207 - The ECO Tariffs Episode

Gary C

Hi, I'm Gary and this is EV Musings, a podcast about renewable electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today we'll be looking at cheap charging tariffs.

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the free to download app and helps EV drivers search plan and pay for their charging. This episode is sponsored by OVO, the energy company committed to helping us all reduce our collective carbon footprint with their EV smart charging solutions. Search OVO Charge anytime, I'll see the show notes for links.

Before we start, I want you to remind you that in keeping with this season's theme of education, I have a couple of ebooks out there for you to read one on electric cars, and one on installing renewables in your home. You can buy them on Amazon for about 99p each, or if you're a Prime member, you can go into the Kindle lending library and read them free of charge. Don't worry, I know you're concerned about me not being paid if you read them through the lending library. But it seems that every page you read earns me a little bit of money. So if you want to sit and flick through them in the comfort of your own home without shelling out your hard earned pennies, please feel free to do so. Our main topic of discussion today is cheap charging tariffs. Statistic shows that the vast majority of people who own an electric car are able to charge that vehicle using their home electricity. They either have a driveway where they could park the car and plug into a charger on the wall, or they have parking on street, but close enough so that they can feed a cable either through a gully in the pavement or via a cable run and into their car. We'll be covering this in a little more detail later in the season. The benefit that these drivers have is that once they have an electric car registered to them, they can use the cheap tariffs provided by various energy companies to charge their car. Research indicates that if you have an EV and you're not taking advantage of renewable energy, time of day tariffs and similar, you could be losing as much as £500 per year. Now in this episode, I want to have a look at some of these tariffs to let you know what's out there, and what sort of savings you could be making. Although it may seem that there is only really one main player in this arena, there are actually several. I'm going to go through some of the players in the space so you can understand who does what. Now, note all prices are accurate at the time of writing, which was before the April energy cap price rise or price change. And they are all for one specific area ie my area, which is the SSE DNO down in South East of England. Now rates, particularly peak rates, will vary according to where you come from, and how your energy is generally generated in that area. And the figures I quote, do not include standing charges either. Now for each of the relevant companies. I'll tell you what their off peak rate is, how long it's applicable, what the peak rate is, and any additional information you'll need to know to avail yourself of that tariff. So let's start with podcast sponsors Zapmap. They're actually a subsidiary of a company called Good Energy. And that company provides an off peak tariff of nine and a half pence per kilowatt hour for five hours overnight, applicable to all energy, with a peak price of 44.1 pence per kilowatt hour. Energy Company E-ON have a tariff called Next Drive which offers nine and a half pence a kilowatt hour for seven off peak hours with a peak rate of 33.6 pence per kilowatt hour. Again, this applies to all electricity usage, as opposed to just electricity used to charge your car. ScottishPower has a five hour off peak rate of 7.5p per kilowatt hour, with a peak rate of 34.6 pence per kilowatt hour. British Gas has an electric driver three tariff specifically for evey owners. It offers five hours of off peak energy at 8.95 pence a kilowatt hour with a peak rate of 30.9 pence a kilowatt hour. Octopus go is 9p a kilowatt hour off peak for four hours with a peak rate of 31 pence per kilowatt hour. Now the beauty of all these tariffs mentioned above is that they apply to all electricity coming into the house and they can be used on all cars and charger combinations. For example when I first got an EV I didn't have my charger installed. So I ran a three pin plug out to the Kia Soul and charged it the Octopus go tariff for about three years. It was a dumb charging system - in other words, it had no internal Intelligence surrounding charging times and linkages to the grid, I just set the correct four hours on the incar timer and let the car sort everything out. But if you want to get some better rates, you need to go to schemes which can interact with your car and charger. The current market leader for this is Octopus Energy. And they have an Intelligent Octopus Go tariff, which gives you seven hours of off peak energy for 7.5 pence a kilowatt hour with a peak rate around 31p a kilowatt hour. However, with intelligent octopus go, you're limited to certain charges and or certain vehicles. Not all backoffice software is compatible. And the reason is that Octopus will talk to your car and charger to determine when to charge based on how much energy you wish to add, and the demand on the grid at that time. If I was to ask you to name an energy supplier that can provide a cheap charging tariff, or wall charger, and a way of paying for public charging while out and about, I would imagine there's only one name that comes to mind, right? Octopus energy. Now they do, of course have all of that. But they're not the only one who provides a service along those lines. A newcomer to our list is today's sponsor OVO energy.

Alex Thwaites

Hi, my name is Alex Thwaites. And I'm director of electric vehicles at OVO.

Gary C

So Alex, tell me what the OVO energy EV driver offering is?

