Gas/Electric help with EV

LunaAndBelle

I’m totally at a loss about energy suppliers and usage. I moved into my new home three years ago and I’ve never changed my supplier as I just don’t understand it, no matter how much I read. Could anyone help please?

Current supplier - Scottish Power
Tariff - Standard Online with smart meters
Payment - £98.23 direct debit a month but they’re suggesting it needs to go to £109 to cover usage

Current costs - 25.603 for electric and 7.901 for gas. Standing charges are 57.23 and 29.7 respectively.

In 2025 I used 6641 gas and 1500 electric. I can’t access my 2024 usage now but it was similar.

So far this year I’ve used 4484 gas and 1118 electric but we’re entering cold season so it’ll ramp up.

Me - I live alone in a two bed terrace and I work from home so usage is always more. I’ve got an EV coming next week. The old owners installed a Hypervolt home 2.0 but I’ve never used it. Just had a service and it’s fine to use.

Scottish power EV optimise doesn’t have my car on there and their EV tariff is £125 a month.

I’m finding it really hard to compare but know I need to switch otherwise it’s going to cost me a lot more. I know costs have risen a lot anyway and I should have fixed a long time ago (before I needed a new car).

Could anyone help identify a suitable tariff please?

EDIT WITH ADDITIONAL ANSWERS.

Car - I’m getting the extended range (52kw) Nissan Micra. My mileage is very low and will not exceed 5,000 a year. It’s mostly short trips but an 80 mile round trip every other weekend on the motorway.

House - I don’t have any solar panels or batteries. I have a combi boiler. I don’t have any appliances that have delayed starts at the moment. Currently using the power saver slots to do washing and drying.

lohr500

Some initial questions that may make it easier to offer some suggestions :

How many miles are you likely to do each year with the EV?

Is your gas boiler used for heating the hot water and is it a combi type boiler with no hot water storage tank. Or do you have a hot water cylinder with an electric immersion heater as back up?

If you have a washing machine (or washer/dryer) and/or dishwasher, do they have a delayed start option on them?

Do you have a working electricity smart meter?

The reason I ask is that there are some very cheap EV tariffs available which offer up to 7 hours of low cost electricity overnight. But most then have a slightly higher day rate.

EDF for example in my region (Yorkshire) are still offering an 18 month fix with 7 hours off-peak at 6.66p per kWh. The peak rate is 30.55p per kWh.

If you have a hot water cylinder and immersion heater, you could get a low cost timer fitted to the immersion heater and then heat your hot water at the 6.66p rate which is cheaper than using your gas. Then do all your washing and charge the car overnight on the cheap rate as well. Also shift any other electrical consumption you can to the 7 hour off-peak window, thus reducing your daytime usage.

Keep_pedalling

The SP EV tariff is not £125 per moth that is just the estimated monthly cost. When you get your EV your electric use is going to increase significantly (more than offset by no petrol costs). EV optimise is a bolt on where your EV would be charged at 7.22p per kWh rather the standard rate for the rest of your home.

SP also have an EV saver tariff which does not need a compatible car but you get charged 8.5p per kWh.

Other options are available from EDF, Octopus, E-on next and others.

What car do you have coming? Do you have solar panels or batteries?

Exodi

Your post is very thin on detail to give any meaningful advice, however I will share my figures to help offer some insight.

My wife and I both own an EV - I own a full EV (MG5 EV 61kWh battery) and my wife owns a PHEV (MG HS 16.6kWh). For simplicity, I'll only look at Electricity (as gas prices are usually the same between EV+non EV tariffs).

Before the electric vehicles, we used about 2500kWh of electricity (2 adults and a toddler). I drive about 550 miles per month, and my EV adds about 2200 kWh of electricity to our annual household consumption. You can see this conveniently averages out to 3 miles per kWh (this was not deliberate FYI!). My wife drives about 600 miles per month (but fills her car up with Petrol 4 times or so per year), which adds 1300 kWh to our annual household consumption.

Therefore, Electric = 4700 kWh (based on house+just my EV). It's also worth mentioning that anyone using an EV tariff will schedule their EV to only charge during the off-peak window. You can do this on the Hypervolt app. I do this (and also have a dishwasher I set to come on during the off-peak window but that's it) and my usage is 34.7% peak and 65.3% off-peak.

Presuming you have an EV, to use my figures:

Using your tariff (25.603 unit rate at 57.23 standing charge) I'd pay (0.25603*4700)+(0.5723*365)=£1412.23

Using the current EON Next Drive Fixed v33 tariff (since I have these figures to hand), the rates are 32.55p peak, 9.52p off-peak and 57.14p standing charge. Using this tariff, I'd pay (0.3255*(4700*0.347))+(0.0952*(4700*0.653))+(0.5714*365)=£1031.60.

You can see quite a significant saving (in reality, it's even better for me as we charge 2 cars).

