EV charger

Drobbo1980

Active member
After some advice as I am a complete novice when it comes to EVs.

I am getting one through work on salary sacrifice and wondering what EV chargers people have or what would you recommend. Does is depend on who your energy supplier is.

Looking at getting on long term finance but can't see any.

TIA
 
If you're with octopus you want one compatible with their api

If you're not with octopus you probably should be so you can be on tracker, or agile

ohme pro is a good shout. You can often add them to the salary sacrifice package and it works out about the same as buying it over the term


if you want info about tariffs etc drop me a pm
 
Depends on your commute but because we don't go far on a daily basis, we've got away with the standard Tesla 3-pin charger and saved the installation cost. It does 8-10 miles per hour. That being said, we went to France last weekend and used the B&B's 'Wallbox'(that was the brand name), and it put nearly 240 miles in under three hours!
 
Depends on your commute but because we don't go far on a daily basis, we've got away with the standard Tesla 3-pin charger and saved the installation cost. It does 8-10 miles per hour. That being said, we went to France last weekend and used the B&B's 'Wallbox'(that was the brand name), and it put nearly 240 miles in under three hours!
I wouldnt recommend using a 3pin charger long term. We did that and it overloaded the household sockets and burnt out the socket which had the tumble dryer on.
I used a local company recently called https://get-charging.co.uk/ and they were first class. Had the tethered version of this charger installed and its working great1000006744.jpg
 
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Check your work scheme… some incorporate a charger and fitting into the plan for a couple of quid extra a month

Ours was about £10 difference

We have a pod point 7kw which is the standard… not had any issues with it and simple to use
 
Have a look at OVO energy, 7p per the anytime tarriff. Not limited to hours overnight, schedule a charge night or day for how ever long at that price. I have an indra pro charger, easy to use.
 
Cheers for all your messages.

Having a look at the boxes and I like the look of the easee one , it looks very sleek and nice looking.

The pod point looks a bit big. I cant get one through my work scheme which is a shame

I've have a look an indra .

Thanks again
 
Cheers for all your messages.

Having a look at the boxes and I like the look of the easee one , it looks very sleek and nice looking.

The pod point looks a bit big. I cant get one through my work scheme which is a shame

I've have a look an indra .

Thanks again
Pod point seem to work fine but the design is a bit dated and bulky. I would recommend a tethered design as its so much more convenient.
 
I have a podpoint. It's ugly but does the job. My main recommendation would be for whichever brand you choose to get the tethered version. So much less hassle to always have it available than having to mess about getting cables out, unravelling them etc, especially on a rainy day.
 
I have an ohme pro. It has a lot of features for smart charging but to be honest I just use it as "dumb" charger and plug it in when I need to. It has been fine so far even if the cable and its hanger is a bit cumbersome.

I would also recommend tethered.
 
I’m on EON Next drive Tarriff. 9.5p from midnight to 07:00am.
I have a Wallbox pulsar plus. Very small and neat. The app works perfectly and is very simple to set a charge schedule. Make sure you buy a charger that has both WiFi and Bluetooth as back up. If WiFi fails your car won’t charge.
Join a forum for your specific car.
 
I’m on EON Next drive Tarriff. 9.5p from midnight to 07:00am.
I have a Wallbox pulsar plus. Very small and neat. The app works perfectly and is very simple to set a charge schedule. Make sure you buy a charger that has both WiFi and Bluetooth as back up. If WiFi fails your car won’t charge.
Join a forum for your specific car.
Really good points there. Appreciate your message
 
another option is octopus agile, it's not specifically an EV tariff and anyone can access it but it's beneficial if you have an EV


the main tariff people use on here is Tracker

This gives you a daily unit rate for electricity (and gas) which has strictly been below the price cap significantly

Last 30 days the average unit rate for elec was 16.91p and gas 3.96p in the north east region

It's good for average cheap electricity and gas, well below the cap and with no load shifting needed (this is moving your usage of high elec usage to cheap times)


The other suggestion is agile

Energy for the day is priced into half hourly slots - essentially it's cheapest midnight to about 7am, fairly cheap during the day, expensive 4-7pm then cheaper again

The 4-7pm sounds dangerous as unit rates can be quite high then but it's so cheap the rest of the time ther it balances out.

