Best Electricity Plan for new EV Owners

But a smart meter should be by default used as a day/night if u want. Its actually mental that u need to get a day night when u have a smart meter.

Just built a house last year and I requested a day night meter on the connection application. I "assumed" that the meter they would install would be a smart meter and I could just use day/night rate....but no they installed a D/N meter.

I have 6.1kW PV and an EV and would like a smart meter and have requested one now but I don't know when will I get it.

Before people say don't you are crazy!!!...I am with EI and there is no difference between their smart rates and ordinary rates. They might be a bit higher than the rest but my missus works for ESBN so we get a staff discount that even things out.

Just want to use their EV rate and get proper record of what I export for FIT.

Edit, I am almost sure also on the ESBN new connection application there isn't a selection for requesting a smart meter. I would have selected that at the time. Put in new connection application around Q1 2021

Sent Airtricity my cooling off form and signed up to Energia there. I should follow my own advice and just stick to the cheapest at the time of switching as it won't matter when they all go up over the course of a year. This year I paid €641 for 1,828kWh, the previous year was €517 for 2,016kwh. All I can do is switch to keep some sort of discount, the rest is out of my hands! Be interesting to see my usage once I get an EV.

Hang on a sec, the staff discount makes all the difference here!

Their standard "Electricity Nightsaver 30%" is 23.41c day, 11.55c night, €396.89 urban standing charge and urban EAB €1187.

Their equivalent standard smart tariff, 32.2c day, 16.92c night, 34.34c peak, €302.92 urban standing charge and urban EAB €1469.

That's €282 a year more expensive just on EAB - granted, their SST gives you €282 "cashback", but off the bar more expensive for exactly the same power.

However need to bear in mind that EAB's were developed before EV and heatpumps were typical so the difference will be much larger again, for example:

A heatpump might be an additional 4,000-6,000kWh a year.

An EV an additional 2,550kWh a year for an average Irish personal mileage of 17,000KM a year at 15kWh/100KM.

If you could run all that at night rate, you'll pay nearly €500 a year extra for the exact same electricity (8,550 * 0.0537 = €459.14 difference).

But in reality, the heatpump will run during the day as well, and there may be occasions you'll have to charge the car outside of nightrate as well so that figure may be higher again.

Alternatively, their "Home Electric+Night Boost" is 31.6c day, 15.6c night, 9.69c "boost", €396.89 urban standing charge also with €150 "cashback".

Nightsaver gives 11.55c for 9 hours each night, while HE+NB gives 9.69c for just 2 hours. That will barely give 100KM of usable range on most EV's (7.2kW * 2 hours = 14.4kW of charge) and then you're back paying a higher night unit rate for the rest, along with the punitive day rate.

Is there any chance your missus could find out why smart meter plans are so much more expensive than their day/night equivalents? 😉

It's the case across the board for all suppliers, is there some underlying reason why?

Electric Ireland requested one for me but it wasn't scheduled, when I called ESB a few weeks later I was given an appointment for the following week.

Am starting to pay attention more to standing charges,big differences🤔

EI booked a request for me with ESBN, but it took a call to ESBN to get any traction. The official SLA is 4-5 weeks, and I rang up in week 4 (like a mug) and the request was immediately scheduled for 2 days later.

Lesson learned on how ESBN implement demand management.

Confirmed in writing. Document posted earlier in thread.

BG giving me the runaround here about changing from my smart meter to a day night meter. They told me to ring esbn which I did, esbn said that there's no problem changing but the request needs to come from BG. I rang BG back and got the dumbest numpty in the office who says the computer says no, he faffed around for a while and then hung up... God this is heartbreaking, I'll take a break and try again later. Any tips lads?

Ask to speak to a supervisor/manager and just say you know it can be done and to firmly ask for them to do it?

If you're on Twitter I'd say post a public tweet to them saying it can be done but it's being refused, who can help you sort of thing. Usually social media direct messages is a better portal for customer service these days.

I had the exact same problem with BG a few months back.

Made 2 appointments for the change only to learn from ESBN that no appointment had been asked for by BG.

Third time got a very helpful person (in BG) who asked their supervisor to check that they made the appointment correctly, and turned out she hadn't!

She was making an appointment to change it to a 24h meter (which it already was).

ESBN cancel that request as soon as they receive it as they can see it's not an actual change that has been asked for.

So it sounded to me like there was a small box not ticked or changed by the BG people as they were putting in these requests. But they all seemed to be making the same mistake so possibly a training issue?

Anyway, third time got it done within the week.

Government are asleep at the wheel on this. Basically if I switch from just a standard rate to a smart rate i will end up paying more even if I charge my EV during the night window because all other rates and gas price too is way higher.

The gas one is crazy - it's like they are saying "cool, you can charge you car cheap enough but we will ride you in extra gas fees"

Thanks for this. I took the initiative and I rang ESBN on their customer care number and then selected 'New connections'. Met a very nice lady from their Cork office who was able to confirm that my provider had requested the night saver meter.

She then asked if I would like to schedule the change so I did and they will be with me this Wednesday afternoon.

Also, she was able to tell me that my current meter (which is 11 yrs old) has night saver capability so there will be no physical change - I will just get the existing meter re-programmed for day and night set-up.

Very easy and thanks to the contributors here for prompting this..

Mike

Afaik it’s the official code for a day/night meter