Best Electricity Plan for new EV Owners

I'm currently with energia on the EV rate, and find the four hour night rate to be perfect for our needs.

Our average kwh price this year is 12c, thanks to a 10kwh battery and panels. All going well my power bill for 2026 including car charging will be close to zero.

Pinergy looks like my next provider owing to a much better feed in rate and night rate.

I drain the battery because I’ve a 15kw/hr system and it’s full again by mid morning

I only do that maybe twice a week and with the fit credit each month,I’ve never paid for electricity in the 2 years I’ve had the panels

I’m currently on electric Irelands night boost rate and during the summer months average anywhere from 40 to 60kw a day or more export easily covering the import on the 2 days I’ll use the night rate charging the EV

I can’t do that when it’s a 15kw/hr system and I’m restricted to 6kw nc6 export ? So my best option would be to get another battery or two

I do agree that I could export the contents of the battery now in the summertime but realistically that’d only gain me about 8 kw x19c or less than 80c a day,

I wouldn’t do it at all in winter because I’d be using all the power for heating

I’m reluctant to move to pinergy when they look for 3 months level pay for new customers

I know they give it back but it could be a thousand euros

I’ll consider it at the end of my electric Ireland contract

I exported nearly 1200 kw last month meaning pinergy would eventually be earning me maybe €60 a month extra April to September

I’m very interested in home assistant btw and how complicated it is to set up,I was coincidentally looking into it this morning if there are any threads here on it

I have 2 inverters and 2 different apps to read both,so something that can pull info from both would be sweet ,let us know

Currently to know my hourly and daily production (as opposed to export) I’ve to look at both and add

I can and do sometimes on clear sunny days top up the car directly from solar during the daytime when the batteries are full and the system is at max export

The system is a prime candidate for an nc7 but I’ve been told I’d spend a grand with no guarantee it would be approved

I’m kind of deciding not to post here anymore because nearly every time I’ve to explain that the system is a big one,built that size for winter resilience ie much of the winter it fills all my needs with no import

Heres my April export

well to be fair if there’s 12kw available and there would be here in daytime solar to export,you could do that on an nc7 and double your example

But no guarantee of getting it approved as I said,and if not the money for the application is down the swanny and that’s a grand

A 2nd EV here would eat up a lot of the surplus for me either

No decision to be made yet on that

I used be paying a grand every 2 months in power bills here

Currently not paying any and building up a surplus for the winter so the system is well more than paying for itself thankfully

Is the level pay the only reason you don't want to move to Pinergy?

You'll earn €300-€400 per month on export for Apr - September in export going by your numbers.

No brainer surely.

Why not break your contract and do it straight away. It's only €50 to break. You'll earn that back in export in less than a week!

As for tax, I'm pretty sure you can add more adults to your bill if there's any of them in your house, thus increasing the tax free threshold.

@Mixupat What's your daily mileage? 3 hrs charging at 7Kw is about 21kwh so 3 or 4 nights in a row would get you from low to high charge. Is it NMC that should only go to 80% unless you're going on a long trip?

I posted this in the renewables thread at end of March, find AI good for working out some ideas.

Currently with Energia, Smart Meter, EV rate 2-6am, 9.43c & then 11.02c above 1000kWh (per 2 months) 40.16c day rate. 3.8kwp solar & 5kWh house battery. 2024 Kia EV9 & 2024 Tesla Model3 RWD out front. Gas rate at 10.13c also (central heating only not water)

Time for a change of supplier I figured, contract was up last month. Let's see what's out there.

Pulled my HDF file from esbnetworks and fired into energypal. It seems that the plan I am on is still the best for my needs. There are a couple of cheaper options but with a 2am to 5am window which is too short for our needs. Actually SSE Airtricity are doing a 6 hour window 11pm to 5am at 12.13c combined with a day rate of 33.76 AND a slightly higher export rate too.

