Will OVO reduce their EV Rate?

Worth noting that OVO CA is intended to work 24/7 whereas most others are overnight only - the higher rate covers the extra costs of allowing daytime charging.

If the recent upstream changes allow for the levy stuff to be yanked from the CA rates, OVO will probably see what they can do. Can’t make any promises, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is having that discussion in the office.

As you point out, the reductions you’re seeing are the result of the 3.5p per kWh cap reductions (which are in turn effectively to do with dropping Renewables Obligation and Energy Companies Obligation costs out of bills and moving them to general taxation).

OVO have a page about their approach to that here:
https://www.ovoenergy.com/help/article/levy-reduction

As OVO run Charge Anytime as a credit/discount style add-on scheme, rather than a specific dual rate tariff, I wouldn’t expect to see the 14p rate be reduced to 10.5p like you’re seeing with E.ON or Octopus etc., though I will be pleasantly surprised if I am wrong with that expectation.

whilst those comments are valid, we used to have a rate of 7p anytime.  I am not asking for a 3.5p rate, but a reduction to at least 10p, shows OVO are passing on some of the savings.  

So with many other companies lowering their pkwh charges will OVO be following them?

Hi ​@GTi ,

Unfortunately… Probably not. The reductions are the result of levies being yanked from regular rates - and I suspect these levies never applied to CA rates so there’s nothing to remove. You’re already benefiting from not paying those levies while using CA.

However, your main rate WILL see a drop so you’ll benefit regardless.

I would love to pay only 14p/kwh for my regular electricity usage at home.

Might I suggest that with current discounted EV charging rates you are being treated exceptionally favourably because the UK Government wants to encourage EV usage and get rid of petrol/diesel powered vehicles.

I would imagine that the current oil price situation and the effects at the petrol pumps  will encourage many more people to consider the switch to EV’s.

However things will change and you will find that the high taxes on petrol will be moved over to EV motoring and usage in some form or other. (That’s already started).

Enjoy your cheap EV charging while it lasts.

In case you don’t know the 14p rate only applies to car charging not to the entire house & is double what most other companies charge! Thanks for your comment!

Those tariffs that were at 7p are now 3.5p for the duration of the contract only. After that you will typically find EV rates of 9p with 33p for non EV hours but you may find others that are lower. The crisis in the Middle East is likely to cause casualties amongst the cheap tariffs once offered.

Also, there is a parallel here with the introduction of the Economy 7 tariff many years ago. It used to be that the overnight off peak rate was very cheap compared to the peak but over the past 10 years it has been very noticeable that the two have moved closer together until there is not a lot of difference between them. As the uptake of EVs increases I'm expecting the same to happen to those EV tariffs. As always it is up to the consumer to decide what tariff best meets their needs and that will change over time as will tariffs from suppliers.

Peter

Most other companies restrict you to overnight charging while OVO Charge Anytime lets you charge whenever you want and still get the discounted rate. 14p/kWh is set that way to cover the costs of having it both ways - daytime eco juice is more expensive than night-time juice.

Not sure that’s quite right, as I understand it - if the car is plugged in OVO decide when it gets charged! It could be during the day but more likely from midnight onwards!  

That’d be because of your Ready-By Time settings. If you set it for 7am don’t be surprised if most of the session runs overnight. OVO finds the most appropriate slots based on various factors like when the grid is greener, has more spare juice or is cheaper.

If you set it for 11pm and plugged in at 3pm however, it would charge at times suited to that window.

OVO make use of the ability to generate income by participating in the Capacity Market. That means changing the load (increasing or decreasing the number of cars being charged) depending on the Net Imbalance Value for each half hour settlement period SP. It's one form of Demand Side Response that helps keep the grid in balance without paying shed loads of money to the generators for them to respond. Generators are contracted (from estimates 24 hours in advance) to generate a certain amount of electricity (MWh) in a particular SP irrespective of anything else going in around them. They want more money if NESO ask them to generate more (difficult, because they are normally operating at capacity otherwise why bother) or less (called constraint - easier but they want compensation for the extra wear and tear due to thermal cycling for gas and biomass plants, my guess) even though they still get paid in full for the contract.

