Best OVO Energy tariff / plan for charging my electric vehicle (EV)?

I think you want to compare the actual tariff, in p/kWh and standing charge, rather than projected costs. You have no idea what kind of assumptions go into the projected cost. 

But my guess is that Better Smart is cheaper than the standard variable tariff. A fixed tariff is different, and can be more expensive or cheaper depending on market expectations. Keep in mind that variable tariffs are likely to go up in autumn. 

@nealmurphy and @MrPuds have both given great advice so far. There’s not really much more I can add to be honest! I actually would like to see them get a rank up out of this, since they’ve got a better answer than I can give this time.

However, I will say that you can have a Smart Meter with OVO regardless of the tariff you pick and OVO will happily install one for you if you don’t yet have any. The only tariff which enforces an upgrade is the Better Smart Energy tariff which requires you to not currently have a Smart Meter and be happy to upgrade to one within three months. Other than that, all the tariffs on offer are available both with and without a Smart Meter (Better Energy is identical to Better Smart Energy but without the upgrade requirement).

You may want to check OVO Drive as well. It doesn’t show up on the regular Quote & Switch tool, but you can get to it via https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/ev-tariff .

• Jess_OVO are you seriously suggesting that the monthly DD would rise from £72pm to £1224pm? I got the latter figure wrong in my original post as clearly thought it wasn't possible but I have checked and it did go to £1224pm. I’ve never paid more than £100pm for dual fuel!

• Also, I put in actual usage figures in both of your options.

thanks I’ll do that.

Welcome @Warrenm . It’s good to meet you. :)

SSE sold their retail division SSE Energy Services to OVO back in 2020 and all SSE customers are slowly being migrated to OVO. That’s probably why you were redirected.

OVO Drive sounds like it might be the best option, especially when combined with the OVO Drive Anytime add-on to get the cheap anytime charging rates. But even without that add-on, I think you can still get reasonably cheap charging regardless. To get the Drive Anytime add-on, you would need to have the Kaluza Smart Pro EV Charger as it’s currently the only one that unlocks the 5p/kWh EV Charging rate though. If you don’t yet have any charger at home, it’s definitely one to consider because the special rate applies at all hours, rather than just overnight.

Alternatively, you could consider one of the regular tariffs with Economy 7 attached, but that might or might not be appropriate depending on circumstances. If you can primarily charge the car up during the seven cheap hours overnight, it could work in your favour.

I hope this helps you out. But please feel free to ask if you need any more help.

No worries. I’m afraid I’m only a forum volunteer so I can’t send you emails unfortunately. The only emails I can send you myself are the ones that are triggered when I reply to a forum thread you’re involved with. But you can email hello@ovoenergy.com if you’d like to discuss anything with OVO directly via email. However, I can certainly give you something that might help get the ball rolling.

The easiest way to get a quote for OVO Drive and OVO Drive Anytime is via the dedicated Quote & Switch tool for that tariff as it doesn’t show up on the regular one. Drive Anytime is indeed an add-on/bolt-on that you can get with OVO Drive - you can simply attach it to your account once you’ve signed up, provided you’re eligible for it and you can check eligibility for this bolt-on right here (you need to be on-supply with OVO to use this link). It cuts the price of EV Charging down to 5p/kWh for ALL EV Charging that goes through the Kaluza Smart Pro, regardless of when you use it.

As for the Kaluza Smart Pro Charger, you can find more details on that right over here. I can’t give you any formal quotes myself as forum volunteers can’t generate official quotes or anything, but the list price for that one is currently £629 after discounts such as the OLEV Grant and the bonus £70 OVO discount are applied (or £1049 as the RRP without them). This is the only charger that unlocks the Drive Anytime bolt-on right now.

You’re also like me with payments then! I never let my account dip into debit, ever. And that’s completely cool and totally understandable. 

Unlike what you’re used to with SSE, OVO does monthly billing rather than quarterly (the entire market seems to be deprecating quarterly bills these days), but you can still credit your account weekly on top of the monthly direct debit if you’d like to. I’m not sure if standing orders are supported for that, but you can definitely do Top-Up Payments via a debit or credit card as an alternative. The other bonus is that your balance in MyOVO works on a more real-time basis. Rather than having to wait for the bill to know what you’ve spent, MyOVO updates the balance within 90 seconds of pretty much anything happening. If you make a payment, your balance will increase once the payment reaches OVO as with all other suppliers. However, your balance will also update almost immediately anytime you submit meter readings or have a smart meter do so. That should help with keeping your account in good shape. It works best with Smart Meters that are in Daily or Half-Hourly mode, but you can still choose Monthly if you prefer.