Of course, this saving is based on my data, if you drive much less or have a wildly more efficient car, then the gaps reduces or can even work out more expensive (e.g. if you're retired and only use your EV to drive the 3 mile round trip to Tesco once a week).

Sadly it's not a simple thing to calculate, but to give a more informed estimate, we'd need to know more details like your estimated mileage, your EV, etc.

LunaAndBelle

Scottish power EV optimise doesn’t have my car on there and their EV tariff is £125 a month.

Means nothing, you need to look at the unit rates. They don't know how much you're going to drive, they've just guessed what the average cost might be.

LukeB_92

One extra step that helps before comparing any EV tariffs: split your electricity into 'house' and 'car' first, because your house use on its own is quite low.

Roughly, annual miles divided by about 3 to 4 miles per kWh gives the kWh you will actually put into the car. So 6,000 miles a year is around 1,500-2,000 kWh of charging, while 3,000 miles is more like 750-1,000 kWh. Compare that with your 1,500 kWh total last year.

Then the comparison is: (charging kWh x the saving per kWh from charging off-peak instead of at the standard rate) minus (any extra you pay the rest of the time from a higher daytime rate or standing charge on everything else). If the car is only a small share of your total, a tariff with a very cheap overnight rate can still work out more expensive overall, and a straightforward low standard rate can win.

As already said above, ignore the monthly direct debit figures suppliers quote for this - they are just an estimate of total cost, not the tariff. Use your own day/night split with the unit rates and standing charges, and treat gas separately, as EV deals are normally electricity only.

LunaAndBelle

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82162104#Comment_82162104

Thanks for the reply. I’ve just updated my post with some additional details.

EV is very low use. No more than 5,000 miles a year. I have a combi boiler but no appliances with delayed starts. My smart meters work.

LunaAndBelle

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82162106#Comment_82162106

I have just updated my post with additional comments. I don’t have any solar panels. The EV is the 52Kw nissan micra.

LunaAndBelle

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82162176#Comment_82162176

I’ve added some additional information about my EV and mileage but your calculations have helped!

Nissan Micra 52kw model and no more than 5,000 miles a year.

Exodi

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82162311#Comment_82162311

In which case as a real simple estimate you could assume your EV averages 3.5m/kWh (cars with smaller batteries tend to be more efficient due to less weight), so for 5000 miles per year that would be 1429kWh of electricity for your car on top of your 1500kWh household usage.

On your current tariff: (25.603 unit rate at 57.23 standing charge) you'd pay (0.25603*2929)+(0.5723*365)=£958.80

On the current EON Next Drive tariff (as you haven't provided the unit rates for the Scottish power tariff you were looking at) you'd pay (0.3255*1500)+(0.0952*1429)+(0.5714*365)=£832.85

Now this does assume you do exactly 5000 miles when you said you would "not exceed" and do "no more than" that so the mileage may be overstated, however this may be offset by the fact I've assumed all household usage is at the day (peak) rate, when in reality some of it would be at off-peak (mine looks to be somewhere around 10-20%).

Unless you can refine the mileage figures further and tell us how much of your usage would be at off-peak rates, I think this might be as far as could be achieved with a ballpark.

While the EV tariff already looks ~15% cheaper, there's also further improvements that can be made in the future (e.g. getting appliances that allow a delayed start).

lohr500

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82162301#Comment_82162301

OK, so with a combi boiler, you won't have a hot water cylinder so that rules out using cheap rate off-peak electricity to heat your water.

However, as per @Exodi calculation an EV tariff should give you a saving on your electricity.

Can I suggest you go onto the EDF website and get a quote for their GoElectric EV tariff.

If the prices are the same as in my region, then using @Exodi calculation as a base and assuming 15% of your current 1500 annual electricity usage is from 11pm to 6a, the GoElectric tariff would cost :

(225 * .066) + (1429 x .066) +(1275 x .3055) + (365 x .6131) = £722.46

A significant saving . And the EDF rates I have used are based on an 18 month fix which is probably not a bad idea given the current concerns over energy prices.

Even if ALL of your 1500 annual house electrical usage was at the peak rate, the annual cost with EDF would be £776.35. But you are bound to be using some electricity through the night to keep fridges/freezers and other 24/7 devices running. Hence my assumption of 15% usage for the 7 hour night time period, excluding any EV charging.

The gas price from EDF on the same 18 month fix GoElectric tariff is 7.89p with a standing charge of 29.77p.
So their gas is slightly lower cost than your current supplier.

LunaAndBelle

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82162325#Comment_82162325

For my mileage, realistically it would be around 3,500 but it certainly wouldn’t exceed 5,000. All my of my charging would be possible at home.

The EV specific tariff is between midnight and 5am with a standing charge of 63.23, primary unit rate of 33.284 and night rate of 8.5.

However I think I’m understanding your calculations so I can take a look at some tariffs and rates now to base my home and car rates on.