So I’ve been thinking of ways of cutting our energy bills now that there’s not really any cheap tarrifs.
I’m now paying basically 20p a kWh (19.73p kWh Electric / 3.84p kWh Gas) which I think is pretty average now with EON (Sainsbury’s Energy)
Other than the big five British Gas, EON, EDF, OVO, Scottish Power theres basically only Octopus providing any alternative. All the others look to be on the rocks if they will survive this winter.
The tariffs I can see that provides cheaper electric are the following that offer an Economy 7 style peak and off-peak rates, aimed at EV drivers.
British Gas Electric Drivers (12-5am @ 12.990p, peak 39.183p)
EDF GoElectric
E.ON Next Drive (12-4am @4p)
OVO Drive EV
Scottish Power Electric vehicle
Octopus Energy Go
Does anyone use one of these?
Anyway that got me thinking, wouldn’t it be possible to charge your home up within the off-peak hours, and use the stored energy within the other hours of the day.
It turns out that you can with my limited research so far.
Basically you need to work out how much on average your house uses daily and then buy a battery system of that size.
It comes with a control box to sit after your meter and before your consumer box which basically is set to top up at the off-peak times, and then only take from the grid at peak if its emptied the battery storage.
These appear to be a few thousand to install which sounds a lot but being charged 5p vs 20p is probably only going to take 4 years to pay for itself in how much it’s saving over 48 months.
I can only see the price per kWh going up from here. My only doubts is whether the energy providers will always have the off-peak rates. Maybe in five years time when a lot more EV peeps are using the grid out of hours theres less surplus. Or the energy companies just get greedy and work together to get everyone to pay the same regardless of time of day.
My other thoughts are they tend to have a 10 year life span, so you’ll be winning for 6 years in savings but they potentially need to swap out the battery module (but the control box should be fine)
And the other thing is battery storage is rapidly improving, especially with solid-state lithium and testing out other non-lithium solutions so within the 10 year lifespan becomes outdated tech. There’s a possibility the provider goes bust and you end up struggling for parts.
What’s your thoughts?
Here’s two I’ve been interested in: