Comment by djaychela | Hacker News Reader

Comment by djaychela | Hacker News Reader

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I'd no longer say 'massively' in front.

I have a Renault Zoe - 2020, 50kWh battery, gets 200 miles in the summer, and was down to about 120 miles when it was sub-zero here.

On the current 34p/kWh home charging, that works out to 8.5p per mile on the high range, and 14p / mile when it's cold.

I also have a Renault Trafic that I get 39mpg on similar driving routes. That's about 19.5p/mile.

However, we sold a Citroen DS3 1.6HDi to get the zoe. That gave about 60mpg, and that works out to around 13p/mile...

I know I'm doing the right thing having the EV (and I love it), but it was a bloody expensive purchase for us, and is currently not going to get anywhere near making up the £15k or so extra that we had to put in to change from the DS to the Zoe.

Had we not had the home charger put in (which cost £1100!), then we'd be way down, as the nearest fast charger is now 50p/kWh, which would have taken the costs to 12.5p/mile and 20.8p/mile respectively - more expensive than my 240,000 mile 2.5 DCI van!

There are plenty of tariffs that offer cheaper home charging than that. I get 6 hours of 7.5p/kWh. On a 7kW charger that's enough for a 0-80% charge every night.

I can't find any plans that are actually accepting new customers for less than £0.27/kWh overnight. I'm pretty sure anything as cheap as £0.075/kWh is grandfathered into a legacy plan.

I would be happy to be proven wrong, I'd love to switch plans right now.

Intelligent Octopus is open for signups (I believe!) and offers 10p/kWh for some hours overnight and longer for the EV if you let them schedule the charge.

There's also Agile Octopus if you just want cheap off-rate. You might need to sign up to Agile then switch to Intelligent if you can't do Intelligent directly.

Both require a working smart meter.

You'll need to call Octopus in order to switch, their online signups have been suspended (like everyone else). My referral ID is fresh-cub-249 if they'll accept it over the phone, gets us both £50 credit.

Is that open to new customers?

Forget the car -- topping up a 20kWh battery for £1.50 a day sounds like a great deal for people paying 34p per unit at the moment, would save £150 a month.

I searched about once a month, and couldn't find any that were taking new customers - other than Octopus who I don't have a compatible car for. Having looked again last night, I found that British Gas are doing a 5 hours of 10p/kWh deal, with more expensive peak electricity, but still enough to save me about £20/week overall.

Where do you get that deal?

Is that an Octopus plan? If not, are you able to share the name of the provider and the tariff?

Have you tried an EV tariff?

For example, picking a random address in London, British Gas offer:

  Standing charge: 33p/day
  Peak rate: 47p/kWh
  Off peak rate: 12p/kWh

They also say they'll install a smart meter for free.

Unless you're using a lot of daytime energy, that would more than half your EV costs.

Thanks - problem is that I've searched, but no suppliers seem to have been doing signups other than Octopus (who I can't use as I don't have a compatible car), and I hadn't seen British Gas until last night. They are doing a 42p/10p off-peak deal which will save me about £20 a week altogether, so thanks for nudging me to have another look.

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