rate. You can do what you like during the off peak window. Charge two cars, charge your house battery, turn on you immersion heater, dishwasher. I offset everything I possibly can 🙂