EV Tariff WITHOUT smart meter

EV Tariff WITHOUT smart meter

Author
Discussion

njj850

Original Poster:

17 posts

27 months

Wednesday 31st January
quotequote all
I do not have an electricity smart meter.
However, I am currently running the OVO Charge Anytime tariff with an I-pace and it is working exactly as it should.
Interestingly, the OVO website suggests that a smart meter is required for this.

My question is, are there other EV tariffs that people are using without having a smart meter installed?

Road2Ruin

5,381 posts

221 months

Wednesday 31st January
quotequote all
njj850 said:
I do not have an electricity smart meter.
However, I am currently running the OVO Charge Anytime tariff with an I-pace and it is working exactly as it should.
Interestingly, the OVO website suggests that a smart meter is required for this.

My question is, are there other EV tariffs that people are using without having a smart meter installed?
It could only be an anytime type tariff, otherwise how would they know when you are using the leccy.

LayZ

1,653 posts

247 months

Wednesday 31st January
quotequote all
You can still get on Economy 7 but you need a different meter for it (not smart).

This is a topic I care about a lot because I've had three smart meters installed and none of them work.

njj850

Original Poster:

17 posts

27 months

Wednesday 31st January
quotequote all
Road2Ruin said:
It could only be an anytime type tariff, otherwise how would they know when you are using the leccy.
The OVO Charge Anytime app is communicating directly with the car so knows how much electricity has been used. The app decides when the green times are and starts/stops the charging accordingly.

blueacid

473 posts

146 months

Thursday 1st February
quotequote all
OVO Charge Anytime is, I believe, unique in that all the electricity use gets charged at the standard rate (28p/kWh or whatever it is); but thanks to the integration between OVO and your vehicle, the number of kWh that was used by them for their scheduled charging is known.

OVO then issue a bill credit; so if you charged 100kWh using the smart charging, and the rate for that is 10p/kWh, they'd bill you for 100kWh at 28p, then credit you for 100 x 18p, so that the car charging becomes the right price.

Sadly with this tariff, it's only the car that is cheap to run. With almost all the other tariffs, they use a smart meter to offer a cheap rate akin to Economy 7, wherein all usage is cheap. So if you can schedule other heavy power use in that time (e.g. timer on the washing machine, dishwasher, charging other stuff in the house, oven self-clean, immersion heater timer, whatever) then you can pay less for those things too.


As a result, I think the only options are to get away with OVO, as is currently happening, or get a standard Economy 7 meter installed. The suppliers may well be highly reluctant to fit one of these (versus a smart meter), though, and Economy 7 tariffs often aren't as competitive as the dedicated EV charging tariffs.