Which electricity supplier?

[Inverness]

Which electricity supplier is best if charging your car overnight. Do any of them still do cheap night time electricity?

Is it worth getting a "power wall"? I see Duracell now do one.

[kambites]

Octopus do a tariff which is something like 5p/kwh for 4 hours during the night.

ETA: https://octopus.energy/go/

If you do switch to Octopus, I can give you a referral code which will net both of us £50 credit too.

Edited by kambites on Tuesday 17th September 09:47

[Dave Hedgehog]

the idea of battery storage is you fill it with cheap electricity (economy 7) or from solar and then use it when you either cant get solar or during peak electricity rate

so they are pretty pointless without E7 or solar (unless you get lots of power cuts)


I am looking to get solar, a power wall and E7 next year, it probably wont pay for itself for 10 years but i should get 10k miles of genuine zero emission driving from my car a year and its cool as hell tech with all the apps

and the cost is 2 years depreciation on most of the cars i buy so ho hum

octopus seams to be the preferred EV energy supplier

Edited by Dave Hedgehog on Tuesday 17th September 09:54

[p4cks]

Inverness said:

Which electricity supplier is best if charging your car overnight. Do any of them still do cheap night time electricity?

You've got me thinking now! I've got two cars both on a trickle charger overnight but I've never even considered the cost and whether my supplier has cheap overnight electricity

[motco]

Scottish Power, my supplier at the moment, offer an all-Green tariff with midnight to 05:00hrs at roughly 5p per kWh but dearer daytime rates. Obviously a smart meter is necessary as is a 'proper' charger.

[Mr E]

Am currently moving to octopus purely for the 5p per KWh between 00:30 as 04:30.

I don’t know how long it will take to get a smart meter installed however.

Can also provide codes that get you (and me) £50 rebates.

https://share.octopus.energy/wise-llama-336

[gangzoom]

Inverness said:

Which electricity supplier is best if charging your car overnight. Do any of them still do cheap night time electricity?

Is it worth getting a "power wall"? I see Duracell now do one.

Virtually all the suppliers offer an economy 7 rate, where electricity is cheaper at night for 7 hrs (midnight to 7am) but your day time rate is 1-2p per kWh more expensive.

Depending on how many miles you do, and if your willing to try and maximize the cheap rate at night by shifting all the washing/drying to overnight it could be alot cheaper.

We are on Bulb E7, day time rate is 15p per kWh, night time rate is 8p per KWh. Doing 15k a year out day versus night ratio is currently 1:4.

Do check your usage though, if your a heavy day time energy user and not doing many EV miles E7 may not be cheaper.

As for a 'battery' the Tesla Powerwall is one of the most advanced systems on the market according to the fitter dealing with ours - his from a independent company. But its not cheap, your looking at £10k roughly all in if you want true off grid backup capability.

Financially the pay back period on the PowerWall is over a decade, but if you have solar PV its just a nice thought to know you can generate your own electricity. You wouldn't be able to charge your car using a single Powerwall though, their max output is less than 5KW, you need 2-3 to actually charge a car with at which point all economics go out of the window!!

[gangzoom]

Dave Hedgehog said:

I am looking to get solar, a power wall and E7 next year

I've been told you need multiple PowerWalls to charge the car, the now 20% VAT on solar PV instead of 5% also increases costs.

But apparently there is a rule to reduce some of the VAT costs it your material costs are more than 60% the total install costs, which a PowerWall would do, or if your older than 60 - so good old fashioned ageism.

However in the context of a even a moderate house extension its probably only about 10% additional cost to the build budget, so if you can afford it why not?

[Dave Hedgehog]

gangzoom said:

Dave Hedgehog said:

I am looking to get solar, a power wall and E7 next year

I've been told you need multiple PowerWalls to charge the car, the now 20% VAT on solar PV instead of 5% also increases costs.

But apparently there is a rule to reduce some of the VAT costs it your material costs are more than 60% the total install costs, which a PowerWall would do, or if your older than 60 - so good old fashioned ageism.

However in the context of a even a moderate house extension its probably only about 10% additional cost to the build budget, so if you can afford it why not?

i avg 40 miles a day so one power wall should easily fill the car and the rest could run the house during the peak periods

[gangzoom]

Dave Hedgehog said:

i avg 40 miles a day so one power wall should easily fill the car and the rest could run the house during the peak periods

After all energy loss your looking at 2-2.5 miles per kWh even with a Model 3, best case is your need 16kWh in the storage to charge the car 14 miles. PowerWall 2 only has 13.5 kWh usable, with 5KW max discharge.

If you want to charge the car off grid AND run the house your need x2 PowerWalls. Also your need a fairly large solar PV setup to fill x2 PowerWalls after other day time drains.

From the install perspective having 2 PowerWalls may not massively increase the overall cost if you can get the material codes to creep over the VAT threshold. You also don't need to pay for more than one gateway regardless of number of PowerWalls.

I'm stating to look into all the figures, its not a small sum of money, £15-20k+ VAT I think is a half realistic all in figure for additional 4-6KW solar PV + Powerwall. So if you can get 5% VAT instead of 20% thats a saving which will pay for half a Powerwall. But in the context of a bigger house extension £20k isn't really a deal breaker anyways .



........and actually as you point our most of us are pretty use to cars deprecating that much in a few years anyways, where as Solar PV + Battery setup will last decades for the same cost. Goes to show how much money most of us on here have wasted on cars through our lives!

I'm going to try kick the habit with EVs. Putting money into the house just seems so much more sensible.

Edited by gangzoom on Tuesday 17th September 11:48

[superpp]

I'm with Octopus Go.
I do a 34 mile daily commute with a Leaf and charge overnight, timer set at 00.30.
On average I guess we do around 50 miles per day.
I manage 5 miles per kWh on average so thats 1p per mile on the Go tariff.

Also have Solar PV, installed this year (post FIT).
The Octopus Outgoing tariff gives me 5.5p per kWh exported.
I treat this as a virtual battery, export whilst at work and charge at night at cheaper rate.

Seems to give generate enough to give free fuel, at least until winter get near.

With this in mind, the sums on batteries don't stack up.
Maybe different if you have PV and FIT?

My Octopus referral (always good to share) is:

https://share.octopus.energy/ivory-snail-551

[gangzoom]

^ Is the Octopus FIT a time limited deal? Ie not like the 20 years guaranteed government one?

Our solar PV is locked in at 2015 rates (14p per kWh for this year) increasing with inflation. We already generate more solar PV per year than we use (excluding car charging). If we didn't have the car I would say our electricity bill would be -£175/year. The scheme is for 20 years so £3500 in total assuming same generation figures but not accounting for inflation.

I don't know how much the panels costs to install by the original owners but based on those figures I would say the chance getting pay back on a near £10k Powerwall is slim.

Even assuming you can capture 100% of all the solar PV electricity generated a year -3000kWh for us. At 14p per kWh day rate thats a saving of £420, so you need 23 years before breaking even. Ofcouse you cannot capture 100% of all the energy, some days your get alot more than what the Powerwall can store, and than factor in 10% losses in storage, so in reality your looking at 25 years+.

But anything back extra is better than nothing?

I'll have a look at Octopus and see how they treat an additional PV setup with one already installed.

[superpp]

Octopus Outgoing is the first of the post FiT replacements.
I believe all companies will have something similar at some point.
They have a fixed 5.5p option and a dynamic one following the wholesale price.
Smart Meter needed as it sends info every 30 minutes.