Charging, dav vs night

[jamesbilluk]

Hi all

Not sure if this is the right place for the post, please forgive the stupid question.... I've recently purchased a BMW i8 (first hybrid) I do try to do all my local journeys on electric power, but with the range being quite short, it's usually depleted, or running low when I get home.
With regards to charging costs, is it going to be pricey to charge during the day? As I tend to pop it on charge when I get back, incase I need to pop out again. Or would it be better to charge during the night,

Edit, realised I out dav, instead of Day in the title....

Many thanks

James

[Mr E]

What does your contract with the electricity provider state?

[oop north]

depends if you have economy 7 (or similar) tariff - if you do, then cheaper to charge in the economy window. If you don't, then makes no difference

[jamesbilluk]

Thank guys I'm with EON, have been trying to get online to check the account, but there seems to be log in problems.. After phoning they said they didn't know! And to log on to my account

[Mr E]

jamesbilluk said:

Thank guys I'm with EON, have been trying to get online to check the account, but there seems to be log in problems.. After phoning they said they didn't know! And to log on to my account

That sounds rather normal.

I have flat rate electric, so it makes no difference to me. I tend to charge at night to be a good citizen.

[lost in espace]

The first thing would be to check you are not paying too much on a comparison site, then look at the savings you can get. I heard good things about Octopus Go for EV's .

[SpikeBmth]

Unless you have a outlet connected to a dual meter, such as storage heater circuit, then your electricity costs the same whatever time you use it.

Its worth asking your supplier if they do a specific EV tariff

[jamesbilluk]

lost in espace said:

The first thing would be to check you are not paying too much on a comparison site, then look at the savings you can get. I heard good things about Octopus Go for EV's .

Many thanks, will take a look on there.

[jamesbilluk]

SpikeBmth said:

Unless you have a outlet connected to a dual meter, such as storage heater circuit, then your electricity costs the same whatever time you use it.

Its worth asking your supplier if they do a specific EV tariff

After checking today, it seems to be just the one meter.

E.ON did seem to do one, but doesn't seem available any more. The girl on the phone had never heard of it..

[SpikeBmth]

jamesbilluk said:

After checking today, it seems to be just the one meter.

E.ON did seem to do one, but doesn't seem available any more. The girl on the phone had never heard of it..

I'm with E-ON too, when I do "check your tariff" thing on the app, I'm offered a tariff called Fix and Drive V6, suggesting 850miles of power each year for two years, but is £16 per month more than I pay now lol

[jamesbilluk]

SpikeBmth said:

I'm with E-ON too, when I do "check your tariff" thing on the app, I'm offered a tariff called Fix and Drive V6, suggesting 850miles of power each year for two years, but is £16 per month more than I pay now lol

That seems quite a bit more!

This site seems to have a good list-
https://www.zap-map.com/charge-points/ev-energy-ta...

[12pack]

Try the Tide tariff here. They'll have to install a smart meter, but then you get 7p/kwh from midnight to 7A.

https://www.greenenergyuk.com/

[jamesbilluk]

12pack said:

Try the Tide tariff here. They'll have to install a smart meter, but then you get 7p/kwh from midnight to 7A.

https://www.greenenergyuk.com/

Thank you, will take a look

[covmutley]

I am with ovo and as I have a smart meter they were able to simply switch me onto a 'virtual' economy 7 tarrif. No physical changes.

[romeogolf]

lost in espace said:

The first thing would be to check you are not paying too much on a comparison site, then look at the savings you can get. I heard good things about Octopus Go for EV's .

I second this. I'm with Octopus on their "Go" tariff and it's been a real money-saver for us. Referral link here if you want it: https://share.octopus.energy/sunny-goat-745

Their customer service has also been fantastic, in so far as a query I had about billing on this tariff being escalated right up to their CTO who modified the system they use to send bills so as to outline complete half-hour usage with every bill so we could exactly when we were using energy.

[gangzoom]

If your thinking of moving to E7 make sure you do the numbers first.

We changed our meter to E7 at the current house 12 months ago.

This means we pay 14p per kWh day and 7.8p per kWh between 00:30 and 07:30. versus standard rate of 13p per kWh all day.

We have a solar PV setup and our EV has done 16k in the last 12 months, charging is always done overnight.

Looking at our annual usage, our E7 versus normal rate usage is split roughly 70% versus 30%, so very very heavily biased to E7 - as you would expect.

However our annual saving for been on E7 versus normal rate is only about £300 (roughly 30% cheaper once you add in standing rate charges), despite our heavy E7 rate.

So its unlikely your make any kind of substantial saving by going on to E7 with a i8.

Adding a battery storage system will increase our saving to about £500/year versus standard rate. This shows just how cheap electricity is, running an EV even on normal rate electricity is still much cheaper than paying for petrol.

Edited by gangzoom on Wednesday 17th April 12:05

[jamesbilluk]

Many thanks for that, does sound like I may be better off with just a foatvrate, but cheaper pence per kWh (seems quite high with E.on at the moment)

[dmsims]

gangzoom said:

If your thinking of moving to E7 make sure you do the numbers first.

We changed our meter to E7 at the current house 12 months ago.

This means we pay 14p per kWh day and 7.8p per kWh between 00:30 and 07:30. versus standard rate of 13p per kWh all day.

We have a solar PV setup and our EV has done 16k in the last 12 months, charging is always done overnight.

Looking at our annual usage, our E7 versus normal rate usage is split roughly 70% versus 30%, so very very heavily biased to E7 - as you would expect.

However our annual saving for been on E7 versus normal rate is only about £300 (roughly 30% cheaper once you add in standing rate charges), despite our heavy E7 rate.

So its unlikely your make any kind of substantial saving by going on to E7 with a i8.

Adding a battery storage system will increase our saving to about £500/year versus standard rate. This shows just how cheap electricity is, running an EV even on normal rate electricity is still much cheaper than paying for petrol.

Edited by gangzoom on Wednesday 17th April 12:05

But if you add in other domestic appliances (most of which have delay timers) e.g. dishwasher, tumble dryer, washing machine you can rack up a lot more savings and your "background" usage is also running at cheap rate for 7 hours

[gangzoom]

We put all our domestic appliances on overnight when ever possible.

Having looked at our exact numbers over the last 12 months it actually shows our E7 used is 80% of total electricity consumption, short of going for a battery storage system I don't think any house hold can get a higher E7 overnight split.

Day time usage was 1725 kWh and at 14.65p per kWh = £252
E7 usage was 7143 kWh and at 7.81p per kWh = £558

If the total amount electricity usage was all on 'normal' rate at 13.23p per kWh = £1173

So total difference in cost on E7 versus normal is £363

The 'average' UK household only uses 4000 kWh annually, so our usage is double - Due to charging the EV, and even with our heavy consumption E7 savings isn't amazing. Yes saving £363 per year is great, but not life changing amounts.

For most household switching to E7 will make hardly any difference, even with an plugin hybrid.