Saving Money | What You NEED To Consider When Changing Tariff 

Don't forget you always get the low 7.5p price for any usage between 11.30pm and 5.30am regardless of whether you are charging or not. So if you can set your dishwasher to start at 11.30pm, you can still make use of the lower rate for that.

Don't forget whatever time octopus charge your car you get cheap from 11.30 to 05.30 so set dishwasher for 11.30pm my electric bill is the same or less than it was with free driving.

You still have your fixed cheap period every night, it’s just you sometimes get extra cheap slots. We have our dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer, how water cylinder and house batteries charge every night. Any extra slots are just a bonus.

Useful video. Like the glass of wine 🍷 in the background. You deserve it!

As others have said you can do your washing and dishwashing at off peak rates using Intelligent Go. You don't have to plug in your car all the time. I charge about once or twice a week and that's the only time that I plug in.

The Intelligent Octopus tariff is exactly the right one for yourself. The “charging schedule” Octopus determines will always charge your car from its lowest state to the highest state you define in the app EVEN if it requires more than the 6hr charging window (23:30 - 05:30). My previous iPace with its big battery and poor “economy” is a case in point. It regularly required a charge well before the 23:30 window and/or later than 05:30. HOWEVER you always get the 23:30 - 05:30 low rate for the “house”. My heat pump, battery storage, any white goods etc can still take advantage of the allocated intelligent schedule AND the 23:30-05:30 window. It’s a no brainer if you ask me. That was until Jaguar Land Rover stopped Octopus and the like from accessing the cars controls. About a month ago I had an email from Octopus saying “they were changing my tariff because Jaguar Land Rover made some changes to their software which prevents third party charging apps (including ours) from communicating with their cars” but that’s another video I guess.

Definitely consider a home battery - you can virtually eliminate peak usage entirely. Worth running the numbers for your consumption levels.

We are a low use household with an ev which is also relatively low use. We also still do not have a smart meter and our house is a victorian terrace with no offstreet access. We have a 16 amp mekennes socket on the front of the house and a 10 metre charge lead with a delay timer built in*. We charge what little we need overnight on economy 7 at 16 amps. This is more than sufficient for our needs. * The local authority allows cross-pavement charging with a proper cable cover directly across the pavement.

We've recently changed our tumble dryer to a condensing heat pump type a bit more expensive but massive difference to usage we now very offten run it during the day on home battery power no problem

No matter when Octopus chooses to charge your car (day or night) you still get your off peak electricity between 23:30 - 05:30. I set the timers on my dryer, dishwasher and washing machine to also start their programs from 23:30, using the delay, so we load everything during the day turn them on at around 19:30 and delay start for 4 hours.

Well done Dave. You emphasis that arrangements depend on the consumers requirement. You illustrated that you can assess and change and this flexibility is important. Some people and families operate under constraints - washing machine in use X times a day! Also older people especially with 'conditions' may need to keep a liveable temperature throughout the day. Be aware of the consequences of passing complete control to the supplier. Realise when shortage arises they will switch off supply insequence - car charging will have low priority. Many are unaware of the exceptional advance in appliance efficiency. A next generation of batteries is needed not to give large vehicles super range but to give smaller vehicles a substantial range.-200 miles? minimum. IMO this is one of your best videos. Aspiration meets reality. Really good work.

You can turn smart charging off. Select devices then icon top right. It takes you to account settings. Select devices, intelligent octopus go. At the bottom of the page you can toggle smart charging off/on. You can then plug car in & start charging straight away.

Great video

Intelligent Octopus Go is a very good choice and I moved to that tariff 2 months ago. I have a Kia Niro EV, solar PV & 10kWh of house battery storage. Best thing about this tariff is: I get 15p/kWh for export. I get guaranteed 6 hours of import (11.30pm to 5.30am) at cheap off-peak rate at 7.5p/kWh I let Octopus control my "Zappi" charger to charge my car 2 or 3 times a week (80 to 120 kWh total) at the 7.5p rate. I charge my house batteries every night so that they are at 100% by the end of the off-peak period (total of 10kWh capacity). My house batteries provide my peak period electricity requirement (about 6kWh/day so even on a cloudy day I rarely have to buy electricity at the peak rate of 30.25p/kWh). On sunny days my solar PV can generate up to 22 kWh of energy per day and most of this is exported at 15p per kWh. With this tariff and my house batteries, my import is 99% at the off-peak rate.