Alex Thwaites

Yeah of course. So one of the key elements of OVO Charge Anytime proposition is actually it's not a tariff, it's an add on to any OVO tariffs. So I'll probably explain by if you look at the majority of electric vehicle tariffs that are in the market, most of them are Time Of Use tariffs. So you get a window normally overnight 12 till 5, 11 till 430, that type of approach. And actually it's all energy consumed in the home in that time period is at a reduced rate, which can be great. And but what normally comes with that is an elevated day rate. So off peak rate will be reduced, but then you'll get a slightly higher peak rate for the remainder of the day. So any power consumed throughout the peak rate is normally at a higher rate. So what Charge Anytime is and why it's slightly different is it's not a time of use tariff, it's a type of use add on. So what that means is we have a few different EV charge points that we're directly integrated with. And then we've also got vehicles where we get the telemetry directly from the vehicle. And what we do is we disaggregate the energy used to charge the vehicle versus the rest of the home's demand. So for example, if your house uses 30 kilowatt hours of energy today, we'll turn around and say, hey, 20 kilowatt hours of that was used to charge your vehicle and 10 was used to charge your home. So we'll give you that cheaper rate on all of the kilowatt hours consumed for the car. And then you'll get a home rate for all the kilowatt hours consumed in the home. Because we do that separation of energy, it allows us to do a couple of different things. So one is we don't put any time restriction on it. So you can smart charge your vehicle at any time of the day, and you get a reduced rate for those kilowatt hours.

Gary C

The rate that customers are charged for the add on is 7p a kilowatt hour at any time of day with the non add on rate at 23.3 pence a kilowatt hour with the new price cap in April. But the new add on - because it's 24/7 - allows for different work patterns.

Alex Thwaites

And we love this because it's really inclusive. So if you think of taxi drivers, NHS workers shift workers, where actually a time window overnight doesn't quite fit their vocation, that lifestyle actually charge any time combat problem.

Gary C

It also means that you get your car charge, regardless of what time you plug it in.

Alex Thwaites

So you could come home at 10 o'clock in the morning after a night shift. Tell us need your vehicle by seven, eight o'clock the next evening. And actually, as long as it's sheduled in for charge, we'll give you a cheaper rate throughout that time period. What we'll look at is you tell us couple of things: when you want your car ready by and what you want your battery state of charge to be. So how full do you want your battery? So I need my car at six o'clock this evening. I want it to be 80% full, we'll look at the time period where you plug in. And we'll say we've got X amount of hours to charge your car, we'll find the greenest and cheapest hours within that time period. So that's super, super, super inclusive. The other thing it allows us to do is we don't actually inflate the day rate. So, because there's no off peak and peak rate as such, and it's more an EV rate and home rate. We don't inflate that home rate, we allow it to be attached to any OVO energy plan. So because it's an add on and not a tariff in itself you could be on for example, most homeowners in the UK at the minute are on the standard variable tariff, which is a bit weird because before the energy crisis, normally, the fixed rate tariffs were the cheapest tariffs that you could get and the standard variable was the more expensive tariffs. But actually, that's sort of flipped on its head now and think about 80, 85% of our customer base are on the standard variable tariff. So what that allows you to do is have the cheapest possible home rate from OVO and then just add on the charge anytime, smart charging, add on to that tariff. So you can get the cheapest possible rate for your home. And you get the cheap rate for your EV charging. So when you combine that together, actually, it's one of the better value propositions for any EV driver that has the ability to charge at home.

Gary C

So how can people get this add on? Well, first of all, you need to be an OVO customer with the standard ovo tariff,

Alex Thwaites

So, there's a there's a couple of different sort of eligibility requirements for it. So of course, you need to be an OVO energy customer. And then you also need to have a smart metre opt in to half hourly reads. And then either a compatible EV charger, or a compatible vehicle. So there's those two groups in rarely is, if you've got compatible charger, that's absolutely fine, we can link to that. And if you've got a compatible vehicle, again, we can link you or we can link directly to your vehicle to get the telematics data directly from your vehicle.

Gary C

OK, so you've got your EV. And you've got your add on to the tariffs, your smart metre and half hourly opt ins. But there's more to the offering than that, right?

