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Cheapest EV energy supplier?
- Thread starter Juve
- Start date
I'm happy with Octopus and the Agile tariff in particular.
Most owners have found them cheapest for their charging needs but you will need a smart meter to access the best rates.
@DaveW put together a spreadsheet that helps you compare the different tariffs available.
Tesla Cost to charge calculator - TeslaEV.co.uk
Most owners have found them cheapest for their charging needs but you will need a smart meter to access the best rates.
@DaveW put together a spreadsheet that helps you compare the different tariffs available.
Tesla Cost to charge calculator - TeslaEV.co.uk
Glan gluaisne
Active Member
Worth looking closely at the times of day when you use most energy. In our case, I can't get either Octopus Go or Agile to be cheaper than a fairly standard E7 tariff, as we use about 56% of our electricity between midnight and 7 am. The Go cheap rate period is too short, at 4 hours, (for example, my car took almost the whole 7 hours to charge back to 90% the night before last, and our heating was on for the whole 7 hours too). Agile is much the same, it can be very cheap for short periods at night, but isn't consistently cheap at those times.
Thanks for linking that in @Medved_77
The charging calculator has prompted me to change my charging behaviour to make best use of the cheap rates, moved to topping up rather than filling up, means you get cheaper charging and wake up to a full tank more often
The charging calculator has prompted me to change my charging behaviour to make best use of the cheap rates, moved to topping up rather than filling up, means you get cheaper charging and wake up to a full tank more often
Yes, they'll install a smart meter for you but there is a waiting time with different forum members reporting different levels of success.
Prior to getting your smart meter installed, have a look at their Tracker tariff which should work out cheaper short term than their standard tariff.
I definitely recommend calling them, rather than just registering an interest, they should then look for availability whilst you are on the phone with them
That is the case for me too - certainly over winter. I charge batteries for domestic use and run a heatpump as well as charge cars so I can hit 70% consumption during E7 night rate.
With no mains gas, one of my objectives is to mimimse heating oil use, so keeping the heat pump running to warm underfloor circuits and thermal store means I can use off reak rates for the entire period they are available.
It is tempting to gamble with a smart tariff, especially if I could max out my 100A supply during every negative charge period, but without a much higher level of automation / AI I would have to become far too obsessive to stay on top of it.
Glan gluaisne
Active Member
Sounds a bit like our situation. Our house is all-electric, no gas, oil or other combustion fuels. We have heat pumps for heating the insulated concrete floor slab overnight, that then acts as a giant storage heater to keep the house warm during the day. The snag is that, even with the heat pump running as hard as it reasonably can, it still take almost the full 7 hours of the off-peak period to charge the slab up with heat. Water heating isn't as critical, we have a ~10 kWh heat battery (stores heat using the phase change of sodium acetate) and that has a 2.8 kW heater, so from cold can fully charge in under 4 hours (much of the time it's at least partially charged by excess PV generation).
Until we can get another tariff that provides a guaranteed off-peak rate of around 7 hours, ideally in one contiguous period, it looks as if we'll just stick with E7. Perhaps also worth noting that car charging can take longer than 4 hours. We went away for Christmas and arrived home with about 15% charge remaining. Charging to 90% took longer than a single overnight charge, the charge point shut off whilst still charging at 07:00, and topped off the remaining charge to 90% with another hour of charging the following night. Ideally, we could have done with an 8 hour cheap rate period to charge from 15% to 90%.
Very similar.
March to end September I usually have enough PV to run everything, but it's still useful to be able to top up charge from near empty from time to time. The problem tends to be during the crossover months how / when to heat the underfloor. It's easy to heat over night only to find that it's a sunny day when you didn't need the heat.
thegruf
Active Member
I agree that Octopus are probably the cheapest supplier, there have also been rmours of Tesla working with them in the future.
Just as an alternate though
I currently am with Bulb as they have a 100% "green" tariff solely from renewables.
They have also been really good to deal with in my experience.
In theory this means that I can legitimately claim zero CO2 emission, or at least non-fossil fuel burning, which seems to match the ethos of running an EV (in Ludicrous mode). It also supports the massively important agenda of moving generation to renewables as soon as possible.
Just as an alternate though
I currently am with Bulb as they have a 100% "green" tariff solely from renewables.
They have also been really good to deal with in my experience.
In theory this means that I can legitimately claim zero CO2 emission, or at least non-fossil fuel burning, which seems to match the ethos of running an EV (in Ludicrous mode). It also supports the massively important agenda of moving generation to renewables as soon as possible.
Bulb supply exactly the same proportion of renewably generated electricity as every other supplier.
Those who quote 100% renewable are just using dubious claims that they supply you with a different energy when in fact apart from very ocaisional days no one receives from 100% renewable sources.
I’m on Octopus Go which works well for us. We have oil heating but everything else is electric.
In late spring/summer/early autumn we export a bit from our solar panels but consume most by charging the cars and the Powerwalls.
The rest of the year we eventually dip down to charging everything off-peak and running from the Powerwalls during peak time.
Our bills range roughly between £20-£80 per quarter.
In late spring/summer/early autumn we export a bit from our solar panels but consume most by charging the cars and the Powerwalls.
The rest of the year we eventually dip down to charging everything off-peak and running from the Powerwalls during peak time.
Our bills range roughly between £20-£80 per quarter.
That's the view I tend to take too. It's just accounting trickery that supports claims of how much renewable etc. And let's face it, on dark, windless winter afternoons, do your lights go off if there is no spare renewable capacity on the grid? If not, then your guilt free eco energy is only available thanks to someone else being less picky!
Almost the same for me. My objective is to try and get my FIT payment of around 850 to net off against energy costs including around 13k miles pa. I thought I could do it, but it's looking tough.
Using E7 for heating at night is fine when you need it the next day, but too easy to 'play it safe' and store up heat overnight regardless. Oil is easier to use to boost hot water and rad's.
MrBadger
Badger out
What about one of the longer (5 hour) Go Faster tariffs? At 5.5p off peak, 13.8p peak, 7 hours use would average under 8p/unit with the added benefit that if you didn't utilise the whole 7 hours, the average would be even less. Plus with some Go Faster rates, they aren't all overnight periods so you may have better utilisation. Not sure if Go Faster is currently available though.
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