EV Tariffs

Thought I’d post in this in the smart meter thread at first as it’s full of people who are interested in their electricity tariff, even though it’s not really about smart meters …. But then changed my mind.

I’m considering buying an EV for the first time and wondering about EV tariffs. I could easily switch to the Octopus EV product as I’m with them already. My question really is what are the implications for the cost of electricity at other times of day? I’m guessing they’re going to offer cheap overnight wattage at the expense of charging more in the daytime?

Does anyone here have any practice experience of what it actually does to your electricity bill (apart from the overall increase caused by ‘fuelling’ the car from your home electricity).

The EV will be our second car and will only have a small battery, and will only do low miles around town, so it’s not like I’m going to be needing to charge up a 75kWh battery twice a week - more like 25-30kWh once a week.

It depends what your current tariff is, Octopus Go is pretty good, atm (i.e. in Nov) but since I switched in August, Agile has been better overall.
Use your API key and the Agile Buddy site [agilebuddy.uk] to compare the cost of the various Octopus tariffs for your actual usage.
Go gives you 5 hours at 8.5p, the rest at 25p [In the East Midlands].

Thanks - at the moment I’m just on Flexible Octopus. There is too much teenage coming and going in this house, at all hours, for me to be able to mandate when we use electricity in order to take advantage of rates that change throughout the day.

I’ve had a quick look around but I can’t find an API key for my own account? There’s lots of very technical information about how to use the thing which seems to be obfuscating the simple question ‘where do I find my API’?

[mrmistoffelees]

To create an Octopus API key, you can:
Log in to the Octopus Web Portal
Click your profile image and select Profile
Click My API Keys
Click New API key
State the purpose of the API key and click Generate new
Copy the new API key to your clipboard

Apparently

Originally Posted by Chris

I’ve had a quick look around but I can’t find an API key for my own account? There’s lots of very technical information about how to use the thing which seems to be obfuscating the simple question ‘where do I find my API’?

Login online.
Home > Personal Details > Developer Settings > Api Access

https://octopus.energy/dashboard/new...ils/api-access

---------- Post added at 22:14 ---------- Previous post was at 22:11 ----------

Originally Posted by Chris

Thanks - at the moment I’m just on Flexible Octopus. There is too much teenage coming and going in this house, at all hours, for me to be able to mandate when we use electricity in order to take advantage of rates that change throughout the day.

Its surprising how little that is actually necessary to save money.
We have not changed our usage habits at all, yet still save (over flexible) most days.

[Sirius]

I am on Agile, i set my car to charge at the cheapest time slot overnight.

[ianch99]

We're on Agile which for the last couple of weeks has been a bit hit & miss. Some days a little more than the standard tariff, some days less. Should possibly return to "normal" next week it seems with more windy.

We were on Tracker for Gas but with the renewal due in first week of Jan and higher than usual rates, we switched to the 12m Fixed @5.60p/kWh. As a data point, today's Gas on latest Tracker tariff is 6.44p

---------- Post added at 08:50 ---------- Previous post was at 08:48 ----------

Originally Posted by Sirius

I am on Agile, i set my car to charge at the cheapest time slot overnight.

Can you programme the car charger to align with the cheapest Agile 1/2 hour slots?