Alex Thwaites

Yeah. So we've got a broad set of products now, actually, in terms of how we can help an EV driver as much as we can. That's how we've tried to look at our proposition suite. So we've got EV charger installations, which is effectively a digital journey. You can pick from one of our integrated chargers, on the website, you can choose different customization. So different colours of charges, different cable lengths, tethered, non-tethered, and then actually go through a complete digital journey. So we have a partnership with a company called JumpTech, that give effectively a self survey for a customer. So we can send you a link, you can walk around your home, answer some questions, take some photos: things like your consumer unit, your electricity meter box, where you'd like your EV charger to be installed that type of thing. You submit it. And then we've got a fantastic team, actually, we call them technical design consultants, but they look at all of the surveys that have come through and have a look at actually yeah, that one looks okay. Or we need another photo from that one and they engage directly with the customer to get that additional information if we need to. And what they're really looking for is Is it a standard job? Is it a non standard job do we need to put any more equipment or kit with it? That will go through customer again, digitally can pay we're we're also looking at different payment options now to try and spread the payments over a longer period. Just again, to make it a little bit easier for customers to be able to access EVs and from an ownership perspective, just help that little bit by being able to spread payments. And then we've actually upskilled a proportion of our smart meter engineers, so they're dual skilled now so they can install a smart meter or they can install an EV charge point. So if you purchase an EV charger for rover, you'll end up with a ovo engineer in an OVO electric van turning up to install your EV charge point. So it's a really nice branded end to end experience for a customer. And obviously, if they've got one of the integrated chargers, they can connect or add the charge anytime add on to their account straightaway. But really importantly, it's also you don't need to be an OVO customer to buy an EV charge point and have it installed. So that's a whole of market offer. So we can go in installing the recharge point for anyone. They don't have to be an OVO customer. We would love them to become one if they're not and they can access charge anytime and get that cheaper rate. But it's not a not a prerequisite.

Gary C

It's just a hone in a bit on that charger install How competitive is it going to be for customers versus going out to the open market?

Alex Thwaites

Yeah, we think it's it's pretty on point with most EV charge point instals That that you'd be able to get out in the market. I mean, you'd always be able to find a local electrician that might be able to do the installs slightly cheaper than what a larger company might be able to do it because they've not got the infrastructure and the overheads, but we don't think ours is is too far off actually. And we don't want to solely look at price. So from our perspective, you have to look at certain elements that build out the value of something that a customer is purchasing. And for us, the big one would be around safety. So all of our electricians are obviously qualified. They go through manufacturer specific training for those EV charge points that they're installing. Because although you might have the electrical qualifications, actually each EV charger might have a different technical specification for how to install it compliantly so we make sure all of our all of our engineers are fully manufacturer trained. And we're here for the for the longer term so things can happen. So if you've got Dave down the road - that's very generic, by the way, Dave, down the road - is your local electrician that can instal your charge point for you, things can happen, it might not still be trading in a couple of years time if you need some maintenance or service it and so we look at the whole so we think we're really competitively priced, safe and compliant instal, we're here if you need us in a year, two, three years time, we can also come back and if you I mean technology is moving so fast. And features and functionality of EV charge points are moving on quite rapidly. So you never know in a few years time, you might want to upgrade to a to a new unit. Actually, if we're the ones that have gone and done the original install, we could probably come back and do an upgrade cheaper because we know what we did the first time we know it's right, we know it's compliant, as opposed to go into a job where somebody else has installed it and actually we're looking at electrical work that's been done by somebody else, not us.

Gary C

And which charges are you actually installing / recommending?

Alex Thwaites

we've got partnerships with three at the minute: Indra, Ohme and Hypervolt. And the three that we have direct relationships and we we sell those pieces of hardware over on the website. So if you go on to OVO Energy and look at our EV chargers, it will give you a nice nice selection. And as I said earlier, you can customise around different cable lengths, colours, etc. So we have direct integrations with all of those hardware. And then what we are looking to do, which is quite unique actually, and I'm really excited about it is the direct integrations from the EV charger hardware go into our Kalusaflex platform. So Kaluza are the technology arm of OVO group, they provide the flexibility platform that does all the algorithms in the background for the charge anytime proposition. And actually what they're doing is opening up the the API's for integration to all EV charge point manufacturers. So what that means is any charge point manufacturer wouldn't be able to go and integrate to Kaluza. So their customer base will be able to access charge anytime. So I'm really excited about that one because we don't want to sell 20 different hardware units on the website because it's too much choice for consumers. We've we've nailed ours down to a subset of great partnerships that we've got. But actually we also don't want a customer that's got another EV charger installed and they might have had that done two years ago, actually, they can't access charge anytime because they might not have the right charger or the right car. So we're opening up that that API access so that all manufacturers can integrate against it so that all customers no matter what hardware they've got wouldn't be able to access charge any time. I'm really excited about that.

Gary C

So what about customers who are out and about with their cars on public charging, what do you have for them?

