[nw83]

I've only just bought an EV (Tesla Model 3 LR) and only just switched to Intelligent go having been with Octopus for several years... so it feels a bit of a kick in the pants that no sooner do I swap, than they introduce a 6hr cap on EV charging.

Thats fine if you don't use your car much... I DO!

Tonight for instance I got home with 15% and need 100% by 6:30am. Around 8hrs of charging.

I've just looked at Next Drive Smart.
8p per kw between midnight and 6am
26.62p per kw other peak times (which is 20% less than Octopus peak rate)

My main questions are

• is there any cap on fair EV usage outside of the midnight - 6am window? Monday / Tuesday I can usually charge in 6hrs, Wednesday / Thursday I need 7-8 hrs.
• if I sign up and get the 12 months price guarantee.. does that mean no charging cap can be introduced within that 12 months?
• how likely is it I'd get these additional cheap slots if I plug in around 7-9pm? OK octopus are bringing in the cap, but for the short time I've had my EV i'f I plug in at 8pm, more often than not it starts charging within 60 mins.

Thanks in advance.

If relevant the overall usage is around 9000kwh PA (1800khw peak, 7200 EV usage)
Gas is around 14000kw

[geoffers]

@nw83 - with EOn drive smart you will get allocated additional charging slots outside of the core midnight to 6am period if Eon can buy cheaper electricity per ½ hour to make this possible.

So "yes" you can get more than the basic 6hrs as I think their aim is to get your EV charged to your required %age by your departure time, but there may not be a guarantee that this will be the case every day

Also be aware that there have recently been a number of cases where EOn is unable to gain access to meters on change of supplier, caused (at the DCC level) by problems with migration of meters due to recent changes for the MHHS process eg. see this thread https://community.eonnext.com/thread...d-any-readings

[Indyk_EONNext]

Hey @nw83

Welcome to our Eon Next Community, congrats on the Tesla how's it working for you? A great car isn't it, my brother brought one last month and it's quite a smooth drive. 😊

I hope @geoffers reply above found you well, how did you get on with choosing your EV Tariff?

We had our lovely member @MikeJM share his first impressions, solutions and any problems via this post 👉 Next Drive Smart – First impressions, so if you have a minute why not take a look and see how it works from another customers views.

[MikeJM]

@nw83 You only get 6 hours at the off-peak EV rate, unless it allocates slots at off-peak rates during the on-peak period. This occurs surprising often. Most of them are in the middle of the day, but it's not uncommon to get 11:30 to midnight slots as well. I do notice that there is often a delay in starting to charge during these random half hour slots so you don't get the full half hour. I assume that's due to cellular connection delays. However, I would have thought that if your Model 3 is set to a time of departure % charge it should override and charge early enough to achieve that. I've never had to prove that on my Model S though - interesting question! What I do notice is that, since I don't use my Tesla every day the car only uses the phantom drain on the battery of about 3% per day, so it sometimes doesn't drop enough to trigger a charge at all. This must be due to the Tesla software over-riding the E.On app. If it's within about 3% of set charge level it needs to be prompted to start charging, eg by upping the set charge % or Boost and neither the Tesla software or the E.On app seem to do that automatically. If it is still sitting say 3% below set level at the end of the off-peak period it doesn't try to charge until the next night.

Just tried an experiment - Battery 67%, set charge level 72% at 18:45, so not charging, waiting to charge for departure time of 6.00am. Dropped set charge power to 5 amps and on the E.On app set charge limit to 95%, so it would need more than 24 hours to charge at that rate. After a minute the Model S started to charge. So the car over-rode the E.On app. Not wanting to use a lot of on-peak electricity I then reverted the charge power rate back to 32amp and dropped the set % back down. After a little delay the car stoped charging. So it looks like if the car knows it needs more than 6 hours to reach the set % by departure time it will start to charge early in order to meet that, over-riding the E.On app.

So if you need 7-8hours charge it looks like you'll get that regardless of the E.On app, you'll just pay at the on-peak rate outside the 6 hour period. Also, my Tesla Powerwall is set to charge during the 6 hour off-peak slot and charges when it feels like it during that period, so I think the car will do much the same if the E.On app slots don't meet your Time of departure requirement.

Let us know if it does work like that.

[nw83]

Thanks Mike.

That sounds slightly odd behaviour (compared to Octopus at least) unless you set those charge parameters in the Tesla app rather than in the eon app?

With Octopus if you set the requested charge level and time of departure in the octopus app then it will manage it all and make sure the car is at the requested charge by the time you ask for it ... which at the moment include more than the 6hrs if required.

I dont use the Tesla app to set charge schedules, departure times or requested charge % at all.. I do it all in octopus.

[nw83]

Well I've just signed up with the Eon Next Smart Drive... lets see how it goes.<br><br>First thing I'll need to do is adjust my direct debit as they have estimated half of my projected 9000kw will be peak so have set my monthly at £227... when id say about 90% will actually be off peak so I'm estimating around £130 monthly!<br>

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by nw83

...First thing I'll need to do is adjust my direct debit as they have estimated half of my projected 9000kw will be peak so have set my monthly at £227... when id say about 90% will actually be off peak so I'm estimating around £130 monthly!...

Unless you really want to pay the same fixed DD amount all year round, it may be worth doing what a number of us have done and ask to be put on a variable DD so you only pay for what you actually use every month (and the payment normally is taken 2wks after the bill, so you get a couple of weeks credit too : Result 👍)

[nw83]

I don't mind over paying a bit in the summer to build a buffer for the winter when we use more heat... but at the moment it wont let me reduce the DD down to £130-150 range. I'll try to speak to them tomorrow.

[meldrewreborn]

@nw83

in these circumstances moving to variable direct debit is the way forward as suggested by @geoffers. If you have any recent half hourly consumption detail to support your assessment, that might be beneficial, but I suspect that would be difficult. Suppliers are supposed to use the best available information in setting Direct Debits but Eon Next tend to rely on industry data which often exaggerates consumption levels.