Alternatives to OVO EV tariffs

Good luck - not an easy question! It also depends so much on individual circumstances. For example, I am retired so tend to do quite a lot of local journeys with plenty of opportunity for charging at home and relatively rarely longer journeys needing public charging. I also hove PV panels plus battery which change the equation. I’m with Ovo in the first instance because both EV and PV are fairly new and I am trying to establish my own patterns of use so just staying with current supplier for the time being. Once I know how things are going to work out, I may or may not switch suppliers. Who knows!

You are right - there is no easy basis for comparison as each supplier seems to have their own approach to tariffs which is why so much depends on your own situation. It might help if you could outline what your own needs are with regards to EV charging. Or it might not - with the new price cap coming in soon, it may be that all the fixed tariffs currently available are going to change as well so we’ll all be up in the air again.

Thanks for your reply.

I have an EV using approximately 200 Kwhr a month, which OVO support, and a PHEV using approximately 100 Kwhr a month, which OVO don't support.

It's not easy but it's a question of doing the calculations to see what is cheapest. What people tend to forget is that by moving to an EV you saved a huge amount of money doing that even on a single fixed rate. The difference between the tariffs tends to be small change.

There is also this link from Money Saving Expert that attempts to compare tariffs but they are approximations. 

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/ev-energy-tariffs/

What you will see from there that OVO comes out quite well in the comparison and there is not a huge spread in the results. its a competitive market and you don't want to be the outlier. You say the OVO rate went up to 14p but what you might not have noticed so much is everyone else put their prices up as well.

As a slightly unusual solution I have Agile Octopus as my tariff with my EV and Heat Pump. It has a continually varying rate throughout the day and no two days are the same. It's a tariff from the wholesale market as opposed to retail. My year average EV rate is 13p and the rest of my domestic including the HP is 19p. What you need to do though is pick the best times to charge and avoid the very expensive 4-7pm peak, about 40p. It works well for me but wouldn't suit everone. It's not smart charging as such. You just pick the best times. As a rare example my rates are about -3p from 5am to 4pm tomorrow. That is minus 3p. I sometimes get paid to use electricity. This is because there are a lot of renewables on the grid tomorrow and it is cheaper to pay people to use extra power rather than pay the generators to cut back on what was contracted to be generated. It's complicated.

My suggestion is to try a tariff that looks promising to see if it works for you and do your best to compare the results with last year. As the results are similar I doubt if it's going to change your costs much. But I do understand the niggling feeling that you have that you could do better and the frustration of not knowing which one is best and then the realisation that there isn't much difference between them.

Peter 

Thanks for the pointer to the MSE site, Peter - hadn't seen that one. It does show how difficult it is to find the best tariff, though, even if you really need to do your own calculations for your own case. For example, it uses the Ovo 14p/kWh figure for CA charging although the "plan" options start at 10p/kWh and under -but only for one month's quota and then you are back to normal per-unit rate. The cheaper overnight tariffs all seem to have quite high daytime rates so might need you to change your pattern of use. Interesting, though, how similar they all turn out to be for the example given. 

At the moment, my PV panels are generating much more than my daily consumption. Come the winter months that will change so the daytime buy-in rate will be more significant. The implication is that you also need to do the sums on a month-by-month basis for an annual total! I leave this as an exercise for the reader...

The difficulty with comparisons is that when you take up one of the variable rate tariffs you adapt your usage pattern (termed shape) to make the most of it and you can't calculate for that. Hence my suggestion that you go with one that you think you can live with (especially if it doesn't have an exit fee - Agile doesn't) and see how it goes.

There are other factors like billing, customer assistance, ease or difficulty of integrating your car/charge point into any smart charging scheme you might want to use, energy or time usage limits. I'm not intentionally trying to sell Agile but it is simple dumb charging with no rules other than don't melt the house wiring when it goes negative. But I have to be aware of what the rate is on a daily basis to get the best out of it.

Peter

@Peter. 

I've looked at the MSE information and, as you say, it has it's limitations. It uses the price cap, not fixed deals, so will flatter the OVO Charge Anytime price, being a bolt on.

I've just noticed that Outfox do a fixed EV tariff with an overnight rate of just 6.56p and daytime 5.30am-11.59pm rate of 26.5p. That's the best twin rate deal I've seen so far, and the daytime rate is actually as good as some standard rate 1 year fixed deals I've seen. I can't ascertain whether the overnight rate is for EVs only, or all usage, so will have to give them a call. The gas rate is decent too at 5.99p.

My personal experience is that by the time inflated day rates / reduced night rates are compensated for on tariffs like IOG from Octopus etc. there isn’t a significant overall difference unless your usage fits particular patterns / volumes and so you’re probably just as well going with whichever supplier is likely to provide the best service and user experience when it comes to charging.

I would personally be wary of suppliers like Outfox given they’ve been in hot water with Ofgem regarding their financial viability / reporting a couple of times in the last few years, especially so if they appear to be undercutting everyone else significantly. Too much risk of failure and ending up in the process of getting dumped on another supplier etc. for my liking.

​@divinemadness 

There's always a catch! They rebranded from Outfox the market to Outfox Energy 18 months ago. I wonder if Ofgem had anything to do with that?

Which? magazine say their customer service is just average, but it's better than OVOs. As for failure, aren't OVO being taken over by EON soon?

Whilst I might agree with you ​@divinemadness Tomato could be said to have been in the same position and, agreed, they folded but for the time they were operational they provided very low rates. Personally I wouldn’t go with something that is a bit iffy but it depends on your tolerance of risk. If you grab the rates whilst they are still going and they survive then fine (who knows?). If they go bust then the worst outcome is that you end up with a supplier of last resort (SOLR) and you have to start again with a supplier which was not your choice.

If you have a tolerance for risk then the suppliers who sail ‘close to the wind’ offer the best rates. It’s on the edge of competitiveness but they are still a competitor and, for the time being, they are still in the game. I’m not in any way advocating that you do that.

Peter

Providing your credit is protected it might be a risk worth taking. And didn't Ofgem tighten up the rules that energy companies have to abide by following the widescale collapses during the energy crisis a couple of years ago?