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

I’m considering moving to OVO as recommended for people with electric cars, When I did the general quote it says £72pm if have a smart meter on the Better Smart Plan. Interestingly £70pm fixed for two years without a smart meter. No idea why.

I then hit the refine quote and gave added details and the same plan was now quoting over £100pm. Why?

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. 

When comparing, think about how often you’ll need to charge your car. If you only need to charge for less than 4 hours each night you should look at tariffs that offer cheap electricity overnight. If you won’t be charging overnight there will be less of a benefit from smart meter tariffs and a low overall rate may be more beneficial for you.

The way wholesale prices are going at the moment I’d avoid variable tariffs as these are likely to go up rather than down in the near future. Lock in a fixed tariff for now, and then if prices do start to come down again look to switch to a better fixed or variable tariff.

@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 .

Hi @Sillup and welcome to the OVO online community.

A great question to ask if you’re thinking of switching to OVO with an EV and you’ve asked it in the best place as we’ve got some EV members ( @MrPuds , @nealmurphy ) on hand who’ve already given some great advice on the advantages of a fixed plan. 

In answer to this one, when checking the direct debit suggestion on each plan on our Quote and Switch page, we’ll base the calculation on average usage patterns initially. By entering your usage figures by clicking ‘Refine your quote’ you’ll see a more accurate suggestion, which may differ from the original monthly amount depending on how your usage figures compare to the national average.

Our community volunteer @Blastoise186 has made a good shout-out to our latest EV tariff offering, OVO Drive. There’s a great discussion and some FAQs on this plan answered here -

• Will I be able to renew from my EV Everywhere plan to OVO Drive? - OVO Drive FAQs

Had a chance to compare the options? We’d love to hear what you think! 

• 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.

That does sound strange, @Sillup. It’s worth double checking the usage figures you’ve entered in that case.

Our ‘Refine your quote’ page gives you the option to toggle between monthly or yearly usage as well, so make sure this is properly selected for the usage figures you’re entering.  

Let us know if this helped get a bit more of a realistic quote! 

thanks I’ll do that.

Jess

That made quite a difference. Silly me!

It’s a reasonable quote but I’d have to pay £60 early exit costs so maybe I’ll come back to you once I get to the 49 days prior to end when they can't charge me.

Thanks for your help. The OVO Drive seems a good tariff.

Kind regards

Sue

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.

Many thanks for your help , My problem is that my current tariff on SSE isn’t really that far away from what OVO are offering , now if there is a bolt on that gives 5p charging then I’m intrested but having switched suppliers in the past I’ve always had issues , SSE I’ve been with nearly 10yrs and been so pleased with the service , 

I pay my bills every quarter as I’m all for paying for what I use , but I credit my account with a weekly standing order , this because I always used more kWh than estimated on a fixed monthly traffic ending up that I owed a lot of money , 

Are you able to email me privately with all my options and costs including for the charger 

difficukt to find time during the day to call due to my work commitments 

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. :)

That's great i will have a look ,

As I'm with SSE I have a smart metre that was installed by them that manages both my electricity and gas, so with that I don't send metre readings.

I'm always in credit as I pay a standing order weekly and usually end up about £50 in credit after each bill, I just don't want to pay a fixed price for 12 months and then be told you have used more and get a big bill at the end of the term ?

The only thing that's putting me off on the charger is big long cable attached to it , I'm just concerned someone will come and vandalise it LOL, my driveway is on a main street , I was initially looking at a non tethered charger.

Ill go and look at the links you sent , 

Many thanks 

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!

SO I've done a quote and OVO estimate based on 4300 kWh

My current SSE bill estimates 5691 kWh

This is without using any kWh for EV charging !

I pay £25 electricity weekly , £10 gas weekly 

So £140 every 4 weeks 

this puts me in credit by about £50 a quarter 

To me OVO looks more expensive , Im lost LOL

more expensive ???

Both bills for June

And does it cost extra to have the drive bolt on attached ?

What is the price for the Untethered Universal Socket unit ?