It's a little more expensive but not much and that 6 hr window looks nice becuse i would occasionally have to charge a bit longer, up to 8 hours overnight if we had something on meaning about 30kWh being pulled at that 40.16c rate outside the EV window.

So I dropped my HDF file into Google Gemini for analysis and it proceeds to generate a few graphs for me and describe my usage to a tee. I then gave it the details of my current plan and the SSE option and asked for a comparison, to which it also replied that my current usage still favoured my current plan, although the pricing was pretty close.

So here's what energypal can't quite account for. I told Gemini - you're not taking into account that I will be shifting my heavy usage from that 4 hr window to the 6 hr window - you are basing your calculations on my past usage - not my future usage which i would obviously change - you can't calculate the airtricity number using any of the 5am to 6am usage, because I would not do that!

After making that adjustment, Airtricity came in slightly cheaper, especially taking into account the gas rate of 7.97c. So that, along with the 6 hr window had me sold and I made the switch.

2 days later I'm contacted by Energia retentions team, wondering why I changed and I explained. So they said they could not match the EV plan but could do the following, a 38% discount on rates locked in for 2 years -

26.12 - day
29.33 - peak
14.36 - night (11pm to 8am)

gas 6.98

On the face of it the higher night rate looks like it would be more expensive as I was hitting 1800kWh per billing cycle of EV units. After prompting Gemini again with these figures including rates, standing charges, HDF data and assuming a change of behviour depending on the EV window, the counter offer was actually coming in about 60 quid cheaper for the year (the gas rate having a large influence here), which surprised me.

It will definitely cost more over the summer given that I hardly pull anything from the grid when the sun is shining but over the year it works out that what might seem to be more expensive at first look actually isn't in the bigger picture.

The other thing I was able to ask Gemini was - can you tell from the HDF file how often I pull 7kw+ between midnight and 8am indicating that I have had to charge one of the EV's for 8 hours overnight, outside of the EV rate window of 2 to 6am

so we had 27 nights in 18 months of owning 2 EV's where we went outide the 4 hr window, anything from 1 to 4 hrs extra.

Another prompt: what would the hypothetical cost of that have been assuming the EV overusage price of 11.02c between 2 and 6am and a price of 40.16c outside of that compared to a price of 14.36 from 11pm to 8am

It would have cost €110 less if I was on the 14.36c night rate for those nights that I did extra charging. Sealed the deal for me so cancelled SSE and moved to this plan with Energia after double checking it was a better overall deal than my current one.

locked in for 2 years at those rates is decent i think, given the volatility at the moment 🤷‍♂️

Once a week Model3 charge and twice a week EV9 charge will be a bit more relaxed. up to now it was 5 or 6 nights a week, which was fine but part of the resaon we occasionally had to do an extra charge was just the conflicting needs of running 2 EV's and having an odd clash of needing a charge.

TLDR: - energypal gives a great overview but AI can read your HDF file and if you prompt it correctly can give you some very good insights.

Those Energia rates aren't too bad in the current climate?

I refused a smart meter in 2022 to take advantage of night rate. Is there any issue in requesting one now?

The energia rates are good, and their customer service is excellent.

What rates are you talking about? None are any way close to what I'm paying with Flogas.

And when did you sign up with Flogas,way before the war in Iran I assume - no comparison to be made.

Standard rates only. Your discount may vary week to week, but discounts are generally trending downwards in a hurry.

There are no affinity offers at the moment that I can see - all the providers are buckling up and tightening their belts.

Anyone benefiting from a good Flogas deal is tied to a legacy offer that will expire at some point in 2026 - then the transition to the new world will be a serious shock if you're not generating your own power.

The good news is solar installs have not crept up in price anything like as fast as elecrticity unit rates or fuel at the pumps, so the smart long term move might be to get into solar now rather than procrastinating another year or two.

It's a flogas rate from 12 months ago with an 18 month contract but now have panels since March.