Home charging

[Jason71]

There's also a chance a future homeowner would assign some value to the existence of an EV charge point. Not suggesting it would fully cover the installation cost but I'd be surprised if no value was attributed to it.

The grid may be able to cope with the load but the local wiring on many estates probably will not ( what with heat pumps as well).
There may come a time when DNOs will start to reject applications for chargers pending local network upgrades ( which will never happen) so my advice would be to get in and get one now!

 

[KennethS]

The grid may be able to cope with the load but the local wiring on many estates probably will not ( what with heat pumps as well).
There may come a time when DNOs will start to reject applications for chargers pending local network upgrades ( which will never happen) so my advice would be to get in and get one now!

Another excellent point!

 

[spooksman]

There may come a time when DNOs will start to reject applications for chargers pending local network upgrades

Indeed - I have had my wall charger about 4 years and everything has been fine. However, my next door neighbours have now tried to get a charger installed (along with solar) and they have been bounced, as it appears we are on a looped supply (bit odd, as they are 4/5 bedroom houses). Now North West Electricity have been out to schedule the work of 'unlooping' us - seems to mean they need to dig up some of next door's garden and the verge of our drive - 6-8 weeks lead time they've been informed (but no cost to either party).

 

[djtaylor]

Yeah I’m already on octopus so will look into a tariff change at some point and yeah the home charger is probably best all round cheers

Just a comment here, the general suggestion is "Switch to Intelligent Octopus Go", yes it's 7.5p while the car is charging but higher when it's not, something like 27p?
On an annual mileage of ~10,000, I went with Octopus Agile because the daily average is nearer 12p IF (that's a big IF), you can avoid the 4pm to 7pm peak by either load shifting or use of a storage battery, which I do have. If not, then it's nearer 18p average. With IOG, the whole house does get cheap energy but only while the car is charging and if you're low mileage, may not deplete the battery enough to benefit from long slow daily charge sessions, plus, I didn't want to have to factor my house usage around frigging with setting up a fake slow car charge just to get cheap rates.
My point being, if you're not a high mileage user then a cheaper tariff but not necessarily an EV tariff may suit better. We've recently had some super days when the Agile tariff was 0p and down to -8.4p per kWh and got paid to charge the car. Rare but fun!
There's no one magic answer here though, you need to sit down and do some sums if it's something you care about.

 

[djtaylor]

There's also a chance a future homeowner would assign some value to the existence of an EV charge point. Not suggesting it would fully cover the installation cost but I'd be surprised if no value was attributed to it.

I read the other day that it *can* add up to £4k value. Not quite sure how that's worked out since it's about 4 times the cost of just getting it done but then i'm not an estate agent either.

 

[fholbert]

If you can go with a wall charger and higher voltage do it.

The issue with low voltage “granny charging” is you sometimes use more, if not all, power running fans cooling or heating the batteries. I’ve seen charging at 1 mph durning low voltage charging. In the long run some are spending more money trying to save money. It makes no sense.

 

[GRiLLA]

Just a comment here, the general suggestion is "Switch to Intelligent Octopus Go", yes it's 7.5p while the car is charging but higher when it's not, something like 27p?
On an annual mileage of ~10,000, I went with Octopus Agile because the daily average is nearer 12p IF (that's a big IF), you can avoid the 4pm to 7pm peak by either load shifting or use of a storage battery, which I do have. If not, then it's nearer 18p average. With IOG, the whole house does get cheap energy but only while the car is charging and if you're low mileage, may not deplete the battery enough to benefit from long slow daily charge sessions, plus, I didn't want to have to factor my house usage around frigging with setting up a fake slow car charge just to get cheap rates.
My point being, if you're not a high mileage user then a cheaper tariff but not necessarily an EV tariff may suit better. We've recently had some super days when the Agile tariff was 0p and down to -8.4p per kWh and got paid to charge the car. Rare but fun!
There's no one magic answer here though, you need to sit down and do some sums if it's something you care about.

If you have a battery then you can charge that at 7.5p, with 10kWh of battery I rarely use any peak electricity at all year round.

I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make about the charging, perhaps you missed that on IOG you get 23:30-05:30 at 7.5p irrespective of whether you charge or not. The 'intelligent' might mean the car charges outside these hours sometimes, so you then get that at the lower rate as well.

The other nice bit with Intelligent Octopus Go is that it's easy to live with, 6 hours of cheap every night when you can shift load to, and you can fully charge your car every night however long that takes at the cheap rate, without needing to think about it.

 

[Jason71]

Just a comment here, the general suggestion is "Switch to Intelligent Octopus Go", yes it's 7.5p while the car is charging but higher when it's not, something like 27p?
On an annual mileage of ~10,000, I went with Octopus Agile because the daily average is nearer 12p IF (that's a big IF), you can avoid the 4pm to 7pm peak by either load shifting or use of a storage battery, which I do have. If not, then it's nearer 18p average. With IOG, the whole house does get cheap energy but only while the car is charging and if you're low mileage, may not deplete the battery enough to benefit from long slow daily charge sessions, plus, I didn't want to have to factor my house usage around frigging with setting up a fake slow car charge just to get cheap rates.
My point being, if you're not a high mileage user then a cheaper tariff but not necessarily an EV tariff may suit better. We've recently had some super days when the Agile tariff was 0p and down to -8.4p per kWh and got paid to charge the car. Rare but fun!
There's no one magic answer here though, you need to sit down and do some sums if it's something you care about.

The 4 -7 thing is a bit of a deal breaker.

By moving dishwasher plus some runs of washer and drier into the night I have shifted over 50% of my usage to the night rate on intelligent which has taken my average rate down to below 16p.

