{"id":242126,"date":"2023-10-18T07:49:39","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T07:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automotobuzz.com\/?p=242126"},"modified":"2023-10-18T07:49:39","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T07:49:39","slug":"best-electric-car-energy-tariffs-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automotobuzz.com\/car-reviews\/best-electric-car-energy-tariffs-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Best electric car energy tariffs 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If you\u2019ve bought an electric car and are charging it at home, switching your energy tariff could save you hundreds of pounds every year. Suppliers will be keen to have you as a customer \u2013 especially since you\u2019re likely to do most of your charging overnight, when the demand on the grid is lowest and the wholesale price of power is cheap.<\/p>\n
That means most of the major suppliers offer a special EV tariff featuring an off-peak price per unit of electricity, which will be a fraction of the cost at busy times. Since the previous Auto Express tariff test back in 2021 there has been turmoil in the energy market and prices for power have risen steeply, but this means the off-peak savings now available are even more dramatic. Also, a number of new deals are starting to appear as the cost of electricity finally begins to fall back down.<\/p>\n
We have plugged all the figures into our spreadsheet to find out which electricity supplier takes the lead.<\/p>\n
Every household and driver is different, so it\u2019s best to get a personal quote, but for the purposes of this test we estimated the average power consumption for a three-bed house at 3,500kWh per year. Adding the charging of a medium-size electric car with an efficiency rate of four miles per kWh, covering 8,000 miles every year, will add an extra 2,000kWh to the bill.<\/p>\n
Owners whose daily mileage accounts for this annual total will be able to easily top up their car using cheaper night-time tariffs, which are usually limited to a few hours. For simplicity, we assumed that all the non-charging domestic power usage would be at the peak rate.<\/p>\n
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Unlike most of its competitors in our test, the OVO Charge Anytime tariff doesn\u2019t have set off-peak hours. Instead, you simply tell the app what time you want your car to be charged by, and it then tops up the battery whenever it detects that the power is at its cheapest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The big issue for consumers right now is that this technology is currently compatible with only 13 brands of car, or two home-charger units \u2013 the latter made by Ohme or Indra. If you have the right products, OVO could work out the cheapest option overall due to the lower peak-daytime rate, despite its surprisingly high standing charges and off-peak prices.<\/p>\n
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Unlike the OVO Charge Anytime and the Octopus Energy Intelligent tariffs, the Electric Driver from British Gas package isn\u2019t fussy about which car or charger you use. It simply lowers the cost of all energy supplied to your house for five hours between midnight and 5am.<\/p>\n
This is enough time to get around 40kW into an EV battery, which will be good for 150-plus miles in an average electric car. However, it will also mean you can schedule other power-hungry appliances such as dishwashers to run off-peak. A low daytime price and the cheapest standing charge in this test offset the higher off-peak costs in our sums.<\/p>\n
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If you don\u2019t have the hardware needed for Octopus Energy\u2019s Intelligent offering, then Go is much less complicated \u2013 but it does cost more. The off-peak price has recently been lowered to 9p per kWh for the four hours between 00:30am-04:30am, and 31p at other times. The standing charge is reasonable, too, at 42p per day, and there are no exit fees if you decide it\u2019s not for you.<\/p>\n
We also like the option to use Octopus Energy\u2019s Electroverse card for public chargers, giving customers a discount on plugging in away from home. It\u2019s a shame the off-peak hours aren\u2019t longer, though.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The most attractive part of E.On\u2019s Next Drive Fixed package is the unusually long seven-hour charge period. This would allow you to cram another 84 miles\u2019 worth of charge into a family-sized EV every night at the cheaper rate, compared with rivals such as Octopus. It could make a real difference if you regularly need to do long journeys on consecutive days.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll want to make the most of it, too. That off-peak price is a reasonably competitive 9.5p per kWh, but E.On\u2019s peak daytime rates and standing charge are both at the more expensive end of our test table.<\/p>\n
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EDF\u2019s cheap rate of 8p per kWh for a five-hour period overnight is reasonably competitive, but the standing charge is the second highest in this test and the peak cost is the most expensive. When the figures were fed into our spreadsheet, the product came out as the priciest, costing \u00a3230 more than OVO\u2019s.<\/p>\n
We were also unimpressed by the \u00a375 exit fee if you want to swap suppliers. Oddly, the five-hour cheaper period shifts from midnight and 05:00am during winter and 01:00am-06:00am during summer. This would require resetting your car or charger, which could be rather irritating in practice.<\/p>\n
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Scottish Power lured us in with a promise of the lowest off-peak rate of any supplier here, at 7.45p per kWh for a five-hour period between midnight and 05:00am. Once we started looking for quotes, though, we were faced with broken links on the website and automated customer services helplines that sent us around in circles and refused to give us any information unless we entered existing customer numbers.<\/p>\n
Eventually we found some information buried deep in the website, which showed it had one of the highest standing charge and daytime rates. No wonder Scottish Power made the details difficult to find.<\/p>\n
To find the best deal for your particular car, charger and circumstances will take a little homework \u2013 and it\u2019s not information you\u2019ll find on the usual online comparison sites. If you have a home charger and car that are compatible with OVO or Octopus\u2019 Intelligent tariffs, then it\u2019s likely these will be the cheapest options for you. The way they work ensures the \u2018greenest\u2019 use of energy by prioritising car charging when there is low demand on the grid \u2013 and that\u2019s good news for everyone.<\/p>\n
However, if you don\u2019t have a compatible vehicle or charger, then you\u2019ll probably prefer Electric Driver from British Gas. It offers five hours of cheap power for both charging cars and running household appliances. The electricity costs outside
\nof these times are competitive, too.<\/p>\n
Thinking of switching to an EV? These are the best electric cars to buy right now…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n