Meet the new Charge Anytime!

sorry, yes bad maths

3 x £30 is £90 for 3 cars.  But the Tarriff with Octopus for the house is MORE than my OVO tarriff

staying at 14p, my monthly spend on my 3 cars will be £100.  £10 more than moving to Octopus, but the tarriff means that £10 is negated

so I am actually no better moving away from Ovo as it stands, and staying on the 14p tarriff

I have only just extended with OVO in the last couple of weeks and the sole reason for staying was for Charge Anytime.  So, the same as everyone else here their carefully curated cheery email announcing their great new changes was an absolute joke and gut punch.  I have obviously gone to every other provider and crunched the numbers, but unfortunately it seems that OVO are still far cheaper for both unit gas and electricity cost and both standing charges.  I am fortunate that I only have to pay for my personal mileage, so will just take the hit on that and move to PAYG.  Like it or not, being able to charge at anytime of day for as long as required is a massive plus OVO have over their competitors. Overall, I don’t want to stay after this and agree with everyone’s feeling and sentiment about how they have gone about this and delivered it, but I have no choice but to stick with OVO for now 

​@Bobbych I agree that the standing charge and day rate is likely to be more, which makes it difficult to compare even disregarding household use being at the cheap rate. But I still don’t think you are likely to need to sign up all three cars. Consider signing up the one that is likely to charge out of off-peak the most and then make allowance for other savings in your comparison. But if the 14p/kWh rate works out best for you then at least that gives you certainty in your costings and shows that OVO have a product that works best for some EV users. Though based on your £100 monthly spend it sounds like you are only charging, on average, 4 hours in a 24 hour period anyway. Would all of this charging be in ‘peak times’ or can at least one EV charge overnight? Lots of questions, which goes to show how complicated each use case is! Hope you can find something that works for you which looks like it could well be OVO.

from the Octopus website

Can you have two cars on Octopus Go?

 

No, you can only connect one vehicle directly to the Intelligent Octopus Go (IOG) tariff for smart charging. However, you can still charge a second EV by using the tariff's six-hour off-peak window to manually charge it using the car's in-vehicle scheduling settings or by controlling a compatible smart charge

I find it funny that there is no one from OVO here defending the actions of their company. I can only imagine the grief these people will now be getting from all the EV owners out there. 

I would happily sign up to a monthly package if it actually made sense, but I assume OVO will lose half there current customers and may never get any new ones. 

OVO has always been a leader in EV charging and now about to become worst in class. 

What a way to tank a brand.

​@Bobbych Correct, that’s what I said about signing up the EV that would need to charge at ‘peak’ the most.

but peak times are only 5 hours or so.  I may need 10 hours to charge, so again, I would be worse off, having to charge that car at peak rate outside those hours.

that would only be car 2 also. I have a third car, which cannot charge at the overnight rate

there is no one around who offers 24/7 flexible charging like Ovo do.  Yes as said before, Ocotpus do, if I pay £30 per car, so £90 for 3 cars.  that is pretty much the same as staying with Ovo and paying 14p,

The knee-jerk reaction of jumping ship after finding the 7p/kWh has doubled to 14p/kWh is understandable. However, it seems highly likely that other electricity suppliers will be increasing their prices as well. In that case it could be out of the frying pan and into the fire.
A wait and see response would be the more sensible approach.

Not only that, but if you go over the 175KWh at all, then the excess goes at your standard rate. (25p per KWh typically)

On PAYG you get up to about 810 kWh at 14p per KWh (actually the cap is £100 of refunds, so varies a bit depending on your standard rate).  This means that for higher mileage users the PAYG terms are *much* better. (but still double todays’ rate)

It appears that these schemes have been devised to fool people into thinking they are getting a better deal than they are.  I feel very let down as I have been encouraging my EV owning friends to move to OVO and Charge Anytime for about 6 years now … to be kicked like this with only a months notice is shocking.

The only way the plans make any sense is if the public charging can really save you £10 per month (e.g. you are already public charging more than this per month).     The other thing about the plans is they make no attempt to accommodate anyone who doesn’t drive a consistent mileage every month.

Based on your monthly charging of around 720kWh I can’t quite understand the logistics of needing the 3 cars charging for long durations at more of less the same time, but obviously you will be able to work out the specifics. Of course, if your charger (ideally) or multiple cars are compatible you can still get out of off-peak cheap rates and not worry about spending the £30 per vehicle. Your usage probably isn’t high enough to give any savings with the Drive Pack. I should also point out that the Octopus tariff is not charge anytime. You need to set a departure time between 04:00 and 11:00. You can’t just plug in during the day and request it to charge by 4pm for instance. This is where OVO’s offering is more flexible and may well suit you better.

How long do you wait, on the off chance that other companies will follow suit and paying double the fixed-term contract you signed a few weeks ago, before deciding the time’s right to switch?

Aside from anything, the way this has been handled and communicated is so poor (dishonestly, in my opinion) that I wouldn’t want to give my business to OVO for any longer than I absolutely had to.