 

[GRiLLA]

 

[djtaylor]

If you have a battery then you can charge that at 7.5p, with 10kWh of battery I rarely use any peak electricity at all year round.

I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make about the charging, perhaps you missed that on IOG you get 23:30-05:30 at 7.5p irrespective of whether you charge or not. The 'intelligent' might mean the car charges outside these hours sometimes, so you then get that at the lower rate as well.

The other nice bit with Intelligent Octopus Go is that it's easy to live with, 6 hours of cheap every night when you can shift load to, and you can fully charge your car every night however long that takes at the cheap rate, without needing to think about it.

Yes i'm aware of all of that. What I don't want to do is rely on force charging my storage battery every night to 100% to save a few p per kWh while simultaneouly maxing out its charge cycles, leading to premature replacement as there's a MUCH bigger cost there.
I was doing that already during the peak of the energy crisis.
As explained though, I hardly drive the car during the week, it has sat for 2 weeks already on the drive so the only thing that would be charging is the storage battery and i'm back to the comment above about stressing that battery. I know that I could set a charge rate to minimum to lengthen the charging time and thus the 7.5p rate but then outside of the night hours, that would require coordination and re-programming of the wife.exe module.

Overall my comment to the OP was merely to suggest doing some sums and figuring out what works, especially since they're not a high mileage driver nor was there mention of a storage battery to mitigate the day rate.

 

[djtaylor]

The 4 -7 thing is a bit of a deal breaker.

By moving dishwasher plus some runs of washer and drier into the night I have shifted over 50% of my usage to the night rate on intelligent which has taken my average rate down to below 16p.

Yep, again, each has to consider the use case. My dishwasher uses 0.4kWh so little to shift, gas tumble drier so can be used all day. Washer at 20 deg C is little load to since minimum water heating. There's really not much to shift here.

 

[spdpsba]

View attachment 1040916

I hope you have a battery storage - or otherwise the energy consumption is a lot. Not sure whether you have 2EVs?

 

[spdpsba]

night rate on intelligent which has taken my average rate down to below 16p.

By the way, finally decided to move to IOG from OG after seeing @GRiLLA ’s savings. Can someone guide me whether to choose Tesla as the device or Charger. I read somewhere there were multiple issues with choosing Tesla as a device. I don’t have batteries or heat pump.

 

[spooksman]

By the way, finally decided to move to IOG from OG after seeing @GRiLLA ’s savings. Can someone guide me whether to choose Tesla as the device or Charger. I read somewhere there were multiple issues with choosing Tesla as a device. I don’t have batteries or heat pump.

My understanding is that if your wall box/charger is supported by IO, go that way, else, go for the car.

In my case, my PodPoint isn't supported, so it's the Tesla route for me

 

[Jason71]

Yes i'm aware of all of that. What I don't want to do is rely on force charging my storage battery every night to 100% to save a few p per kWh while simultaneouly maxing out its charge cycles, leading to premature replacement as there's a MUCH bigger cost there.

Hopefully not a dumb question ( I don't have battery storage) but if the point of the battery is not to charge and discharge it to load shift from one rate to another then what is the point of having it unless you are worried about power cuts?
It will last longer if you don't use it but you won't be getting any benefit from it so what is the point?
I am thinking of getting one but assumed the best way to use it would be to charge it using Octopus Go Intelligent then use in the day time.
Even if I get solar also if I can sell that for more than 7.5p using it to charge a battery seems pointless? Am I missing something?

This may technically be off topic but the title is litterally "home charging" so.....

 

[spdpsba]

my PodPoint isn't supported, so

I have pod point but I saw pod point on their list of devices - am I right?

 

[djtaylor]

Hopefully not a dumb question ( I don't have battery storage) but if the point of the battery is not to charge and discharge it to load shift from one rate to another then what is the point of having it unless you are worried about power cuts?
It will last longer if you don't use it but you won't be getting any benefit from it so what is the point?
I am thinking of getting one but assumed the best way to use it would be to charge it using Octopus Go Intelligent then use in the day time.
Even if I get solar also if I can sell that for more than 7.5p using it to charge a battery seems pointless? Am I missing something?

This may technically be off topic but the title is litterally "home charging" so.....

Not a dumb question at all, it's also for capturing the excess solar and discharging that in the evening. I'm on the original legacy Feed In Tariff so right now being paid a smidge over 60p per kWh just for generation, then 50% again of what I generate as presumed export. Except that I don't export anything since it gets stored, though I still get paid for deemed export.
The ability to also charge at very low rates and discharge when it's expensive is part of the integration and my battery has a specific integration with Octopus Agile to achieve this.
You're not missing anything, it's an option to fully charge it cheap and discharge it later and that's what I was doing. My Agile rate average is still cheaper than the previous Economy 7 rate that I was on with Scottish Power and yes, I could do IOG but prefer to reduce the stress on the battery.

Like I said, lots of options with all this stuff, everyone has a slightly different perspective on it and different costing may work out to favour one option or the other. No single answer.

 

[Trevel]

I have pod point but I saw pod point on their list of devices - am I right?

Also would like to know this before I order
You can use the Tesla to control Intelligent Octopus Go.

Either the charger OR car need to be compatible, in the case of Tesla the car is compatible so the charger doesn't need to be.

 

[thax1]

View attachment 1040916

Yours looks like mine, and yet rather than smile, I still find myself wondering “who used the 8 units on-peak!”

 

[thax1]

Yep, again, each has to consider the use case. My dishwasher uses 0.4kWh so little to shift, gas tumble drier so can be used all day. Washer at 20 deg C is little load to since minimum water heating. There's really not much to shift here.

47 years old, and today I learnt that ‘gas tumble driers’ are a thing!