Best Electricity Plan for new EV Owners

There is a monthly allowance after which the price increases it isn't a huge jump but just double check your usage to see if you'll come close to exceeding it. The day rate was just too high for me to consider it as I'm only using about 20-30kw per week in the car.

"electric car to be charged every week or so"

This plan has to be worth a look for you:

Home Electric+ Weekender

As you're getting one day free (Sat or Sun) you can discount 1/7 off that rate to give an effective frate of about 30c. That's before you do all your car charging on Sat (or Sunday) for free.

Your solar during the week will further reduce the impact of the 30 c rate.

Have a look anyway. Works great for us (Energypal confirmed).

I got the Kia deal with Energia. Rates below, plus i got a free Zappi charger (well i pay €300, but get that back through the grant).

I thought it was a good deal at the time, but reading above, I am not so sure!

I have a 77KwH car, and it takes me most of the 11pm - 8 am night rate slot to charge from 10% to 80%. Does that sound very slow?

Smart Time of Use Tariff:

Day rate running from 8am-5pm and 7pm-11pm, with a rate of 0.3010.

Peak rate running from 5pm-7pm, with a rate of 0.3154.

Night rate running from 11pm-8am, with a rate of 0.1611.

The Standing Charge will remain the same at €300.91 for the year.

Edit: above rates include VAT.

I've an 80kWh battery, but that is overkill, I have just a standard 12kVA MIC, so max I can draw is 15kW. So I basically buy 3 hours of that every single day, so 45kWh. I would love to go 16kVA, but the ESB want over 2 grand for that, and that is without any work on my side. I want to replace my gas boiler with a heat pump in due course

And yes I have a lot of solar PV too!

LOL yeah I am just using the words the Minister used to describe the conditions under which you get the €400 per person exemption. It specifically states contributing to the bill 😁

Quite the setup, Unkel. Would be a nice story on Nationwide to try shine some (solar) light on what people can do if they could be bothered / afford the initial outlay.

Or a Youtube video……….!!

I thought a 12kva MIC limited you to about 12Kw max draw - not 15?

I don't suppose it matters as clearly they don't care, but unless I'm understanding it wrong the max allowed is 52amps continuous. Your wires must be well hot @ 63a, cause my cables (25mm2) are pretty hot at 52a. I haven't gone above that, but I suppose interesting they don't seem to care if you draw ~ 63a for 3 hours straight

https://www.esbnetworks.ie/new-connections/understanding-connection-capacity

They are not dangerously hot, I suppose the word hot is relative.

Curious though as i read you used to be a spark. . .If you draw 13a continuously (like a granny cable) on domestic plug socket it's not really advised, unless your sure of quality and infrastructure. Does the same apply to mains connection? If you have a 63a fuse is it fine to run it at the limit continuously?

Edit: sorry your not the spark, it was allinthehead I was thinking of.

Sign up to esbn to see if your meter is transmitting data to them. If you can see your usage data everything is working as it should and signing up a smart plan will be easy.

I was in the same position. With Bord Gais on dual fuel and had a smart meter fitted last year and didn't activate it. I signed up to esbnetworks last year to get the data from it so i had some idea of my usage.

When out of contract with BG in September they weren't offering anything decent to me so i moved to a smart plan with Energia. No issues with the switch. Just done it online and got a letter from ESB networks to say the smart meter was now activated. There are plenty of 24 hr single rate plans available on smart meters now if a Time of Use doesn't suit.

To be honest if you don't have an EV or a PHEV there doesn't seem to be a reason to have cheap night electricity as you won't be able to switch enough power usage to night time to make up for the higher day rate.

Obviously people with heat pumps, storage batteries etc are different but for the bog standard household with gas heating and no solar etc you really need an EV to make use of cheap rates.

Thanks. My question was mainly prompted by the people on here that use "Urban EV Units" rate between 2am and 5 am. For my car, that would not be nearly enough to get it from 10% to 80%.

So either they have much smaller car batteries, or they charge it a little bit every night, or (i thought) maybe they are able to charge much faster than me.

My understanding was that the optimal for EV battery life is to let it run fairly low (10-20%) and charge to 80%, so i try to manage that, and charge every second night. But maybe that is incorrect.

posted to wrong forum

Thanks. My daily work commute is closer to 120 Km + other bits and pieces, and I generally get two days from one charge.

A bit off topic, but does the number of charges make any difference to the battery life, i.e., is there any difference between charging from 30%-65% every night Vs 20%-80% every second night (in terms of impact on battery life)?