Cheers Dave

As i live alone and have solar panels and a Tesla Powerwall and a Zappi charger ive just stayed on the standard rate with Octopus, i think it would cost me more to go on one of the other tariffs as i dont need the battery or the car charged everyday. i use my washing machine only about every 2 weeks and as i dont do many miles as im retired i can use what little sun we have with some from the grid . i can see from my Tesla app when the washing machine is on and set on eco it draws 2kw for about 10 minutes then basically nothing . Good video . Thanks Dave . Edit, i get about £500 a yr in FIT payments.

Hi Dave, If you check the octopus AP once you have plugged your car in it usually shows you the charging schedule.

Nice overview. We were on Octopus Go but switched to Octopus Intelligent Go several months ago. We have an air-source heat pump to heat the house, solar and 2 Tesla Powerwalls which allows us to shift over 90% of our energy use to the 7.5p per kWh night rate.

We are on Octopus Go, not intelligent Go unfortunately as don't qualify but still manage to charge 2 EVs in the 4 cheap hours between 00:30 and 04:30. We also load shift our washer dryer and dishwasher to this time period so the vast majority of our energy use is in them 4 hours. Our average price per kWh is roughly 16p.

Dave I have Octopus and ohme charger I set the time 11.30pm -5.30 am via charger app no problem, I prefer to use it that way.

Hi Dave, very interesting about your prices. With effect from from 01/04/24 NIE (Northern Ireland Electricity) reducing charges to Day rate 34.46p/kWh Econ7 16.49p/kWh (01.00 to 08.00 hrs) with standing charge 13.68p/ day. Thankfully I am retired and my Ioniq 5 does very low mileage. Much prefer your rates. I enjoy your videos.

Great to do washing at night if you are in a detached house. Had a person who did the washing at 12 and drying later on but no thought for the attached neighbour who was woken up by vibrating washing machine and droning dryer two or three times a week. House is on a hillside and has wooden floors, location of washing machine under the bedroom by about 6 foot. So be considerate mine was not.

I also have solar and a battery andWFH. Therefore agile for me is just perfect with a fixed export rate of 15p. Last weekend ignoring standing charge actually made cash on 90kwh of usage

I opted for Octopus Agile. It averages a better price/kwh and until very recently the standing charge was cheaper than intelligent. Intelligent was alright but sometimes was a bit buggy and didn’t charge the car. I now have 2 EV’s with one being my company car that will run roughly 55-60k miles/year so agile make more sense to me than Intelligent for sure.

I am on the same Octopus tariff, regardless of when the car is being charged you will still get the cheap rate between 11:30 pm and 5.30 am

Also we a high usage houshold with a permanant style hot tub. Thats got a 3 kh heater. So weset the heating for that to come on in the 11.30-5.30am window with the dishwasher and tumble dryer. Thats 15kwh overnight without charging the car. Next to nothing in comarision in the day until we get home and use the tub. Thats the time to plug the car in and often inteligent decide to charge car early then tub useage is then at 7.5p too along side cooking tea. Most ive managed is 13 continuous hrs at 7.5p.

Afternoon mate

With intelligent you can get 10 hours charging and you always know when, it is very clearly seen in the devices tab in the Octopus app after you plug in, as others say you always get 11:30pm to 5:30am at 7.5p whether the car is plugged in or not.

Thanks, Dave Interesting analysis. But, at around 19 and a half minutes you discuss your final week's bill from EDF and give the impression that this averaged 10p per kWh. Those figures lead to the much higher average figure 18.5p per kWh, so I must assume you meant that the 10p was for the year to that point. I am with Octopus as well but content with the Octopus Go tariff, for the moment. It's only four hours a night of cheap charging at 9p, but that is enough for an average EV user. Last year my 7000ish miles cost me only £250 as I only had to use public chargers 3 times.

Just a thought, Dave. You say that you dry washing by putting in a heated spare room. Have you thought about a dehumidifier? These are inexpensive and very effective, in my experience.

Interesting Dave. Of course many ICE drivers would see all this as being too much trouble.... I often wonder how many of these EV doubters actually pay the electricity bill in their house? Many don't even seem to know or understand about off-peak rates. It is good to see more competitive supplier deals appearing again though...

You need a givenergy home battery which octopus can charge at the same time as the car charges.