Alex Thwaites

So we've got the EV charger installation, then we've got the home charging for those that are lucky enough with off-street parking and can have a charge point installed. And then actually towards the back back end of last year, October, November time, we acquired one of the UK's leading public charging aggregators in Bonnet. So that's effectively an application that has direct integrations with quite a large number of charge point operators. So I think we've got about 27,000 charge points, in England, Scotland and Wales now. And that also spans across Europe, about 500,000 intotal, I think when you include throughout Europe as a whole. And what that does is that aggregates all of those CPOs into one app to try and remove some of the friction points. So as an EV driver, most will know you've got multiple different apps or RFID cards for public charging, that type of thing. This actually brings everything all together into one app, and the payment is within the app as well. So it's actually a cardless solution. And it just removes some of the complexity of public charging. And what we're really aiming to do with that is bring Charge Anytime and what will be Charge Anywhere that rebranded on it together. So if you're an EV driver, actually, we've got all of your charging needs sorted, whether you're charging at home, you can have charge anytime. And also I've charged anywhere for the once or twice a month that you might need to use it for public charging, but then also for drivers that don't have off street parking and solely rely on public charging, this is a great solution, because it again, aggregates all of those CPOs into one, but then also we've got different levels of subscription with it. So you can have pay as you drive when you just pay what the cost is directly at the charge point. But then we also have a couple of different discounted subscriptions. So for £2 per month, you can get a 10% at discount on all of the charge points on a platform. And for £8 a month, you can get 15% discount. So it's quite a significant discount. And again, that's spanning across all of the charge point operators that we have on that platform. And then the other critical bit to that is, again, that that charge anywhere proposition is whole of market. So you don't need to be an OVO energy customer for your home, to be able to download the overcharge app and use the Charge Anywhere public charging facility, you don't need to be a customer for that.

Gary C

Now, I'm a big fan of roaming apps. And I know a lot of people think, well, everything should be contactless, etc. And you know, there's a case for that. But I like the fact that I can take one app or one RFID card and I can use it across any number of different operators. The key for making roaming work for me is having the largest number of partner networks. You bonnet/ OVO Charge/ Charge anywhere have the same major networks attached as most of the other key roaming operators, osprey charging Fastnet Ionity MFG, Genipepoint, et cetera, but what sort of conversations are taking place with the other key ChargePoint operators from the Zapmap top 10 that aren't in your ecosystem. And I'm thinking specifically of Instavolt and Gridserve, for example.

Alex Thwaites

So I was gonna say this too, I wasn't going to name them, you've now we're in conversations with both of those. And we would love to get them onto our network as soon as possible. Because like you said, there there, the two larger networks actually want to have the most well known that we don't have on the platform that we would love to so we're actively in conversations those two now.

Gary C

While we're here, let's talk heat pumps. We're an EV and renewables podcast and overall energy have recently announced a heat pump offering. Tell me a little bit about that.

Alex Thwaites

become a net zero business by: 2035

Gary C

The heat pump add on that Alex mentioned there is priced at 15p a kilowatt hour if you have an eligible OVO energy tariff. So Alex is talks us through the overall energy offerings for heat pump owners and for electric vehicle owners. But as I said, at the top of this interview, the 800 pound gorilla in the room is Octopus Energy. They've been in this particular business for longer, they have more detailed and complex offerings. Agile octopus, Intelligent Octopus, Octopus Gol, Octopus Cosy, et cetera. So what is the USP the unique selling point that would persuade people to move to over energy from Octopus or to choose OVO energy when selecting an energy supply for their electric vehicles?

Alex Thwaites

country, get towards Net Zero: 2050

Gary C

One of my dream ambitions for EV charging will be to link your home EV tariff into the public charging network so that if you get cheap charging at home, you can use that as the basis for cheap charging in public. 7p a kilowatt hour at home might equate to say 35 pence a kilowatt hour public charging on a rapid Is there anything that OVO energy doing that can help move towards that goal?

Alex Thwaites

Hypothetically, could we do that? Yes, we could. But one of the, so OVO is a residential only supplier. So we don't supply commercial energy to any commercial premises or transport operators. But if you asked me when we looked at the Bonnet acquisition, one of the things we thought about I don't know if we'll ever be able to get that. But what would be amazing is if we have a joint app with Anytime and Anywhere in it. And it doesn't matter where you charge, you paid the same rate. So there's no difference between wherever I go and I use a public charge point on the motorway or if I'm charging at home, it's the same rate. That would always be the Nirvana for me because you just again, you just make it super simple for EV drivers. You remove some of that complexity, remove some of the worry about having to spend more on public charging. I think it's really difficult to get there because the delta between public charging and home charging is just so big. Honest answer do I think we'll ever get there? I don't know. Would we love to do something like that? Absolutely. We'd love to make it so that it would just super simple and have a single rate we might be somewhere off that.

