Best power company for EV's

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411 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2960266 27-Aug-2022 18:05

Obraik:
BuzzLightyear: In Auckland and moved to Genesis EV plan which they don’t advertise. 11c off peak 9pm - 7am and 22 cents peak. Have installed ducted heat pump and charge the Tesla and power bill is cheaper now than pre EV and heat pump. Very happy overall.

Sounds like Genesis is offering the same deal as Meridian. That's exactly what I was on with Meridian and their EV plan while I was in Auckland.

Meridian was my second pick last year. Because I was already a Genesis customer it was just easier.

everettpsycho

614 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2960309 27-Aug-2022 21:39

We moved over to meridian, we get a good night rate between 9-7 and had evnex boxes installed which are set to only charge in that period.

I did a lot of maths from our old consumption and assumed I could do all our ev charging in the off peak nights and anything we used to use in the free hour on EK would also be deemed night rate. It might not work for everyone but just putting everything on at 9pm works well for us and has really helped keep the bills down. We also out heaters on a timer to come in at 6am to pre warm the house before we get up while it's still cheap.

Overall I'm spending about $3 to run two EVs on a combined total of 150km round trips to work which I'm very happy with when cinoared to our old petrol spend. At 30c/kw in the day it's a bit expensive but keeping most usage to night time has been pretty easy.

rphenix

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#2960679 29-Aug-2022 10:16

I moved from Electric Kiwi to Octopus - only charge on the weekends using the night rate finding it a much better deal than the free hour of power we had with EK our bill is certainly lower than before.

For those of you with Solar their buy back rate is higher than the night rate making it an interesting proposition to export during the day and get paid more than you consume to charge the EV at night - I'm considering getting solar to do this myself.

tripper1000

1617 posts

Uber Geek

#2960772 29-Aug-2022 13:55

Don't feel obligated or rushed to change power company in preparation. If I take my "petrol" money and put in on my power bill, I get "free" power plus change so I'm not loosing sleep over saving an additional $10.

How do I get free power?

My EV costs $4 per 100 km (others will be similar). I travel ~1000km per month. Charging my EV increased my power bill by $40. I no longer spend $250 a month on petrol (would be $300 at current prices). I didn't change power company and I'm saving $210-$260 per month on transport fuel which consistently exceeds my power bill.

martyyn

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#2960794 29-Aug-2022 15:39

We moved from Powershop to Octopus last month having just bought an i3. We decided to use the 10A plug in the garage to see how we went before committing to something capable of charging more quickly.

We do 50/60km a day so it's charged overnight maybe once or twice a week to top it up and then plugged in whenever we are at home over the weekend (when we might do 200km) to use the Octopus off peak rates to charge it fully by Monday morning.

This month we're looking at a $400 bill (with Octopus and the EV) whereas last month with Powershop was $440 without the EV.

everettpsycho

614 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2960911 29-Aug-2022 19:28

tripper1000:
Don't feel obligated or rushed to change power company in preparation. If I take my "petrol" money and put in on my power bill, I get "free" power plus change so I'm not loosing sleep over saving an additional $10.

How do I get free power?

My EV costs $4 per 100 km (others will be similar). I travel ~1000km per month. Charging my EV increased my power bill by $40. I no longer spend $250 a month on petrol (would be $300 at current prices). I didn't change power company and I'm saving $210-$260 per month on transport fuel which consistently exceeds my power bill.

Each tk their own but for some that will be a significant saving. Those saying they can get away with weekly charging when power is free at the weekend or in the 3 hour window that's bringing their usage down to almost nothing. $40 is $40 and it's not generally a hardship to plug the car in with a timer. I pay half of what you do just for moving to a power company which took minutes of effort 9 months ago. I still plug the car in as I would need to do anyway and it starts itself at 9pm, it's zero effort after the sign up for free money. We do also run things like washing and dishwasher at night but again it's set them as if you were turning them on and just hit the delay button to make sure they start after 9pm. Somehow we ran two leafs at 150km a day and our entire power bill was only $350 which would have been less than the cost if the petrol for me driving our old ICE to work.

tripper1000

1617 posts

Uber Geek

#2961219 30-Aug-2022 16:13

I appreciate that squeezing as much as you can out of (or is that into?) your free hours of power is a fun game for many people.

Yup, $40 is a big deal to some people, but those people have more important things to do with their money than splurge on environmental luxuries like EV's that depreciate $10 to $20 per day, so don't pretend!

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jarledb

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#2961237 30-Aug-2022 17:05

tripper1000:

splurge on environmental luxuries like EV's that depreciate $10 to $20 per day

You have to include more than the depreciation to have the full overview of cost/benefit if you are just looking at the hard numbers. And you would have to include that for a comparable ICE car as well.

