Are EV and ToU tariffs unfair to other electricity customers?

JKenH

MattMattMattUK said:

JKenH said:

Scot_39 said:

michaels said:

JKenH said:

I have started this thread to respond to a comment on a different thread ( Martin Lewis: Standing charges update risks households paying more) without taking that thread off topic

QrizB said:

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This isn't entirely true if you look beyond standing charges (the subject of this thread) and include unit costs (which the thread has begun to include).

Someone on a flat rate tariff will be paying a weighed average price covering the entire period of the tariff (3 months for the SVT, 12 or more for a fix). Swapping to a ToU tariff will allow the householder to choose to use more electricity during cheaper periods and less during more expensive ones. This can save the householder money without creating a loss for the supplier that needs recovering from elsewhere. A "winner" without a corresponding "loser".

That is an interesting (and valid) point. 

Ultimately if every individual optimised their consumption to achieve the lowest import price on a ToU tariff then prices would adjust to meet demand until they levelled out. So at the moment those able to take advantage of ToU prices can do so because others can’t. 

That is the short answer and applies to tariffs such as EV tariffs which are underpinned by the variable utility of electricity - we value it more at tea time than in the middle of the night. 

The situation is more complicated with tariffs like Octopus Agile and Tracker and Intelligent Octopus which have arisen to reflect price variability driven by the intermittency of renewable generation and I concede there can be winners here without corresponding losers. In fact it can be win-win on occasions if curtailment is avoided as SVT customers also benefit. 

Seems a very odd question. Either we use prices to match supply and demand or we choose state control and rationing.

I don't see what state control has to do with rationing power.

Not at the moment anyway in UK.

In fact if anything its the exact opposite.

What we have is definitely not rationing - we have massive overcapacity thanks to net zero and renewables without storage model we use - so actual capacity duplication.

Solar (approaching 20GW) and wind (over 30GW) at certain times, and when they cannot, gas/biomass etc at others.

And the imbalance at times leading to folk like Octopus "dumping power" on people - certainly on agile in past for hours at a time - actually paying them to use energy - whether using for useful things (like moving a washing into cheap times) or say turning on a bar fire on in the middle of the garden in summer to get paid to burn kWh of power.  (Their was even a thread here discussing the morality of potentially "wasting power" in such ways - whether it was even wasteful at all)

So we have state - net zero policy - in control - actually interfering - de-stabilising the traditional supply and demand model - not by constraining peak supply to potentially require rationing - but by boosting it under the right weather conditions.

In fact the only rationing going on is amongst our poor and vulnerable - who cannot afford - not the luxury of what they might like to - but the basic standards of life - of using what they need - for a comfortable healthy existence.

As thanks to policy - including our rushed net zero policy - UK has amongst the highest energy costs in comparable countries.

While I generally agree with your comments you do appear to be confusing generation capacity with generation. At times our renewables capacity means that we can generate more than we need resulting in all the expenses associated with curtailment that you refer to but at times during the winter months there is a genuine shortage of generation because of intermittency of renewable generation. Much of the year we are relying on imports to fill the gaps but when they are tight prices surge. As @michaels suggests ToU tariffs play a role in managing demand or we might well need rationing. ToU pricing also includes the provision for surge (negative) pricing to enable consumers to dump excess generation into the garden which presumably is a cheaper option than curtailment. I have enjoyed many afternoons of negative pricing this summer.

These problems of generation shortages and excesses are solely the result of our renewables focussed generation policies (aka Net Zero madness) and lack of storage and the development of smart tariffs to manage demand is an integral part of the roll out of renewables. As you have pointed out the UK has some of the highest energy costs (both domestic and commercial) in the world but because of my solar panels and smart tariff I am not (so far) feeling these. Given the furore in the media about energy prices someone else must be taking my pain. 

The fact that you are a climate change denier discredits your position. You can either choose to look at things rationally and scientifically, or you can choose conspiracy theories, if you choose the latter then your arguments lack merit. 

And the evidence that I am a climate denier is…? 

