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.
 
Yes, If you're pulling 40KWh a day on average Nov to Feb then definitely a big battery filled up on the EV rate will pay for itself quite quickly.

On a cold day my heat pump might pull 30-35KWh.
But on average across Nov to Feb it pulls 7-8KWh per day
 
AJAM said:
Yes, If you're pulling 40KWh a day on average Nov to Feb then definitely a big battery filled up on the EV rate will pay for itself quite quickly.
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And maybe my estinate is wrong. Ill have a better idea after thisbwinter as ill be monitoring it a bit more closely. Maybe 40kwh ler days is too high an estimate. Another 10kw of dyness battery would prob vost me 4k invl install so its hard to see how that would pay for itself quickly. Load shifting 20kw from say 8c versus 25c is a diff of 17c times 20kw is €3.40 per day. Over say 6 months thats about €600.
 
Theres fair usage limits on many of the EV rates though which you need to be careful with - still can be a good strategy.
 
Run all appliances, charge battery and heat water on the Ev rate with Energia smart EV plan. I do have an EV and charge that then too but no need to have an EV to sign up.
 
Have the deals for Energia's EV Smart Drive tariff increased substantially in the last month ?
Maybe the suppliers have copped on to the idea that people are using the electricity between 2-6am for general use rather than for EV charging .
Thats a pity because EV charging was as low as 6.74c per unit a month ago , including VAT. Now its 7.54c . Doing my arithmatic thats because the discount off their standard rate has decreased from 24% to 15%. The day rate has also followed suit.
I have also checked energypal.ie and kilowatt.ie and bonkers. Any body else notice these big increases ?
 
The more people that pile their charging into the EV band, the less of an electricity surplus there will be during those hours. That will bring the price back closer to the day rate over time. When the day comes that there are a million EVs on Irish roads, it may wipe the benefit of the EV band out totally.

The next phase will be chasing windy nights and sunny afternoons on dynamic tariffs.

For now though, 7.54c is still arguably great value compared to daytime electricity.
 
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