And even more importantly, you have calculate how much driving an ICE the milage you drive would cost vs an electric car.

I have seen many examples of people that are actually saving a good chunk of money by having an EV vs driving an ICE car.

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nzkiwiman

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#2961784 1-Sep-2022 09:10

When I looked into EV plans or just generally changing providers after getting my EV last year, I quickly found that we seemed to be on pretty good any time rates and any attempt to change would result in higher daytime rates that would increase the cost because someone is home all day.

So in the end I stayed on the existing plan with the existing supplier

Dingbatt

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#2968406 15-Sep-2022 09:23

Obraik:

BuzzLightyear: In Auckland and moved to Genesis EV plan which they don’t advertise. 11c off peak 9pm - 7am and 22 cents peak. Have installed ducted heat pump and charge the Tesla and power bill is cheaper now than pre EV and heat pump. Very happy overall.

Sounds like Genesis is offering the same deal as Meridian. That's exactly what I was on with Meridian and their EV plan while I was in Auckland.

I looked at this plan as we are Genesis customers. We have quite high usage during the ‘peak’ day period, particularly from the the ducted aircon in the height of summer and hot water usage by shift workers in the house.

22c/11c and a higher daily charge didn’t provide much cost benefit over 19c flat rate (and lower daily charge) without a major effort to ‘phase shift’ our energy use. I don’t do a huge mileage in the M3 so energy consumption charging isn’t that big. I have it set up to start charging at 9pm to see if it would fit in the 2100-0700 window. Mostly it does.

And so finally to the reason for this post

I read this morning in the NZHerald that Genesis are now offering an add-on to their EV plan called EVerywhere. For customers on the plan, they can link their Chargenet account to their Genesis EV plan and (as long as you have a zero Chargenet balance) you will have the Chargenet charge added to your Genesis bill. The best bit being that

the amount you pay will be based on your home rate rather than the standard Chargenet tariff.

So if I read it correctly, instead of being billed 25+25c at a standard Chargenet fast charger, you will be billed 11c/kWh. It seems like a good deal. What I am wondering though is, because it says “billed at your home rate”, does that mean if you fast charge (at Chargenet) between 0700 and 2100, will you be charged 22c or 11c /kWh? Either way it will be cheaper when you are on a roadie.

So I’m going to crunch the numbers as this may tip me to change to the Genesis EV plan.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

mkissin

388 posts

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#2968428 15-Sep-2022 10:12

Dingbatt:

the amount you pay will be based on your home rate rather than the standard Chargenet tariff.

So if I read it correctly, instead of being billed 25+25c at a standard Chargenet fast charger, you will be billed 11c/kWh. It seems like a good deal. What I am wondering though is, because it says “billed at your home rate”, does that mean if you fast charge (at Chargenet) between 0700 and 2100, will you be charged 22c or 11c /kWh? Either way it will be cheaper when you are on a roadie.

So I’m going to crunch the numbers as this may tip me to change to the Genesis EV plan.

I'm on a low user plan with Genesis, so if it uses the day rate during the day (which would make sense, I guess) then it would actually be more expensive for me this way :/ (I pay 30c during the day, 15c at night on the low user rates).

larknz

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#2968432 15-Sep-2022 10:27

Low user plans are currently being phased out

Dingbatt

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#2968435 15-Sep-2022 10:35

mkissin:

Dingbatt:

the amount you pay will be based on your home rate rather than the standard Chargenet tariff.

So if I read it correctly, instead of being billed 25+25c at a standard Chargenet fast charger, you will be billed 11c/kWh. It seems like a good deal. What I am wondering though is, because it says “billed at your home rate”, does that mean if you fast charge (at Chargenet) between 0700 and 2100, will you be charged 22c or 11c /kWh? Either way it will be cheaper when you are on a roadie.

So I’m going to crunch the numbers as this may tip me to change to the Genesis EV plan.

I'm on a low user plan with Genesis, so if it uses the day rate during the day (which would make sense, I guess) then it would actually be more expensive for me this way :/ (I pay 30c during the day, 15c at night on the low user rates).

One of the prerequisites is that you have to be on the Genesis EV plan.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

mkissin

388 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#2968566 15-Sep-2022 12:07

Dingbatt:

One of the prerequisites is that you have to be on the Genesis EV plan.

And indeed I am...the low user version.

mkissin

388 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#2968568 15-Sep-2022 12:10

larknz:

Low user plans are currently being phased out

They are, but I recently re-signed my plan for a year, so I'll be on it for a while. I've never used a public charger so it doesn't matter much anyway.

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