Kaluza does it on a 24 hour basis whereas Kraken (formerly Octopus but being sold as a company in it's own right) seems to restrict to the early hours. The job of these systems is to work out (essentially guess) where the most profit can be made by by offering a DSR at a particular rate to NESO that is likely to happen in the future. NESO look at the offers and decide which ones to use. If you bid too high or don't offer much of a response you get rejected.

If you look for MODO Energy on YouTube then they give (mercifully) short videos on how the energy market works. Power generation has evolved into a highly complex industry and often makes no sense to the average user when it comes to tariffs or discounts. In a nutshell your EV is a resource that the supplier can use to help balance the grid which is a continuous minute by minute operation to prevent a catastrophic blackout similar to what happened in Spain not so long ago. That abilty earns payments, part of which goes to the EV owner.

Peter

PS I'm not an expert and I'm sure I've got some of it wrong or perhaps not totally correct but it is a complex subject. 

Appreciate it doesn’t apply to everyone, but I’d be happy if it was overnight and cheaper. Daytime charging is always usually going to be more expensive.

colin

Octopus (and a few others) offer that type of charging deal….

Hey all,

I’ve asked the Charge Anytime team and as far as we’re aware right now there’s no plans to change the Charge Anytime rates or the Charge Anytime add-on so i’d say the statement that ​@divinemadness posted above sounds fairly accurate. I’ve actually assigned that as the best answer for the thread unless we get updated information in the future. 

​@Bobbych It seems that Charge Anytime wasn't sustainable at the 7p charging rate in the past, so I'm a bit unclear about the figures you're referencing regarding savings. What do you mean?

​@Colingray83 ​@woodstok2000 I don’t have an electric vehicle myself, but I’ve heard a lot of great stories from members who charge their cars during the day and take advantage of the lower rates! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Would you prefer a plan with a lower nighttime charging rate and a set charging window, or do you think having the flexibility to charge whenever it’s convenient for you would be better?

The flexibility to charge at any time during the day is almost the only thing keeping me at OVO at the moment, as I often charge during the day and the elevated daytime rates that others charge on their cheap overnight ‘EV tariffs’ would start to cost too much.

It would certainly suit me better to have an overnight only rate of say 7p as I’m mostly out during the day & always charge at night!

Same here. 
I am seeing others reduce their rate to 5p off peak. But having three EVs and as we speak I have one on charge now to 5pm is the only reason I cannot go to an off peak tariff. 
 

but if others can maintain a profit at 7p and during this lower rate between April and July reduce it even more to 5p how can OVO not reduce 14p even for three months to 10p 

It’s worth noting that despite the headlines of super low rates from the likes of Octopus, these were only available for a very short period of time to new customers - if you wanted to sign up for Intelligent Go today for example, the ‘cheap rate’ has already increased to 11.5p as a headline, meaning 8p from April. If Octopus are only offering 11.5p/8p for restricted overnight focused charging, it’s probably unrealistic to expect to see OVO offering 10p for any time IMO.

There’s a bit of a misunderstanding here. The reduction in unit rates arising from the budget promise is simply a result of removing some per MWh charges from what suppliers have to pay. Where suppliers offer a low per kWh rate for, say, EV charging overnight, the customer can expect to see that rate fall. However, OVO charges CA customers the normal rates for all consumption, and these rates will fall, too. The quantities recorded for EV charging don’t affect the no. of kWh delivered, and so have no influence on what OVO have to pay for government levies.   

Good summary ​@divinemadness. It's the balance between the tariffs that suit your needs bearing mind cost and when you need to charge.

Peter 

It’s entirely dependent on usage and charging patterns, but personally I really appreciate the flexibility CA offers compared to other EV tariffs. I’m lucky to have got the VW deal so I’m still on 7p/kWh, but even at a higher rate I wouldn’t switch to e.g. Octopus as I need to charge during the day/evening fairly regularly, and I also often need to charge from very low (<20%) to get back to 80-90% for the next day.

At the post-April Octopus rate  (8p/kWh) my car would cost £7.20 for a full charge. At standard OVO CA rate (14p/kWh) it’s £12.60, but if I needed to do a full charge outside the limited hours with octopus it would cost me £30 (33p/kWh).  With my usage, Octopus is coming in significantly more expensive on a monthly basis.

The other downside with Octopus is that, as I understand it, you only get 6 hours cheap rate per night, which would be slightly less than a 50% charge for me.