SMETS1

[Bootneckshuffl]

A lot of those 'EV' tariffs are rubbish and will actually cost you more. Do a little research before you commit.
My spreadsheet may be a little of out date (not by much) but will allow you to easily spot the expensive tariffs and by playing around with your expected consumption you should be able to identify a tariff that fits with your needs.
Clearly your meter may not be smart enough to get the very best tariff but then there are standard tariffs out there that easily beat some of the smart 'EV' tariffs while you wait for your meter upgrade.

brilliant this, thanks

 

[LukeUK]

Similar position, was with Scottish Power, SMETS1 meter installed in 2017.

I've moved to Octopus, currently on the Tracker tariff, waiting for a SMETS2 meter.

The customer service with Octopus is far better than Scottish Power ever was. I'm fine with communicating via email, rather than spending ages sat on the phone etc.

Ok, the monthly manual meter reading is a bit annoying, but it will be worth it for the short term to be able to move to Go, Agile, etc. and make the most of EV ownership.

To echo the comments above, I put a spreadsheet together and many of the 'EV rates' are obliterated by the inflated 'normal' rates. We still have a house to run, with normal family usage, so some of the tariffs out there amount to not much more than a con, or a fiddle of the numbers.

Luke

 

[Drew57]

Yes. The Tracker does not require a smart meter.

Normally Octopus just take the daily Tracker variable rates over the period since the last meter reading and divide by the number of days to bill at an average. Not as good as using a smart meter with 1/2 hourly data but better than other tariffs.

If someone with Octopus Tracker could be bothered to manually submit a daily meter reading then you could take advantage of pricing variability & charge the car/ use other high consumption appliances on lower rate days (Tracker includes the rates for current day/tomorrow). Yesterday was a low rate day for instance.

At the moment I'm OK on Tracker & waiting for a smart meter as we have solar PV/battery storage so grid usage is minimal until late Autumn - monthly usage bills since April have been 99% standing charges. The main issue seems to be the huge backlog for meter installs ('thousands' according to Octopus) so I may not be able to switch to Agile in time.