Quite common for unit rates like 2-3p in the cheap times and there are even negative unit rate slots - they pay you a few p per unit. Octopus has an api so with a compatible charger it will automatically pick the cheapest unit rates to get you to your target charge percentage

When I compare tracker, which is already cheaper to most, to agile, agile comes up a couple of pounds less, with no shifting.

If you add an ev into that mix, so cheap charging is available overnight and you could do a few things like shift dishwasher or washing machine loads to then, then you'll save even more.

With all of these tariffs though you need some understanding of your usage curve and likelihood of ability to load shift.

If you can't avoid putting all your appliances on in peak time, the more expensive energy will offset the cheaper ev energy e.g agile 4-7 or eon next 7am-midnight (unit rate is 8p k. Eon next 7-midnight but then outside of that it's 30.6p, so it's great for charging your EV but if you don't have battery or solar or both, all your usage from 7am to midnight is at a cost significantly higher than the price cap so you'd always want to be load shifting if possible)

Other thing to consider is where your gas is at as you'd probably want to go dual
Supplier at the very least, which isn't faff for apps etc

No agile equivalent of gas so just tracker, unit rate on tracked averaged below 4p, with current price cap it's 6p, eon next quoted me 6.3p

This doesn't sound significant difference bur remember you use thousands of units - our last 12 months we've used 9300 kWh so at price cap that's £558 with price cap, £585 with eon and £362 with octopus. We are low users - average household uses 11,500kWh on gas so an even bigger difference in price -£690 price cap, £724 eon, £448 octopus.

No exit fees with agile or next but next is fixed for 1 year, after which you renew at the new price

This is significant because price caps are forecast to fall and you'd think the eon next unit rate for off peak is going to be tied in some way to that - they put the price up in jan when the price went up on the cap slightly - the q3 forecasts are saying 5p gas and 20p elec rates, again doesn't sound a lot but remember 11,500kWh units on gas and 2700kwh units in elec for average household.

So a lot of info there but key points in summary:

1) consider when you'll use your electricity, both in and out of cheap windows for any tariff, and ability / desire to load shift

2) consider what is forecast to happen with energy prices and how your chosen tariff will react to that

3) make sure charger is compatible with specific tariffs / api

4) don't forget to consider gas as it's a considesble part of your bill
 
Here's a couple of days on agile showing how the unit rate flexes

I'd honestly only bother with the ev changing times rather than checking each day for the cheapest slot to put the dishwasher on, but I'd def put the dishwasher on overnight knowing it'll be the cheapest rates

This shows a few slots with negative pricing or stupidly cheap pricing (the green)





IMG_1144.png



Then this one shows some other slots but the key chart is the unit rate distribution graph at the top which shows all of February's slots and what bucket they fell into

IMG_1145.png
 
I've just used a blue 32A Industrial socket in the last house and this house too, and the last two EV's both came with adapters for commando sockets. They look like this:

1709370417069.png

The socket is basically about £30, rather than paying £500 for a wall charger, and you get 7kW, the same as a wall charger. The cost to wire it in should be slightly cheaper too but there won't be much in that aspect.

Don't bother with 3 pin plugs, they're only ~2kW and generally not built for daily use etc, they're more for emergencies.

However, if I was going to get one now, and I knew I wouldn't be moving house I would want a wall box one compatible with Octopus, to make the most out of cheaper charging. Some cars can take over this aspect automatically but getting info on this would not be easy.

On any car you can have timing profiles so you charge at like 2am - 6am etc, but some are better than others, the ones which give you more control are better. The Merc one was really good, the Porsche one is decent, but the one we have on our Evoque hybrid is dog ****.
 
I'd honestly only bother with the ev changing times rather than checking each day for the cheapest slot to put the dishwasher on, but I'd def put the dishwasher on overnight knowing it'll be the cheapest rates
That's what I largely do, unless there's an alert on where they're paying you to take out the juice, usually when it's pretty windy but not too windy or stormy. When those are on I fill and run everything :LOL: Dishwasher always goes on at night as can't stand to listen to it, but it's only like 1kW use per load on eco, so not much to worry about, but it all adds up.

In summer, afternoons are usually really good for charging from midday to 4pm because of the solar being fed into the grid. In winter anything after midnight is normally sound, with 2am-4am probably the best, so that's good if you're only doing ~40 miles per day (2hrs x 7kw = 14kw, and 3 miles per kW is about 40 miles).
 
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