Thanks for that, your point is well made and could provide some extra incentive to switch to electric motoring.
In my particular case I already have OVO energy and they do a bolt on tariff called ‘Anytime’ which charges 9.52p per kWh but only when charging a vehicle. To take advantage of this tariff you must have a smart meter (which we already had) and link the tariff to the Ohme app. OVO then charge the standard rate for every unit used, irrespective of whether it’s the car charger or not, but credit you back the amount it thinks you’ve used to charge the car at the end of the month. I’m not sure how it knows which electrical devices are consuming energy at any given time, but I’m guessing that a combo of being linked to the app and the size of the power draw will indicate to their system that a vehicle is being charged. This will mean that the excellent benefit you’ve outlined in your post won’t apply to me, but certainly will to others on a more conventional tariff. I know that Octopus Go works as you’ve suggested, in that there’s a time period (normally through the night) where all electricity consumed is at a lower rate, and I’m sure there are plenty of others. In my case, as we already had OVO, it was easy just to stick with it and see how it went. We aren’t under contract as our fixed deal ended at the worst possible time during the energy cost crisis and there were no other deals better priced, but you can be sure that I’ll be monitoring how much I get credited back per month vs how much I’ve charged the car, the cynic in me thinks they’ve set it up like that to cheat a bit. It’s a strange charging system, you tell the system what time you need the car to be charged by then plug it in. It then intermittently charges based on when the carbon figure is least impacted, up to your chosen percentage and by the time specified. So, even though it’s branded as Anytime, to make it immediately charge at the maximum possible wattage you need to override this intermittent feature and force the system to provide all the power straight away which then charges you at normal rate (just under 30p per kWh). I’ll be seeing how it goes with the costings and adjusting suppliers if it doesn’t work out.
Your excellent tip will be valuable to most I think, and all of these little gems of advice go towards education in the benefits of electric driving. So much of the mainstream press denigrates electric driving, they like to prey on fear of the unknown, it’s always good to hear the positives as well. ?