EV rate on electricity for normal use

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bestestimate

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Shopping around for the best available rate after recently installing solar panels.
I don't have an electric vehicle. Do the special time of night EV rates quoted by suppliers only apply to charging EVs .
I notice the smart meter EV night time rates are much cheaper than ordinary smart meter all night rates.
 
I availed of one such rate a few years ago, and simply told the switching salesperson on the phone that I was planning to buy an EV. Three years later, I'm still planning to buy one! So go for it!
 
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What plan, provider are you with?

That EV rate is for about 2 hrs I think. Do they get you back in another way? Like the off peak or full peak rate is slightly higher than a regular off peak/full peak plan?
 
Do you have a battery? Grid shifting can be very economical with a good EV rate. I recently built a 16kwh battery to complement our existing solar install. I charge the battery on an EV rate and use it to power 99% of our daily consumption. We now export most of our solar production and are making money, I'm on track to have enough credit by October to cover our usage through till April and solar production should pick up by then to start breaking even again.
 
tnegun said:
use it to power 99% of our daily consumption
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The difficulty, with this strategy, for some people, is that if you have a heat pump itll consume a lot in winter. A geothermal heatpump is supposed to run almost all the time in winter to maintain a vomfy home. This uses a lot of electricity, often at a very high day rate - where the ev plan has been signed up to. It would negate a lot of benefits.
 
I don't have a heat pump but you should still be able to put a dent in it with a decent battery charged on night rate. How much would an average one consume daily during winter?
 
Ouch, what about average, though? Is the house particularly large? Can they be boosted during particular hours to try to offset the usage outside of an EV rate?
 
House is large. I mean 40 per day avg nov to feb anyway. Its a 14 yr old HP and doesnt seem to have timer functionality. I have been told to leave it alone to do its thing based on outside temp and internal thermostat setting. But i do nktice it rjnning a lot of the time during day in winter.
 
With an enhanced connection from ESBN and a 4 hour EV rate you could pull in 60kwh in the window. You'd need the hardware to support and charge these batteries, its definitely feasible, our daily consumption is 34kwh excluding heating as that's gas, we're just on the limits of what can be done on a smaller scale with reasonable payback period, but its working for us so far.
 
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