I have 3 cars in the household. Not all mine. 
three people have their own cars and use them daily for work needing good mileage for that. 
 

we are flexible where needed as I can charge my car during the day. But my commute is 220 mile round trip I do twice a week

so to charge 3 cars on a constant rotation where I can anytime just works for me. I will have to just soak up the cost increase as octopus just won’t work for me 

​@Bobbych if your mileage increases, just make sure you don't exceed the maximum allowed reimbursement. 👍 Good luck 

This is one way to put people off buying an EV 

 ovo not doing anything positive to encourage EV ownership

This is one way to put people off buying an EV 

 ovo not doing anything positive to encourage EV ownership

 

 

Even at 14p a unit the calculation is going from about 14p/mile ICE to 3.5p/mile EV. Ok, so it's not the same as going down to 1.75p/mile but most of the saving is in that first step.

If you want to refine your savings with the second step, having gained some experience with owning an EV you can then look at moving on to something with a headline rate of 6p but possibly with a much higher non charging rate. But you will need to do some calculations to see if it's worthwhile and also being restricted to charging in the early hours (which may be fine or it may not)

Peter

Scottish Power offer a 24/7 tariff, essentially the same as Charge Anytime, but they charge 10p p/kw. Personally, I wouldn’t touch Scottish Power with a barge pole due to previous experiences with them, but it’s an option for you. 
 

We’ve started our switch to Octopus. Got a referral code from a friend, which gives us £50 bill credit (will charge both of our cars for about 2 months) and my friend’s electricity lowered significantly despite getting an EV because they started using their washing machine, dryer, dishwasher etc overnight at the cheaper rate. I’m happy to get into the habit of doing that. I looked at eon Next drive (which was the cheapest) and BG, but they didn’t seem to be smart tariffs from what I could see on the website. 

I do not reach a cap now on the 7p rate so just moving to the same PAYG on 14p I cannot see me hitting any cap

the cap mileage’s are on the packages which I will not be even entertaining as they are only around 12p anyway and then standard rate after the mileages cap 

A cap on credit applies on PAYG as well, as you can only be paid £100 per account per month:

16.3 The maximum monthly Charge Anytime Credit you can receive is £100 per month per account. Any Smart Charging consumption that exceeds the maximum Charge Anytime Credit will be charged at your tariff’s usual rate. 

This means if you are receiving 12p per kWh back, you only have the first 833kWh at the cheaper 14p/kWh rate. (Works out on average at around 27kWh per day)

Agreed. But as I have said on many posts here , there is no alternative for me with three EVs to juggle charging through the week which will be cheaper than the new OVO rate 

There seems to be some misunderstanding on Intelligent Octopus Go. It does seem to work like Charge Anytime and isn't just restricted to 11:30pm-5:30am. From the Ocropus site:

"Then, just plug in your car and tell us how much charge you need. We'll automatically schedule your charge for when energy is cheapest and greenest, and you'll only pay 7p/kWh regardless of the time of day"

Also you get 7p electricity for your whole house in the 11:30pm-5:30am slot.

The basic Octopus rate would have cost me about £250 year more, but I have solar and a battery so would be able to charge my battery from the grid at night at 7p instead of from the solar panels and sell the excess solar that I would have used to charge the battery during the day to Octopus for 15p. In the summer I estimate I wouldn't need to buy any peak rate power, working on solar and battery at 7p and still have surplus to sell at the 15p rate. In the winter I estimate solar and battery will supply about two thirds of my requirement. Ovo doesn't have a offpeak household rate. So even if Ovo hasn't gone from 7p to 14p I would be better with Octopus because of the cheap overnight solar battery charging and higher price for solar export (15p compared to 12p). I only realised this when I started exploring other suppliers after the doubling of the Charge Anytime rate. Thank you Ovo!

​@EVuser This is exactly the same for me. Octopus is way better than OVO in that scenario, and will ensure I have greater savings. Had OVO not got greedy, I may not have even explored those options. But as it happens we will be dropping OVO when our fixed rate ends soon.

I also disagree with those that bang on about 14p still being cheaper than ICE. Having an EV (on economical reasons) requires the charging rates to be very low to make sense. When you factor in the huge price for an EV, depreciation, shorter lifetimes of the car, battery fall-off, temperature sensitivity, inconvenience on long journeys and upcoming battery technology advances, unless you are trying to do your “go green” bit with an EV it costs much more overall.

I thought this thread had been closed, no replies in 20 hours!

Still miffed about the situation tho 😔

The one issue I see with this which is preventing me looking to move is the intelligent part. The website alludes to the fact you have to set a ready time of between 4.30am and 11am 

so if I plug my car in at 1pm I have to set a time for 4.30. So it will wait and charge mainly overnight anyway

with OVO I can set a time for 9pm. So it will charge one car by 9pm. I can then plug in a second car overnight if i need to. I assume this would not be possible with octopus

Has anyone looked at EDF, or know anyone who uses it? 

They have a go electric tariff that gives you 5 hours per night at 9 pence (between 00:00 and 05:00) and in addition to this, if you add the smart charging bolt on, you get additional off peak hours throughout the day at the same rate 9 pence. Like Octopus this rate applies to the whole household.
 

The advantage I see of EDG over Octopus go is the on peak rate and the daily standing charge is set at the price cap, not way over like Octopus go. I guess my only concern is how many additional hours off peak will I get with smart charging as 5 hours per night may not be enough ( I generally have to charge my car from 20 to 85 percent ¾ time per week n due 150 round commute to work. 

Does the smart charging only work with the pod point? Trying to figure it out looks like it would only work with one of our cars but can’t see anything about charger support apart from pod point. But it defiantly looks like a viable alternative!