I’m on the same tariff as you Dave. If I need an especially large charge for my EV, Octopus will charge outside standard low cost times, still at 7.5p. My mileage at 7000 miles per annum is much lower than yours. Demographically I’m in a higher age group and my combined monthly energy cost on dd is £205 - which seems to be accruing a significant surplus at the end of winter.

Dave, Octopus will DD on an "actually used" basis every month. Takes all the hassle out of calculating whether you are over paying or under paying.

I can't use the Octopus scheme , my chargers are not on their data base. I have recently changed tarriff, with a 50% saving in overall costs. Well worth the effort. My off peak to daytime tarriff ratio is approx four to one, even on just 5 hours a night. It just takes intelligent use of time switches.

I charge with Octopus and I get about 8 hour low price at the moment from when I plug in to when I want the car. We are down about £80 per month from our last supplier.

It tells you in the app when the cheap rate is. You look at the app and then use your dishwasher, washing machine at the times the app tells you. It’s also always cheap from 1130 to 0530 regardless of your car being plugged in, so just run your machine then.

I'm on IO Go and sometimes need the full charge and it's always given me it outside of standard 6 hours. Don't wait for V2G add a home battery now my peak rate usage is never more than 1%.

Plug my Kona in at 4pm with battery with 2% remaining. Yes you read right. Let my ohme charger do it's thing with 100% ready for 9am today. Charged fully 64kw all at 7.5p. been the same since aug last year when I changed tariff to intelligent. I'm averaging 11p kWh over all electric use.

Im going to try and switch to Intelligent today (already on Go). Will be doing it via charger not car though.

Everyone’s use case is different,IO suits me,6 hours off peak can put 140 miles in the car,I also charge the house battery off peak, and also load shift. Overall unit charge less than 9p/Kwh,I have solar as well.

Hi , I'm with Octopus Intelligent and the phone app tells me exactly the charging schedule as soon as I plug the car in, often the schedule is during day time.

I’ve not bothered with a smart meter as most of the electricity we use is during the day. As we’ve now got two EV’s, we end up charging regularly during the day. It’s cheap enough as it is, so happy to have the flexibility of just charging when it suits me.

I am with Octopus Go and didn't want to choose the "intelligent".... I was considering getting a battery pack, to top up overnight. Then run by battery during the day.

Dave on intelligent octopus they send to your phone what time your car will charge so you can set your appliances to run then. So you will always get the cheap rate over night plus additional hours during the day usually in the morning. I set mine for 100% by 11am. just so I can use it for the house. Make sure you have notifications on so you know when the cheap rate is. but most important the cheap rate is still overnight

Hi Dave, our washing machine went kaput two weeks ago, just out of interest, which washing machine did you choose?

With Octopus Intelligent you can switch off their ability to control when you car charges through the app. This will not affect the tariff. I have had to do this as when they interrogate my Kia, it can drop my 12v battery down to a level that stops my car getting into ready mode.

Same situation here, we're staying with EDF though : going onto EDF Essentials 1Yr Apr25 - at 22p kwh economy 7 (but its 24 x 7 )

We had a nightmare with Octopus & couldn't afford to be with them as the DD was beyond affordable, They kept saying "we seem to be using a lot of energy" er no we're not. There's only my wife & myself who are retired & we use energy sparingly. The only things running during the day time are a desktop PC & the TV as a monitor plus the weekly wash. The monthly DD was just short of £400/month & the meter readings they had for our property were nowhere near the actual smart meter readings. It's not like I can alter the readings, of which I've kept a monthly record on paper & picture for years & I've sent them copies. We've been in this old house for 40 years & never had trouble like this, We've never been in debt to any energy companies. We only charge the car (MG ZS EV) twice a month from around 40%to 80%. My wife changed supplier to Rebel Energy without asking if they did an EV tariff which they don't, but our monthly DD bill fell to less than half of Octopus energy's price.

You always get 23:30 to 05:30 as cheap hours regardless plus any bonus slots. As far as I know I’ve never even heard of anyone not getting all the charge they want by morning. So if you need 80kwh Octopus somehow manages to figure it out.

Home assistant cn be your friend if you want to schedule things to run when the car is charging/cheaper rate providing the things you want to run can be controlled via it.

Hire bad octopus intelligent for quite some time I'll always allow the washing machine. A dishwasher and tumble dry to come on between the hours of 1130 and 530 as IM. All electric in a flat is when my storage Heaters come on and also my Hot water

Hi Dave. The price figures you quote (while not meaningless) are vague unless you specify what those values include. So ... is VAT included, any discounts (typically discounts for direct debit, online billing), etc. I'm assuming the price excludes any daily standing charge (you pay that anyway whether you but 10kw or 50kw). Please state what is included/excluded when quoting prices. Thank you.

