Picking my car up on the 24th March and currently on a normal energy tariff with E.On which is fixed until 6th July. I have a SMET2 meter and am wondering if I should leave the, and move to Octopus for the Go tariff and start saving. Currently paying 14p KWh. Tariff has £30 exit fees for both gas and electric
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New M3P Owner
- Thread starter NickC84
- Start date
That unit price is roughly the same as Go during the day so you should save money from off peak usage and take a look at agile as you could save even more. Do some calculations and if it suits you I can provide a referral code for £50 credit which can help with cover some of the exit fee if you choose to leave early (I did as it would save the other £10 quickly)
If you are within 3 months of the end of your tariff you don’t need to pay the exit fees.
Calculate how much you’ll pay to charge for the period until 6th April.
You might find you won’t switch until close to the 6th April if you switch now anyway.
I’d wait until you collect your vehicle then switch...you should miss paying the exit fee, use the referral code to get £50 also and then swallow the charging costs for 2 weeks.
The period in which you don't have to pay the exit fee is the final 49 days
If you are within 3 months of the end of your tariff you don’t need to pay the exit fees.
Calculate how much you’ll pay to charge for the period until 6th April.
You might find you won’t switch until close to the 6th April if you switch now anyway.
I’d wait until you collect your vehicle then switch...you should miss paying the exit fee, use the referral code to get £50 also and then swallow the charging costs for 2 weeks.
Wording as per EDF’s policy and on website is 3 months from end of tariff.
I double checked with the online chat to make sure I was 100% within the period.
OP, it may also be worth a chat with them to confirm the date from which you can switch.
I may have been inside the 49 days but the wording on the website is 3 months.
MrBadger
Badger out
Whilst headline Go rate is tempting, personal real world charging numbers may help you decide whether you want to jump early.
We have a second source for charging and its probably 50/50 remote/home charging, slightly more bias to remote charging now on Go - remote we just plug and leave, Go we have to 'clock watch'.
For us, we do 10A charging so need multiple home charges a week to keep within the 4 hour slot, where as when not on Go, we just plugged it in once per week and left it on as required.
We recently changed to Go (long term Octopus customer) so have lots of real world costs, but not so many on Go.
Cost wise (on top of charging elsewhere)
Octopus variable, approx £4-5 once per week ~ 40%
Octopus Go, approx £1.80 spread over a few charges per week (we topup by % so not exact end time) ~33% total
So in our situation, Go seems to give us a saving of around £3 per week. Approx 1k miles per month.
We have a second source for charging and its probably 50/50 remote/home charging, slightly more bias to remote charging now on Go - remote we just plug and leave, Go we have to 'clock watch'.
For us, we do 10A charging so need multiple home charges a week to keep within the 4 hour slot, where as when not on Go, we just plugged it in once per week and left it on as required.
We recently changed to Go (long term Octopus customer) so have lots of real world costs, but not so many on Go.
Cost wise (on top of charging elsewhere)
Octopus variable, approx £4-5 once per week ~ 40%
Octopus Go, approx £1.80 spread over a few charges per week (we topup by % so not exact end time) ~33% total
So in our situation, Go seems to give us a saving of around £3 per week. Approx 1k miles per month.
Thats helpful thank you. If I take the £50 referral and only pay the penalty for electric which is £30 then I am still £20 up and will save so I think I will go for it to be honest.
Bear in mind that it takes a few days to switch. If you go for Agile, they swap you to a fixed tariff until they know they can get readings from your existing smart meter. That took an additional four days for me.
They also take a big advanced direct debit based on that fixed tariff so that your account is in credit. I presume that will be adjusted after a pattern emerges on my usage.
I’m fairly confident that this switch will result in lower payments than EDF’s EV tariff, but savings made by moving from one EV tariff to another will probably be quite small in the grand scheme of things. Main thing is to get off petrol/diesel.
Also, if you choose agile, consider the ev.energy app to automatically optimise your charging costs, particularly if you expect to charge during the day.
They also take a big advanced direct debit based on that fixed tariff so that your account is in credit. I presume that will be adjusted after a pattern emerges on my usage.
I’m fairly confident that this switch will result in lower payments than EDF’s EV tariff, but savings made by moving from one EV tariff to another will probably be quite small in the grand scheme of things. Main thing is to get off petrol/diesel.
Also, if you choose agile, consider the ev.energy app to automatically optimise your charging costs, particularly if you expect to charge during the day.
Just worked out that the staying on the current tariff will cost be £20 a month extra with the additional usage built in compared to Go. It will take a couple of weeks to switch then the time before they move you to the Go tariff another week or two so then I am down to saving from say start of May.
I could give notice at the start of May, takes 21 days on average be switched by the end of the month the start on the Go tariff mid June.
For 6 weeks I may as well just wait
I could give notice at the start of May, takes 21 days on average be switched by the end of the month the start on the Go tariff mid June.
For 6 weeks I may as well just wait
You’re welcome.
Some other things that might help:
Whilst Octopus encourage you to use email to obtain support, the response time is very slow in my recent experience. It is better to phone them and wait a short time in the queue if you can’t wait a few days.
For me, the electricity switch was easy and seamless. Not so much for the gas. Their website wouldn’t recognise my gas MPRN, and because of that, my gas switch seemed to escape their automation. It will take me three weeks longer to switch the gas than the electricity even with phoning to chase.
I'm swithering between Octopus and EDF, Octopus better at 5p off peak for charging cost but unlikely to use much else between 00:30 and 04:30 apart from possibly washing machine and dishwasher on timer. It's very tempting just to make the running of the car as cheap as possible, but the EDF tarriff goes from 9PM to 7AM and all weekend, we're out all day during the week so we use quite a bit of our electric at the weekend when the wife catches up with all the washing and drying. If I look at the overall picture, from some calculations I think I could be around 15% less with EDF even with the car charging included and it's not so time restrictive.
Typically the switch to Octopus takes two to three weeks. They switch you over on the standard tariff, then once they’ve confirmed that they are getting meter data every 30 minutes they will switch you to GO. For me that took four days after going live with them. I’ve got SMETS1 meters that happened to be compatible with Octopus.
As you’ve already got working SMETS2 meters, your switch should be straightforward. Most people seem to be having problems getting smart meters installed and working, but you’re already over that hurdle.
Everyone has to make their own decision based on historical or anticipated usage.
I was initially attracted to EDF for precisely the same reasons as you seem to be. However, despite promising it and wasting lots of my time on support interaction, they were unable to show me graphs showing my daily consumption to make it easy to work out what I was actually spending and when.
The lack of data and knowledge that I could easily avoid the 16:00–19:00 peak window for Agile even on weekends was what prompted me to switch to Agile Octopus. Also, because of my driving patterns, my overnight charge frequently exceeds 55kWh so the Agile rates make it more attractive than any of the alternatives.
Like I said earlier, the cumulative financial savings between most home EV tariffs over a year won’t amount to much for most people in the context of the overall car budget including supercharging on trips. However, it is rather satisfying to know you have finessed it.
Either tarriff will be a lot better for an EV than my current one, from further calculations probably not much in it cost wise, slight advantage to EDV but their timing is also an advantage as I could charge at anytime at the weekend which is when I'm likely to do any longer runs, the Go faster tarriff would probably be best for me as I could change my off peak starting time to suit me better but I think it's invitation only. How much do they charge roughly on Agile for the peak times of 16:00 - 19:00?
