Best Electricity Plan for new EV Owners

I got Pv installed, and have a space all ready, for multiple batteries, but have been told to wait for battery prices to drop, before ordering.

We have a heat pump, so bigger batteries may be feasible, if battery price is right. A 15kw battery should supply all household daytime needs, for most of the year. All our EV charging is at night, as is, all water heating, dishwasher, dryer & washing machine.

Assume i get batteries, and even if export drops to 17c (currently 24c) an export rate drop, is inevitable, as overall rates drop, i can still make 10 c by charging the battery on a night boost smart meter, at 7 cent, and export everything.

Some decisions like this are often tipped by the funds just sitting in a bank account, doing very little. You could also look at it as a bit of a hobby, looking always to maximise your benefit and lower your costs.

Ya, what i meant by waiting for battery prices to fall, was a month or two.

Impressed with PV generation(10 back, + 8 front) so far, only started generating on Feb 1st, and its averaging 8kWh, daily, in whats been, awful weather in the last 3 weeks. I can see this will easily double, in the coming months.

Using EVs as night and solar storage to be used during peak time, maximising differential and flattening the usage curve, would be a potential market for development.

You would need to be on one of the low night rate plans that gives a few hours at 5 / 6 /7 cent.

Why is Bord Gais one of the worst? Maybe I'm reading it wrong but their EV plan seems pretty reasonable according to https://www.energypal.ie/.

I agree that Bord Gais is the best option -- certainly for my usage profile on a smart plan with an EV but no PV solar panels or battery.

I uploaded my 12 months usage to https://www.energypal.ie/ and BGE came out as the cheapest. It is a close run thing with Energia but they were slightly more expensive.

Yuno was almost the most expensive!!

Is there a limit on the Saturday Usage ? Could I set the tour to charge from after midnight into Saturday morning and then after 10hrs plug in the other car- could be 20 hour sustained draw..

It's free from 9to5 and limited to 100Kw per month.

Electric Ireland also have a similar weekender tariff, called “Home Electric+ Weekender”

which i understand is unlimited, however, the unit rates outside of the free period are extortionately high at 37.16 cent inc vat, (from March 1st)

These so called - free time tarriffs are very restrictive for the majority of people, and in almost all cases for EV owners, they don’t give overall good value.

That's why I'm surprised the BG plan appeared top of my list I could charge the car 2 Saturdays a month I'm using about 40kw a week and the rest of the time charge it at 22c per kWh. Am I reading the results correctly in that if I don't change any house habits I'll save 348 per year from what I'm paying now? I'm on the Flogas 30c 24hr plan with 301 standing charge.

They're bang on with the prices from the suppliers, you can easily verify the meter readings yourself by cycling through the usage windows on the meter itself, they're exactly right in my case. There's a good video on the ESB site about reading your smart meter that's what I used.

I think the issue with plugging your HDF file or current details into energyPal or these online calculator is they won't take into account the changes you would make if you switched to an EV rate

eg I would obviously now charge in that 3/4 hr window but my current usage may have it changing all night ours (for night rate)

Or similar with other appliances or heat pump etc you could force within that window.