With Intelligent Octopus Go, how can you check that Octopus are charging you at 7.5p when the car is being charged outside the off peak period?

Octopus terms state they need to control charging once a month. Charging outside the off-peak is a bonus, not a standard. Leave it plugged during the day and they'll bonus charge as required on price. However, you can still use fixed period, just let them take control twice a month (to be sure). There is elephants in the room with EV Tariffs- 1) 12 month contracts and 2) open ended no fixed contract such as Octopus Go. Over the next few years, the UK is losing significant Base generation - Nuclear from 14GWh to 5.3 to soon be 3.6. Hinckley C delayed until 2031 and Coal generation finished from September while at the same time demand is growing. Why do you think Rishi announced more Gas Generation is needed to avoid Blackouts? Yes - the penny is dropping, why are many being paid not to use electricity at peak? The issue being, more Gas generation, especially overnight Baseline then Wholesale gets expensive and if Winter '25 is a low Wind output, cold Winter with high demand then EV Tariffs not fixed will be ramped in price with real risks of rolling Blackouts. Running short of Baseline overnight energy and inevitably means burning more Gas and what they're not telling us, prices will remain high or increase. We fixed with EDF at 35p/15.7p with 7 hours overnight Economy 7. OK, its twice the price as EV Tariffs but with guaranteed pricing until '27. All 3yr Tariffs were withdrawn again from February, we signed 4 days before they vanished which is telling. War in the Middle East is brewing, Gas price increases certain. Although we've paid 16p overnight over Winter, we have 31kwh batteries and 7 hours to charge them and the car. 12,000 miles would be £475 per year, however, 6kw of Solar is now providing 100% of the house and 75%of the car from the roof until September. So, although £475's worth - actual annual cost factoring in free Solar is £220 per yr. Seriously- be careful of not being in fixed Tariffs the next few years, shortages, spikes and possible conflict will slam prices through the roof and again EV Tariffs will be withdrawn. We're losing 80% of our Nuclear and that will affect overnight Wholesale. As an example- before we got the EV. Russia was building on Ukrainian borders and we fixed at 4p Gas and 18.9p Electricity for 3yrs Sept '21. People laughed until the day it was forecast to be 54p per kwh (EPG Capped it to 34p). It's too unstable right now to be in an open ended non fixed tariff and even at £475 per 12000 miles, I'd live with it for 3yr guaranteed. This energy crisis is by far from over, compounded by a joke of a government failing to take energy security domestically seriously and global events affecting Gas prices that silli fishi Rishi is signing us up to burn more of. Search government documents on 2025 if you don't believe me.

I was on Intelligent go for 12 months its good but its not as simple as if you own an EV you must use it. I've recently swapped to Agile and will monitor costs for a year if Agile is more expensive I will swap back to Intelligent. My first weekend of Agile was during an admittedly rare plunge weekend where they pay people to use electricity, I got 50 miles of better than free driving.

Exported to Octi when we had solar in Oct 2022. Had to see out a fixed deal with BG till they screwed up a £1k refund from my account. Ombudsman in my favour. I switched to Octi for leccy early at no penalty 🎉. Could never fill the batteries with 4 hours of old tariff. Electric car tariff is a game changer. Full battery every night. Dishie on timer delay. Dryer on a timer. Plug the car in at 7 and if they decide they charge it then. Only delayed twice since I have had it.

The washing machine comment is a mixed bag. Most detergents now focus on low temperature performance, 30 or even 20 degrees. Given that incoming water is typically 10 to 15 degrees, raising that temperature by 5 or 10 degrees isn't even that much. On the other hand, if someone is doing 60 degree washes all the time then that's s different matter. My dishwasher uses between 0.4 to 1 kWh typically. What was significant was changing the American fridge freezer. The old one consumed about 4kWh per day, the new one is just less than 2. People should do their sums though as ultra efficienty appliances aren't cheap but buying cheap has a long term running cost.

The go electric single rate is 14p a unit so you save 5 p off peak and pay 6p more at peak times per kWh it’s a fine balance to optimise this tariff without a household battery or major lifestyle changes. Most EV drivers under 5 to 8000 miles would be better off on the go electric tariff. The average uk home uses 2700kWh of electricity 11,500 kWh of gas. The average EV to cover 10,000 miles consumes 2500kWh. (Source British Gas).

