OVO EV Tariff, how’s does it work?
Discussion
I’ve noticed that OVO have a charge anytime EV plan where you can charge your car for 10p per kw.
Can someone explain how this works please?
Is it always 10p or does it vary depending on the time of the day?
I’ve looked at other EV tariffs, but as we are a low EV user, the peak time usage negates any savings we make charging during the night.
Can someone explain how this works please?
Is it always 10p or does it vary depending on the time of the day?
I’ve looked at other EV tariffs, but as we are a low EV user, the peak time usage negates any savings we make charging during the night.
raspy said:
I probably should have worded my question differently.
Does your standard rate stay the same? and if so, how are they able to offer 10p per kw while also keeping your standard rate the same? It seems like a no-brainer vs other EV tariffs.
Does anyone use the tariff, what's their experience?
We've switched to OVO and started using Smart Charging yesterday.
I work at home, so I left it plugged in all day and all night.
I started with around 45% battery, and it put 11kw into the car until midnight last night. Then today so far it's put in 15kw.
We're currently using a granny charger while we're waiting for a charger to be installed next week. I know charging is slow anyway, but for some reason the smart charging seems to keep dropping the charger rate down to 5amp instead of 10amp. It seems to only charge at the full rate for a small number of hours.
Overall, it seems like it's going to be able to cover my daily usage, and it'll be interesting to see what the experience is like with a 7kw charger. i.e. how many hours per day you end up getting at the full rate.
Over the last two days, it says I've saved £5.52 vs paying the standard rate.
The app seems decent enough, and integrating it with a Tesla was easy enough. You set a min and max charge % in the app, and if you're below the minimum, the app will charge your car up to you minimum at the standard unit rate. Once you hit your minimum, it drops to smart charging. Then I assume that smart charging starts/stops and alters the charge rate depending on grid load etc.
I work at home, so I left it plugged in all day and all night.
I started with around 45% battery, and it put 11kw into the car until midnight last night. Then today so far it's put in 15kw.
We're currently using a granny charger while we're waiting for a charger to be installed next week. I know charging is slow anyway, but for some reason the smart charging seems to keep dropping the charger rate down to 5amp instead of 10amp. It seems to only charge at the full rate for a small number of hours.
Overall, it seems like it's going to be able to cover my daily usage, and it'll be interesting to see what the experience is like with a 7kw charger. i.e. how many hours per day you end up getting at the full rate.
Over the last two days, it says I've saved £5.52 vs paying the standard rate.
The app seems decent enough, and integrating it with a Tesla was easy enough. You set a min and max charge % in the app, and if you're below the minimum, the app will charge your car up to you minimum at the standard unit rate. Once you hit your minimum, it drops to smart charging. Then I assume that smart charging starts/stops and alters the charge rate depending on grid load etc.
silent ninja said:
So you're daytime rate is unchanged and you still get cheap electricity for your car?
I just switched to Octopus and wish I had known about this earlier.
Yep, exactly that.I just switched to Octopus and wish I had known about this earlier.
In the last 2-3 days I've put 57.7kw into the car. At my standard rate that would have been around £19. But instead it's cost £5.77.
I had a BMW 330i before an EV, and my monthly fuel bill was £200 @ 20-25mpg. Now I'm paying 10ppkw my monthly bill is less than £30.
It looks like last night after 8pm anytime allowed the car to charge at 2kw (the max for my granny charger) all night. The app says now it won't start charging until 1am tomorrow morning, which I'm guessing is because I've hit my max charge % of 80%, so tonight it knows it just has to replenish what I'll be using today. Of course, you can start an urgent charge, but you're billed at your standard rate for that.
I plugged the car in last night, via a granny charger, and I'm disappointed to see that the smart charging feature has dropped the charge rate from 10amps to 5amps all night, so it's only put 15% or so in the car.
