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

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 

No worries. It appears that SSE has been removed from the ZoomEV partner list because it’s been superseded by OVO via the OVO Drive tariff, which I can understand given the ongoing SSE to OVO migration project. However, I’ve not been told anything about OVO partnering up with ZoomEV so far and this is the first time I’ve heard about it. I’ll play a Joker Card and see if I can ask @Tim_OVO and @Jess_OVO to stop by as they might know more about this offer.

Bear with me for a bit, as this might take a little while. I hope that’s OK with you. I wonder if you can combine OVO Drive, OVO Drive Anytime and ZoomEV together into one giant bundle too… That could be interesting…

It does seem however, that the only EV Chargers on offer via ZoomEV with their discount (currently £50 off RRP) are the BP Chargemaster Homecharge and EO Mini Pro 2, which aren’t currently compatible with OVO Drive Anytime but can be used with regular OVO Drive. That discount is without factoring in the OLEV Grant which would probably apply anyway no matter which one you go for.

With that being said, ZoomEV does show a starting price of £545 for the EO Mini Pro 2and £549 for the BP Chargemaster Homecharge with the OLEV Grant and ZoomEV discounts already applied, so it’s not too bad an offer if you’re willing to sacrifice the Drive Anytime bolt-on.

To help put this into perspective, I’ve also looked up the RRP/MSRP of both chargers directly from their respective manufacturers. The full price of the EO Mini Pro 2 Universal Socket (Untethered) variant without any discounts starts at £945 for the 7KW model, while the Chargemaster Homecharge one unfortunately won’t provide a price at all without me generating a quote which I can’t do myself (sorry!). But if I assume that the combined discounts from ZoomEV (£50) and the OLEV Grant at maximum level (£350) wipes out £400, then that gives me a starting price of £949, presumably for the untethered version.

Sorry for all these edits on this comment though! I don’t like to double post and flood everyone with loads of alerts, so editing this in is a bit more silent and keeps the forum a bit tidier.

After visiting the Fully Charged Outside show at the weekend, I'm surprised that OVO weren't promoting the Drive +Anytime options more. Have to say the stand looked pretty dead each time I walked past it, which is a shame.

Hi @nealmurphy - how did you find Fully Charged? Did you see Chris Russell on stage on the Friday?

I was chatting to one of my colleagues this morning who was there and he mentioned there being lots of interest in OVO Drive and Anytime. A shame you didn’t pop in to say hello!

What were your picks of the weekend? Anyone else there? 

I was there on the Saturday. I think the presentations should hopefully be put online at some stage. Really good range of topics, and interesting to see the Beyond the Boiler session really well attended! I think there's scope to expand the electricification of heat sections of the show for the next event in April (OVO should definitely have a chat with FC about promoting what you've been up to!)

Had a test drive of the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the VW id.4. Impressed with them both. Have to say the electric Fiat 500 looked really good as well.

Nothing wrong with the OVO stand, but I feel that some huge lettering on the windows of the stand promoting the big selling point of +Anytime of 5p/kWh charging anytime would have got the attention of people that don't yet know about it.