Does ovo have a tariff for solar + battery + anytime?

You have near enough described my situation. I have Solar and an Indra charger for my EV and have obtained quotes for the installation of a Powerwsll.

Your Indra trickle charges but on a sunny day it will only deliver a trivial amount of electricity for your EV to supplement your grid charge.

What I suggest you will need is the ability to charge the Powerwall overnight at cheap rates (a time of use charge) to power your house from the battery during the day and similarly grid charge your EV overnight setting a schedule on your Indra to achieve this. Of course during the summer months the solar will be available to power your house with excess going to the battery.

 There are helpful videos on YouTube which will assist you on this.

I wonder if anyone from OVO will be kind enough to comment on this thread as to whether the company offers a tariff that achieves what I have described above. I am not talking about the new monthly payment plans which have been the subject of considerable recent discussion. 
BTW avoid ‘boost charging’ unless you have to as you will be paying the full rate (circa 25p per kWh) for your grid charge. 
I think a kWh is 3.5 miles or thereabouts in OVOs newly adopted terminology.

Morning ​@stead and ​@BobTom, I hope you’re both well.

As it stands Battery Boost can’t be used in conjunction with Charge Anytime. You can find out more on this here: https://solar-and-heating.ovo.com/blog/maximise-your-solar-savings-with-battery-boost. We are working to get the two compatible, but they’re not at the moment.

The Indra charger will be solar compatible:

I’ve reached out to the Charge Anytime team for further info, and will let you know if they get back to me. They can also be contacted via email at chargeanytime@ovo.com.

​@stead I’ve referenced your questions to the Charge Anytime team. They’ve come back and advised that, in all honesty, for the type if setup you're looking at, you’ll be best off shopping around for a more compatible supplier.

apricate the honesty, I have been looking at octopus as they do seem to support the charger and battery combo

I was tempted to wait until my fixed contract ends as I still have electricity fairly vs switching at the moment but was hoping something will be coming in for battery!

Funnily enough I visited my favourite pub the other day. I had been a loyal customer for a considerable number of years, going back a long time before it changed its name. The pub is under new management now (a sort of regime change if you like).

I asked the new landlord why he was no longer serving my favourite beer and putting up all his prices.

He told me that he had ‘evolved’ the business and that if I didn’t like it, I should go elsewhere. 

So I did.

​@stead we’ve still got teams exploring how to link Battery Boost and Charge Anytime, but I couldn’t give you a timescale on when this will become available.

If you do end up switching you’re more than welcome to remain a member of this Forum, and we’ll be sure to update everyone if there’s any changes in this space.

ll suppliers seem to be charging things around now and it's not clear cut who is best anymore but I had an email earlier saying by battery boost is ending from February?

Seems very short notice, is there anything in the pipe line for the future or is it just wait and see if anything happens?

Hi again ​@stead,

Sorry to say that, as of yet, we’ve got nothing in the pipeline. At the moment we’re offering to waive exit fees if customers wish to switch due to the closure of Battery Boost. 

Full terms and FAQs can be found on our website here.

I shall remain hopefully that all these odd schemes of different things getting cheaper rates slowly get scrapped and instead have one regular lower rate for everything! I wouldn’t personally benefit from that but feels fairer.

Who knows what the future will hold!

Just out of interest is it possible to go onto an economy 7 tariff as such ? I can’t really see anything on the ovo site but despite my last statement if that stays an option i’d be curious, from what I can tell its only people who are already on existing time of day tariffs can stay on them?

Hi ​@stead,

It’s not possible at the moment for customers to move from a single rate plan to be Economy 7. This is only possible if there is a dual rate meter already in situ. 

To confirm, Economy 7 would mean that your daytime rate would be a fair bit more expensive than it is now. Unless you’re using a good chunk of energy at night (eg storage heaters or an immersion tank) Economy 7 will likely end up more expensive. The overnight charging of an EV alone wouldn’t be enough to warrant the dual rate plan.

Hi ​@stead 

As I've said before the whole energy supply business is changing rapidly due to the introduction of huge amounts of renewable energy in the form of wind and solar and this is making it very difficult to determine what tariff is best suited to you. Unless you know you are going to be better off with the Economy 7 tariff then switching to it is not likely to be a benefit as ​@Ben_OVO said.

As a way forward I suggest you head over to MoneySavingExpert which is a reputable site for comparing energy costs based on your actual usage. What is key is that you put as much accurate information in as possible to get an robust comparison. Energy companies are also changing their tariffs to flex with the changing generation mix so keep an eye out for changes.

I'm with Octopus at the moment but I had a decade of good service from OVO before moving. I would have to say that although I have a tariff with Octopus their billing is completely haphazard and it's only my ability to track my costs that gives me confidence that I'm not going into debt. E.g. Octopus say my balance is over £600 but I know my true balance is about £200 because they haven't deducted my electricity costs for the past three months. It seems the eight-legged-one is not good at calculations. In 10 years OVO never missed a bill and never got it wrong so you need to look at other factors as well.

I hope you stay with OVO but you have to put your finances first.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/energy/

Peter