JKenH

In relation to confidence in using a computer here is a useful document from Age UK https://www.ageuk.org.uk/siteassets/documents/reports-and-publications/reports-and-briefings/active-communities/internet-use-statistics-june-2024.pdf

Just one quote

Newbie_John

GingerTim said:

Lack of enthusiasm or lack of knowledge/awareness?

Totally agree with this question. A lot of people I know have no idea how much electricity they use, they have no idea of their electricity rate, all they know is that they are charged something like £50/month and say it's a lot. 

Till 2021 I was in the same boat, didn't really care about any of that, even while being on E7 tarrif (no gas) and not using any heating at night while being charged premium during the day for years. When the prices started going up it pushed me to understand how these things work.. 

2022 moved away from E7 to basic tariff and saved 30% a year
2023 got a smart meter and switched to Agile - saved another 30% - this was a great time as I understood how my house works, how I can have sometimes 25*C in the middle of winter for free, what costs the most (heating, hot water tank) and what can be fully ignored (TV, lights..)
2025 moved to 5p/kWh at night tariff and saved another 30% to the point that my bills are much cheaper now that they were in 2019

It's clearly lack of knowledge, for exmaple from my family point of view running dishwasher during the day (costing 50p) or at night (costing 10p) costs the same - "pennies" so it really makes no difference, nobody sees the accumulated effect that changing the habit just on one item can save you £40/year, and that can be applied to many more.

To make most of ToU you need to either invest a lot in things like Heat Pumps, EV, battery, solar etc. (high costs) or change your habits - and both are difficult sadly.

RedNose975

Time of Use Tariffs

I have moved from E.ON’s Economy 7 to E.ON Next Drive Ev Tariff. E.ON have disabled my Meter from showing the Off-Peak reading. They say they use the Smart Meter to download 1/2 hourly data for billing. Why when the change in tariffs is only twice a day, why have half hourly data for billing just Peak and Off-Peak readings?

The problem now is that I can’t use the readings to check and verify my bill. In the past I had readings for daytime usage confused on bills with nighttime usage, how am I now to check the monthly bill?

Nothing wrong if they want to use ToU method, but I should still be able to get my Meter Readings, and the bill should still show the meter readings.

Has anyone else experienced this issue, surely it has impacted other?

MattMattMattUK

RedNose975 said:

Time of Use Tariffs

I have moved from E.ON’s Economy 7 to E.ON Next Drive Ev Tariff. E.ON have disabled my Meter from showing the Off-Peak reading. They say they use the Smart Meter to download 1/2 hourly data for billing. Why when the change in tariffs is only twice a day, why have half hourly data for billing just Peak and Off-Peak readings?

That is the way the regulator wants it, any new E7 installations will also now use the half hourly readings rather than separate registers.

RedNose975 said:
The problem now is that I can’t use the readings to check and verify my bill. In the past I had readings for daytime usage confused on bills with nighttime usage, how am I now to check the monthly bill?

The ToU data is available to download in your account on their website, you can also access it via one of the third party apps (Bright etc.) and verify it that way if you wish.

RedNose975 said:
Nothing wrong if they want to use ToU method, but I should still be able to get my Meter Readings, and the bill should still show the meter readings.

You can still get your meter readings and your will will show the meter readings, every half hour window for the billing period, it does make for a long PDF though. 

RedNose975 said:
Has anyone else experienced this issue, surely it has impacted other?

Everyone on a modern ToU tariff and many of the legacy ToU tariffs (mostly E7).

Ildhund

MattMattMattUK said:
That is the way the regulator wants it, any new E7 installations will also now use the half hourly readings rather than separate registers.

This is news to me (not an unusual experience, to be sure). Where should I have read about it?

Can you say how this is supposed to work when meters currently being installed have an in-built delay of up to half-an-hour between the start of an offpeak bucket and the circuit powering 'offpeak' equipment being energized, and the same at the end of the offpeak period? 

silverwhistle

MattMattMattUK said:

You can still get your meter readings and your will will show the meter readings, every half hour window for the billing period, it does make for a long PDF though. 

