Best Electricity Plan for new EV Owners

Just signed up to Energia today, fair play to them for honouring the discount as I'm on the 7.9c rate, for anyone who missed my previous posts I was in a cooling off period with Airtricity and there's a 20 day restriction on changing supplier so I was registered to change with Energia when the price was 7.9c but it was cancelled and I was put back on my original Electric Ireland tariff. I was finally allowed change today, go figure I charged my car for the first time yesterday on a 28c rate!

Fingers crossed this one doesn't get cancelled for some stupid reason!

Thats false, you must have either been talking to a moron or are a smart meter customer

Seems to be a trend that switcher offers have gone awful in past fortnight or so. Poor discounts, poor cash back offers etc.

I still need to see to believe I'm on fixed price.

Was bound to happen at some point unfortunately.

If the Energia EV plan is no longer fixed then you just have to find the plan with the biggest discount % and hope that your roll of the dice works out as the next round(s) of unit rate increases come.

fair play, this is also my situation except it's the slightly later 29.65/8.59 rate. My 20 days is up in the first couple of days of October. The chap on the phone said he would be ably to put it through on the rate applicable on Sept 1st when I tried switching (and failed).

That offer included the fixed rate so I will be hoping alright.

Thats a pity, not sure what you can do now, i’d mentioned more than once on here, as did others, to get the meter changed with existing supplier, as a step 1, and follow up straight afterwards, with ESB Networks, to make sure the request was received and was in progress, as i got told by my supplier, the request to switch to day/night meter had been entered, when it had not, i had also been told it would cost x, when that wasn’t correct, On my 2nd attempt lt was succesful, and got someone who also confirmed there was no charge, as it was a 1 st meter change request. Two totally different people, working for the same utility company, 2 totally different sets of facts given to me.

It seems a lot of untrained customer service staff, are working for all the utility providers, some know their stuff, many, do not. You get totally different answers, when you phone them, depending on who you talk to, its a real - buyer beware scenario, check and triple check - everything, take screen shots etc of everything. Thats the reality today with utility providers.

Its worth pushing Energia again, to take account of your attempt to switch to them, albeit, they are unlikely to honor that, as they were not even your supplier, but worth a try.

Final bill received from Bord Gais today and they haven't charged the €50 early termination fee either (5 months left on my contract).

I've been looking and I think for me the Bord Gais Smart EV plan works out the best, From my calculations its seems better than the energia one.

I've a screen shot of my calculations below maybe someone can sanity check them I may have missed something or mis-estimated. Regarding the Estimated numbers, last winter we were doing plumbing working so the boiler was out of action and we were using electricity along with fire and superser to heat the house so the number would be higher than they should be so I've taken them down a bit, I could be a bit wrong here but don't think it should effect the overall calculation, also we didn't have the electric car. Have estimated it at avg 11kwh/day based on expected mileage. Realistically can probably increase the amount used during EV rate a bit also.

Be curious to hear any thoughts on it, I am just estimating what I can split into night and EV rates but Bord Gais looking better, even if you add on extra 100 for standing charge.

The unit rates for Bord Gais are due to go up significantly from 2nd October. I'm assuming based on your quoted unit rates you're on 20% discount:

• Day: 38c (from 27c)
• Night: 29c (from 20c)
• Peak: 54c (from 37c)
• EV: 10c (from 7c)

While at this stage, assuming you're a smart meter customer, you won't have a day/night put in before Energia increase their rates with the 15% discount taken into account:

• Day: 45c (from 34c)
• Night: 15c (from 10c)

That said, if your standard household usage is low, you don't have an electric shower, and can time appliances like the washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, immersion to all run between 2am and 5am and can avoid the 5pm-7pm period for significant usage then you could save quite significantly on Bord Gais' plan even with the higher standing charge. Just watch out for load - particularly given it's during night time hours.

Your standard electricity supply is 12kW - car will take 7kW, and washing machine, dryer, dishwasher typically take 2kW each and immersion 3kW in bath mode.

That is just to signify that that box can take a 60A or an 80A fuse. You wont know which fuse is inside it. You'd have to ask ESB or look at the initial connection form that was sent into ESB when the grid connection was requested.

You should assume a 60A fuse (12kVA) unless you know otherwise. The 80A fuse (16kVA) is what ESB call the "enhanced connection" and is typically used when an EV or a heat pump is involved.

You will also be limited by the fuse in your consumer unit so even if you have an 80A fuse in your meter box and a 60A fuse on your consumer unit you wont be able to go above 60A anyway!

I got rid of our Electric showers 12 years ago, best decision I ever made. No noisy showers in our house, and lucky to have good a mains pressure system, so no pumps needed ! Solar tubes heated the water for the most part, for over 10years, now a heat pump, does it on timer, at night meter rates.

As to which electricity tarriff, the 9 hours per day of Night meter rates, gives much more flexibility. Those 2 to 4/5am smart meter rates, are good, but just too restrictive for me, i also don’t like running washing machines, dishwashers and dryers, when people are asleep, and i want to be able to fully charge my car, at low rates, in one single charging session, which the night meter, 9 hour window allows, but the very restrictive EV smart meter, does not.

I won’t be inviting you to my house !!

Would never go back, to gravity fed, low pressure, or, with noisy pumps. Showers are meant to be, peaceful events, not headache inducing, low pressure water -experiences.

Most people don’t even know, what they are missing.

12 years its in, with zero issues, allthough , i did get a new tank with the Heat Pump install, in April.

Brushless electric showers have come a long way in recent years. We had our 6 year old replaced and the new one you can barely hear.

We got a pump in about 16 years ago, to drive the water, to a shower in a newly converted attic, the noise was close to unbearable. You can do a few things to dull the noise, but not eliminate it. Later, we got in a mains water pressure system, (we are lucky, to have good mains pressure), it drives the water to all outlets, with no pumps, no noise and without using any electricity. Now, since April, we have the heat pump, and apart from PV, or solar tubes, neither of which, we have, there is hardly a more cost efficient method of heating water, on night rates, and combined with great noise free, and excellent shower water pressure, its a vast improvement, in both comfort and ultra low cost.

Definitely the most efficient way of heating water now, heat pump, night rate and even better if it’s on co2 refrigerant.

I had considered installing one a few years back but the costings didn’t work out, that’s with me installing it myself and getting all the materials ex vat.

Fitted a silent 9.5kw electric shower, on a stud wall and you can’t hear or feel it in the bedroom next door.

Shower runs for about 2hrs per week, half of that on nightrate- That’s only €3.50 a week- even less April to Sept when solar is providing half the power. No need for water storage or heating a tank.

€14 a month or €168 a year to run the shower for a family of 4 - I’d never make back a HP operated hot water system and I’d need to have made room for the indoor unit.

It’s gone off topic but there are ways to do it without massive expenditure

Wait till the night rate moves to ending at 8am, I’ll be waking the kids at 7.30am to fire them into the shower 🤣🤣