I also believe in transparency as well - especially if it relates to things that can affect important decisions. This qualifies as being one. If you don’t have a Smart Meter yet, you will need one for OVO Drive Anytime and it will need to be in Half-Hourly mode so that OVO can get the billing right. If you do have a Smart Meter, it needs to either be a SMETS2 or a SMETS1 that’s either manufactured by Secure or has been migrated to DCC. I’ll be more than happy to help you identify what you’ve got though - please feel free to post photos of your meters in your next reply and we’ll be able to confirm what they’re capable of. :)

If you do decide to switch, it’s a lot easier these days than it used to be. All you need to do is sign up with your newly chosen supplier and they’ll take care of pretty much all the heavy lifting for you - including automatically notifying your old supplier that you’re switching away. When you submit Opening Readings to your new supplier, these will also be shared with the old supplier automatically as Closing Readings for that side as well, as a sort of “Tell Us Once” type system. The only thing you’d need to keep doing with SSE in the meantime, is to carry on paying the bills and giving meter readings as before - and once you pay off the Final Bill, that account will close automatically. If there’s any spare credit left with SSE after the Final Bill is paid, you’ll get that refunded automatically as well. In actual fact, if the credit balance on your SSE account happens to be enough to zap the entire Final Bill, then it will be marked as Paid automatically and their system will trigger an automatic refund to return any leftover credit. If there’s not enough in there, then the credit that is in that account will be put towards the Final Bill and you’ll simply need to pay the difference.

I hope this helps. I’m not allowed to go into any formal quotes myself here, but the Support Team will be happy to help with that if needed. :)

No worries. Glad I could help. You can actually have the Smart Pro in a few different variants if you’d like to. It’s available as Tethered Type 1, Tethered Type 2 or Untethered Universal Socket as per the tech specs. But I can see what you mean there as it’s not obvious from OVO’s website. That can probably be fixed though.

I’ll ask @Tim_OVO if he can pass this on as feedback, since it would be nice to have this kind of info be a little easier to find without digging through datasheets. Thanks for the catch!

Both bills for June

What is the price for the Untethered Universal Socket unit ?

Hi @Warrenm 

Further to my previous suggestion, it may allow us here to give you more personalised advice if you could let us know what model of car you are getting and also how many miles a day you reckon you’ll be doing and when you would ideally like to charge it.

Depending on which tariff you go for, if the car has all the clever charge timer features then you may be able to get away with a simple socket. If it’s not got a timer then you would need either a smart charger or a smart lead such as the OhmeEV offering to allow you to schedule the charge.

Thanks! Nice choice of EV there too. I think Tim and Jess would be impressed.

Yup, that’s the only significant requirement on top of the regular OVO Drive terms for the most part. You obviously also have to have an EV to have Drive Anytime, but that doesn’t technically count since you won’t qualify for the OVO Drive tariff without an EV anyway. There’s a couple of smaller ones though, which I’ll mention as well.

It’s worth noting that to get the super cheap rate, you will have to have your Smart Meters running in Half-Hourly mode and set an opt-in for Smart Charging on your EV Charger to be controlled by the Kaluza Flex platform (Kaluza is part of OVO Group). It will manage the charging schedule on your behalf based on what works for you and all charging that’s done this way gets the cheap rate. If you need to override, you can do a Boost Charge which temporarily bypasses the smart scheduling and immediately charges up your car as fast as possible - but you’ll have to pay the standard rate for that charge session (the charger will switch back to smart schedule mode after that session is done).

There’s one more thing as well and this is important. Because of how Drive Anytime works, you will initially be billed for all charging at the full standard rate on your bill, but you’ll be issued with an Anytime Charging Credit on the 1st of each month into your OVO account to reimburse the difference - and this will make it so that it was as if you were charging at the cheap rate. It might not sound the most efficient way, but it’s the easiest way for this magic trick to work. I would still probably recommend paying the full bill anyway if that’s what you’re used to.

It’s easier to do it this way because it doesn’t interfere with the main tariff and also provides a bit more transparency into what’s happening. Pretty neat huh?

Yeah, Economy 7 on any of OVO’s other tariffs is also an option, but only if you can make the fixed schedule work for you. They’re usually somewhere around midnight to 7am but can vary depending on where you are - and ALL electricity use outside the cheap hours on the Day rate is much more expensive than OVO’s Standard rates (likewise, ALL electricity during the cheap hours goes on the Night rate which is much cheaper than the Standard rate). But on the plus side, you have less upfront cost, more tariff choices and the freedom to use any charger. I’m afraid I can’t easily run the number crunching for Economy 7 vs non Economy 7 because it’s more complicated than just doing a direct side-by-side lookup.

If you need to regularly charge up at home during the day or at anytime outside the cheap hours, I would probably recommend against having Economy 7 on any tariff as it will burn a pretty big hole in your bank balance if you plug in an EV during the Day rates.

OVO Drive with the Drive Anytime bolt-on is a single-rate tariff for everything that doesn’t qualify for the 5p/kWh EV Charging and you do have to pay for the charger (although it can be discounted via an OLEV Grant). But it also doesn’t come with the penalty of paying much higher rates during the day.