Still, it's enough to cover me for the day, I just wish it wouldn't change the charge rate, because I have no idea if I'm going to have enough charge the following morning.
Still, it's enough to cover me for the day, I just wish it wouldn't change the charge rate, because I have no idea if I'm going to have enough charge the following morning.
SGirl said:
My electricity account is about to be ported through to OVO, and I've been trying to talk to them about switching to this tariff.
My first call got through and was put through to another department, which hung up on me.
So far I'm on my seventh "I'll just put you through to the department you need to speak to", which doesn't actually ever result in me being put through to the correct department.
More than one department has people shouting across to one another in the background, too.
Please tell me this shower aren't always like this. Is there any way to sign up for this tariff without having to actually talk to their atrocious customer "service" team?
I did it all online.My first call got through and was put through to another department, which hung up on me.
So far I'm on my seventh "I'll just put you through to the department you need to speak to", which doesn't actually ever result in me being put through to the correct department.
More than one department has people shouting across to one another in the background, too.
Please tell me this shower aren't always like this. Is there any way to sign up for this tariff without having to actually talk to their atrocious customer "service" team?
AF07 said:
I’m looking to switch as Octopus only offer cheap ev charging if you fix at 45p for the next 12m which makes no sense.
I looked at ovo but a couple of negatives unless I’m mistaken:
The discounted rate only applies to the ev being charged, not any other usage in that window. A bigger issue is that it won’t work for me as I have 2 ev’s and one of them isn’t compatible.
With octopus this wouldn’t matter as the discount applies to all off peak usage, so they don’t need to know what you’re doing.
In short I’d rather have a tariff that doesn’t rely on knowing you’re charging the car, and just gives straightforward discounted rates off peak which you can use for whatever you want.
I did some calculations to work out whether switching to an off-peak tariff would benefit us, and because of the higher peak cost, I worked out we'd save £10 per month, which hardly seemed worth it.I looked at ovo but a couple of negatives unless I’m mistaken:
The discounted rate only applies to the ev being charged, not any other usage in that window. A bigger issue is that it won’t work for me as I have 2 ev’s and one of them isn’t compatible.
With octopus this wouldn’t matter as the discount applies to all off peak usage, so they don’t need to know what you’re doing.
In short I’d rather have a tariff that doesn’t rely on knowing you’re charging the car, and just gives straightforward discounted rates off peak which you can use for whatever you want.
The OVO tariff suites us perfectly, as it keeps our bill for house usage the same as it was before, but we get to charge the car at a much lower rate. So we're financially better off. Probably one reason it works for us my low mileage, and that I work at home. This meant that we didn't use enough off-peak energy to cover the increased cost of the day usage.
Worked out that on an EV tariff our average cost per unit would be 28p.
On OVO anytime, our average cost per unit is around 21p.
Edited by TheBinarySheep on Thursday 13th April 13:10
LaserTam said:
I read this with interest. About to move house and the new house provider is currently OVO. My EV is not on the list, but I'm now thinking I will install a compatible charge point in the new property, rather than pay to have my current non-compatible charge point moved from here to new property. £500 to uninstall and reinstall, verses £1k to buy and install compatible charge point.
Most who have commented on here seem to have compatible cars, but interested in any experiences of people with just compatible charge point on this tariff?
I'd got an Indra Smart Pro that's supposed to be compatible, but then Indra say it's not compatible with the OVO tarrif.Most who have commented on here seem to have compatible cars, but interested in any experiences of people with just compatible charge point on this tariff?
The Indra Smart Pro app does offer the same sort of functionality as the OVO Anytime app in that it will charge your EV when electricity is cheaper and you can force it to start charging, so I don't know if the Indra app and the OVO app are getting their source data from the same place.
Actually, I've just Googled. It looks like if you've got a compatible EV, you need to use the Anytime App. If you're using a compatible charger, you need to use the chargers app.
https://forum.ovoenergy.com/my-smart-home-138/how-...
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