The Octopus App will tell you the hours. If you unplug your car at 11 am for example and plug it back in a minute later I find that I often get cheap electricity in the afternoon on weekdays

We just use a Granny charger and charge our EV between 12pm and 7am at cheap rate on the Eon EV tariff. The 70 ish miles a night that adds is plenty for our needs. If we got another EV, we’d probably get a faster charger but it’s fine for now. Peak rate has gone up by 2p, but like Dave we put other appliances on overnight as well as charge the car and have found it’s virtually halved our electric bill. Anyone who can home charge should get a decent off-peak tariff - It’s saving us a ton of money.

Of course you know when you are getting a plan with Octopus. Plug it in and you will get a plan, shown in the app. I'm charging now at 7.5p from 12 midday to 4 pm. That's 16 hours of cheap electric for the car and the whole house. And I will get about the same tomorrow, more than enough to charge the car. I use my car to get the cheap rate for the rest of the house.

I have real problems with your calculations at 19:50. X unit at peak and Y unit at offpeak then your answer taking into account the ratio loading gives you an average per kWh less than the offpeak rate which is not possible?

my Average rate with Octopus Agiles all included (variable & fixed) this month is around 15 p/kWh.

Why not invest in solar PV, a home battery and heat pump? We run our house and EV mostly off-grid and our savings are thousands of pounds a year. For example, our EV costs less than 1p per mile (

I'm on ovo charge anytime. 7p anytime of day or night

(1) do you mean changing tariff or what you wrote?. (2) IO is very limited. Most vehicles are excluded.

Seems like you have not got your first bill with Octupus yet, so just pointing out that with them you don't have to calculate your average unit rate, they do it for you and put it on the bill. Also, I don't fully understand your problem with washing machine and dishwasher? Most if not all units can be set for delayed start and that means you can just set it for hours between 23:30 - 5:30 and it will ALWAYS be 7.5p rate, regardless of your car charging or not. Additionally this type of tarif is best combined with hoem battery where you can charge it cheap and use it during the day. My average unit rate mostly hovers around 8p/kWh thanks to that offloading.

If it takes longer than the 6 hours to charge you will still be charged at the 7.5p kWh.

Neither my car or charger are supported buy octopus intelligent, but for me british gas is cheaper than the standard octopus go tariff.

I'm on octopus intelligent go. 6 cheap hours. This gives me 84% charge a night😊

Lots of people are going to be installing heat pumps in the coming years. A heat pump must be on from early in the morning until late at night. The amount of energy used by a heat pump far exceeds currently available battery sizes so using off peak tariffs is pointless. Although you could charge your EV overnight on cheap rate electricity the price penalty for the heat pump using peak time electricity far exceeds any savings made on EV charging. Furthermore, with further adoption of EVs, cheap rate overnight charging will go away. What is more to the point is the exorbitant standard price for domestic electricity. It is around four times that of gas? why? Renewable electricity is cheaper than gas. The most efficient gas fired power stations have an efficiency of over 60%. So each 10kwh of gas produces 6kwh of electricity. I imagine the distribution costs of electricity and gas will be simiala so, without taking into account the generator running costs, electricity should cost less than twice as much as gas. Clearly the generation costs have to be taken into account but doubling the price of electricity appears to be a complete rip off especially as the ever increasing renewable proportion of our electricity is much cheaper than gas.

At 19.30 you say 39p peak and 14p off-peak averages to 10p? This maths seems wrong to me

280 videos in a year, Dave, do you ever sleep? Are you going to tell us about your part time job and your previous career?

Is there an email I can contact. I would prefer not to give my advice publicly.

I am always shocked when I hear average is 8000 miles, why would you pay 50k plus to do that few miles ? For that few miles you need a nice big v8! 😂. I do 30k per year in my Tesla M3 LR

Bloody cheap as chips 👌

Your looking above the camera - like your script reading - very weird

Hi Dave, do you have any home solar or batteries? Interesting video BTW

And don't forget the Electroverse card with Octopus Intelligent Go

That sounds a horrid setup 😕

What's going on with all the anti Tesla rubbish in press, re going bust and day of Tesla / EV over.

Dave, do you have a referral link for Octopus Energy - You get £50 for the referral and I would get £50 off if I changed, which I have been considering anyway?