Best Electricity Plan for new EV Owners

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)?

There are different battery chemistries used by car manufacturers, both of which have their own advantages and disadvantages. My BYD utilizes Blade / Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) while another example, say the Audi Etron or a Hyundai Kona use Lith-Ion. Audi recommend that their battery is charged to MAX 80% when used primarily for shorter trips (probably the vast majority of users fall into this category) and increase to 100% when travelling long distances.

By comparison, the FLP / Blade has no recommendation to avoid 100% charging, irrespective of your general usage pattern.

Personally, I typically, keep my battery charged on the higher side (usually in the region of 80-90%) and would allow it to run down to circa 10% every few weeks. I would occasionally charge to 100% also, with no methodical focus whatsoever.

In your case, I would wager that you are fine with your charging profiles, but I would be charging to MAX 100% occasionally, where the situation allows.

How my charging behaviour affects the battery health, I have absolutely no idea. 8yrs/200,000kms warranty on battery & drivetrain alleviates any concerns that might otherwise exist.

I came across this a while back, so unclear if it is up to date:

Huge differences up to almost 10 cent per unit, between suppliers, particularly important for bigger exporters/larger pv setups, but reductions are inevitably going to come, as consumption unit rates gradually decrease.

https://switcher.ie/gas-electricity/feed-in-tariffs/

Incorrect. If you upgrade from 12kVA to 16kVA, the fuse in the consumer unit will be upgraded from 63A to 80A and the fuse in your ESB meter box will be upgraded from 80A to 100A

I hadn't heard from the retention team so I called to ensure that the credit on my account was refunded to me

Asked if I was interested in staying but would only put me on a smart plan

I'm D/N currently

Told him no thanks

Quoting percentage discounts is somewhat meaningless without mentioning final unit rates. The implication is a bigger discount is better, when that may not be the case at all.

MC02 24c/12c day/night with no contrived 'windows' seems to be a fair example for market value right now.

No, your ESB fuse will be 80A if you have a 16kva connection. Page 19

https://www.esbnetworks.ie/docs/default-source/publications/national-code-of-practice76cf7c6b-4890-4c39-87fc-a2d6692ef2d3.pdf

I renewed with Energia on a D/N MCC02 a couple of weeks ago with the 38% offer.

What rate is that on night and day rate please with the 38% reduction. Thanks

Thanks. That's what I'm paying with Flogas up to March 2025. That's a very good rate especially for 9 hours overnight.

This is correct, I have a 16kVA connection, the ESBN fuse is 100A and the consumer trip is 80A