Best not print it! When I get my half hour bill I only give it a cursory look; the overall total and a quick scan of a page or two, if that.

MWT

MattMattMattUK said:

You can still get your meter readings and your will will show the meter readings, every half hour window for the billing period, it does make for a long PDF though. 

The bills will usually show the energy consumed in the half-hour period, but they do not usually show meter register readings as the suppliers need to bill based on one or the other, half-hour totals or the difference between meter readings. 

silverwhistle

Back to the OP on this thread that I only noticed earlier this evening..

No, it's not unfair. TOU tariffs are offered to give a benefit to the system. Those of us who use them do so because we get a benefit too otherwise why bother? You can be sure that the asymmetry of information between the comapanies and the consumer means that we are not getting more than we are worth!

Tonight Agile, which I am on, went up to 60p, and the network was obviously under stress, so I didn't use much. I went to the bother of using V2L for my cuppa and reheating some food. My efforts obviously have a worth to the system and hence all the other users for reasons explained elsewhere.

MattMattMattUK may have been slightly unfair when he called the OP a climate change denier, but I was uneasy myself about the thread title and the history of the person who posted it. So I carried on reading and came across this: 

Michaels said about the OP: "Seems a very odd question. Either we use prices to match supply and demand or we choose state control and rationing."

The OP replied:  "That’s the mess we are in because of the push for renewables. I accept that ToU tariffs serve a useful function in managing demand but before we relied so much on renewables we didn’t need to - we could simply ramp up gas or coal generation. I believe current peak demand is down around 25% from a few years ago so we shouldn’t really need to be talking about state control or rationing."

My bold, I hasten to add, so maybe not a climate change denier, just someone who doesn't want to actually do too much, and posts an awful lot on these boards to that effect? "Thou shalt not kill nor shall ye strive, officiously to keep alive"..

JKenH

silverwhistle said:

Back to the OP on this thread that I only noticed earlier this evening..

No, it's not unfair. TOU tariffs are offered to give a benefit to the system. Those of us who use them do so because we get a benefit too otherwise why bother? You can be sure that the asymmetry of information between the comapanies and the consumer means that we are not getting more than we are worth!

Tonight Agile, which I am on, went up to 60p, and the network was obviously under stress, so I didn't use much. I went to the bother of using V2L for my cuppa and reheating some food. My efforts obviously have a worth to the system and hence all the other users for reasons explained elsewhere.

MattMattMattUK may have been slightly unfair when he called the OP a climate change denier, but I was uneasy myself about the thread title and the history of the person who posted it. So I carried on reading and came across this: 

Michaels said about the OP: "Seems a very odd question. Either we use prices to match supply and demand or we choose state control and rationing."

The OP replied:  "That’s the mess we are in because of the push for renewables. I accept that ToU tariffs serve a useful function in managing demand but before we relied so much on renewables we didn’t need to - we could simply ramp up gas or coal generation. I believe current peak demand is down around 25% from a few years ago so we shouldn’t really need to be talking about state control or rationing."

My bold, I hasten to add, so maybe not a climate change denier, just someone who doesn't want to actually do too much, and posts an awful lot on these boards to that effect? "Thou shalt not kill nor shall ye strive, officiously to keep alive"..

The title of the thread is 

Are EV and ToU tariffs unfair to other electricity customers?

This is the Energy board of a money saving forum. Why on earth would this question make someone feel uneasy? Obviously it must be a very interesting thread as you continued to read it unless of course you were just looking for a launchpad for a personal attack. 

Play the ball, not the man. To do otherwise is just desperation.

This is not the Green and Ethical board and even if it were, is it unreasonable to ask whether EV and ToU tariffs are fair on other customers? The answer may well be yes they are but not everyone might realise it. The whole reason for starting the thread was that @QrizB had made a very interesting point (that there can be winners without corresponding losers from these tariffs) and we couldn’t discuss that further without taking the original thread off topic.

I don’t buy into the point of view that certain topics should not be discussed in case our sensibilities are offended by points of view contrary to the prevailing narrative.