Ah yes, I see what you mean there. It looks like the quote doesn’t factor in Drive Anytime because it can’t be calculated upfront. If you do qualify, it’ll probably be a little cheaper in the end. But that can be ignored for now since you’re only comparing the raw tariffs at this point (which also makes the comparison easier).

It’s also worth noting that there’s a market wide price rise about to take effect in the next few weeks and this will increase your prices on the SSE tariff you’re currently on, possibly to be more than what OVO’s quote currently shows. You’re currently also on a Standard Variable tariff which often tend to be more expensive than fixed-rate deals. When you’re on a fixed-rate tariff, you’re able to lock in the agreed rate for the entire contract, whereas Standard Variable will force price changes on you after the fact.

It’s also a little more complicated to run comparisons against Standard Variable and Fixed Rate tariffs, since the latter spreads the cost throughout the entire year, while the former doesn’t. But you can definitely pay off the entire bill every month either way.

I’m not sure if this next point is quite as applicable in your case, but it’s not usually practical to compare the rates from last years fixed rate tariffs against those that are offered this year, since this creates a bias which makes comparison extremely difficult. With that being said, the much lower Unit Rate on OVO Drive should offset the slightly higher Standing Charges - even if you can’t get the ultra cheap 5p/kWh EV Charging that I suspect will almost certainly work in your favour either way.

In actual fact, I also ran some numbers and it ultimately seems that OVO Drive probably is cheaper than SSE Evergreen/Standard Variable anyway. I calculate that at the same rates you’ve been paying SSE, 4,300kWh would cost nearly £500 more than what the quote from OVO shows. Here’s a screenshot of how I worked it out.

Likewise, flipping things the other way round and using OVO’s rates from the quote against the SSE projection gives a calculation of £1,059.94 - which is about £224 cheaper than what SSE has calculated. Here’s how I worked that one out as well.

As for your other questions, I can answer those as well. I can’t provide a quote for the charger, but I think Untethered ones are usually a little cheaper than Tethered units, since you’re not paying for the tethered cable. You can use the charging cable that comes with your EV but the use of so-called “Smart Charging Cables” is not recommended because they can interfere with charging.

However, the Drive Anytime bolt-on is free. It’s done as a bolt-in since not everyone on the OVO Drive tariff is eligible for the 5p/kWh rates and having two versions of the tariff makes things more complicated. Having Drive Anytime as a bolt-on solves both issues because it can be attached to the tariff at anytime once you’ve been verified as eligible and simply unlocks the cheap rate so that you’re billed correctly. You can also remove the bolt-on from your account later if you no longer want it, again without impacting the main contract. Doing it this way also means if you don’t qualify at first but later get a compatible charger, you can add the bolt-on without having to cancel and restart the contract or incur exit fees along the way.

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.

WOW ! incredible information, i may be sold !!

Ok so here goes ,

Vauxhall Mokka e

Mostly charged overnight at home 

Average 60 miles a week to work and back

Possible additional 30/50 miles at a weekend 

To qualify for the drive bolt on is it just the compatible charger that is needed ?

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?

Ok, playing devil’s advocate here. The car has an approximate range of 200 miles, so you’ll likely to be charging only once or twice a week from home (find a free charger at a supermarket and you may not even need to do it that often!) You’ll need to consider whether getting the specified charger is worth the initial expense or whether you go for a tariff that gives cheap overnight electricity (for everything, not just car charging). If you happen to have or are thinking about getting solar panels then this should also be factored into the choice of charger.

OVO Drive Anytime has it’s advantages if you need to charge at times when off-peak electricity prices are not available, but if you are going to be doing it overnight then I’m not sure it gives you the same benefit.

Happy to hear from anyone who has tried OVO Drive to get their thoughts.

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.

I'm never at home during the day , so the plan was always to charge the vehicle overnight, 

Searching on ZAP-MAP there are not many charging stations near me or FREE ones but i am very new to this , 

I may subscribe to ZOOM EV as that gives some additional discounts on chargers , any thoughts on that ?

So opting for a EV was for financial reasons so charging needs to be way less than Diesel