Gary C

Since I started putting this episode together a left field entry is coming blowing everything else out of the water. And it's British Gas. They have a hive smartcharge offering for EV drivers. It's the lowest rate in the country, and it's 4p per kilowatt hour. It applies between midnight and 5am which for a car with a standard seven kilowatt charger will put something in the region of about 33 kilowatt hours of energy into the battery for the price of around £1.32. That works out at around a penny a mile for a reasonably efficient EV, which is 2p/mile if you're in an E Tron. Now as with OVO Energy this is linked to your charger. So it can't be used for topping up a battery or using anything within the house. So anyway, a couple of takeaways from our discussion with Alex. It's worth shopping around for your energy tariffs, while the 800 pound gorilla in the room might seem to be the logical answer. For an all in one proposition with cheaper anytime charging, OVO might be worth a look. Do your calculations to work out what the overall costs will be for you and how much you can actually offset to nighttime usage. I can see more and more energy companies embracing the EV driver with some sort of all in one offering. OVO energy have done this, but they're not the only one. And because home electricity and EV ownership are so inextricably linked, this is only going to get bigger and bigger. Of course, if you're not able to charge a home, this is still an issue. But as we'll talk about in a later episode this season, there are options. And if we can get something that links home energy rates to public charging cost, we can start to move that needle a little. Fnal thing to remember about this is the electricity prices are often artificially high because the generation price, ie what the energy companies buy it for from the source, is linked to the price of natural gas in the case where renewables are not forming 100% of the mix, which is pretty much always at the moment. So what this means is that once the government reforms the pricing mechanism, and decouples the price of renewables and the price of gas, these rates should drop anyway. It's an artificial market, which will then settle into something a little more reliable, predictable and low when this happens. Unfortunately, I don't think this is something that the current Conservative government will prioritise prior to the election this year. Let's hope this changes after the election. Many thanks to Alex for his time and to OVO energy for sponsoring this episode. This season, we're looking at raising the awareness of carbon literacy with our listeners. And one way we do that is with a carbon effect, as read by carbon literacy trainer, Anne Snelson

Anne Snelson

Think that planting trees is good enough to cover your holiday flights? A single flight to New York takes a whopping 78 trees to offset within a year. Even a trip to Tenerife takes 40 trees. So when you're booking those flights, start imagining all those holes you should be digging.

Gary C

It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with your listeners. Ever fancy taking on the colder climes with a 100% electric snowmobile? Well, now you can. Vidde is a new design that emulates the snowmobile of old but uses 100% electricity to run and operate. It works in temperatures as low as minus 35 Celsius. It can tow 250 kilogrammes, and it charges in a little under three and a half hours on a type two AC connector. There is one teeny weeny little downside though. The price. It's pitched at a little over 26,000 euros, which is quite a lot for a single maybe, two-seat vehicle. But if your business relies on being able to move in the snow, it could be worth investing. Links in the show notes. And that's the show for today. I hope you enjoyed listening to it. If you want to contact me I can be emailed at info at evmusings.com. I'm also on Twitter at MusingsEV. If you want to support the podcast and the newsletter, please consider contributing to becoming an EV Musings patron. The links in the show notes. Don't want to sign up for something on a monthly basis. Well if you've enjoyed this particular episode, why not buy me a coffee? Go to Ko-fi/evmusings and you can do just that K O dash F I.com/EVmusings. Takes Apple Pay, too. I have a couple of ebooks out there she wants to need to read on your Kindle. So you've got an electric is available on Amazon worldwide for the measly sum of 99p or equivalent is a great little introduction to living within the electric car. So you've gone renewable is also available on Amazon for the same 99p and it covers installing solar panels, a storage battery and a heat pump. Why not check them out? Links for everything we've talked about in the podcast today are in the description. If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe. It's available on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave reviews it helps raise visibility and extend our reach and search engines. If you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening thank you why not? Let me know you've got to this point by tweeting me at MusingsEV with the words "All in one offerings #ifyouknowyouknow, nothing else. Thanks as always to my co founder Simon. You know I watch his videos of him pootling around the town and the country on his electric unicycle. And I often wondered to myself, could I do that? Could I join his exclusive club of becoming an electric unicycle rider? I asked him if it's easy to join his gang and he told me

Alex Thwaites

There's a there's a couple of different sort of eligibility requirements for it.

Gary C

Thanks for listening. Bye