Electricity Tariffs

Octopus Go

The Octopus Go tariff is ideal for both electric vehicle drivers and owners of battery storage.

It’s a dual rate tariff, with both a day rate of roughly 14p per kWh (depending on your region) and a cheap, night rate of exactly 5p per kWh. The 5p rate runs for a 4-hour period from 00:30 until 04:30 every night.

Using your electric vehicle’s software, or even the app controlling your charging point, you can programme your vehicle only to charge during that cheap 4-hour slot. In 4 hours, you can put about 100 miles of range into your EV. That should be plenty to cover most people’s daily driving needs.

If you have battery storage, you can also charge it up during those precious 4 hours. The Tesla Powerwall, for example, can store 13.5 kWh (units) of electricity. Charge the Powerwall at 5p per kWh at night and then let that cheap electricity discharge to the home or office during the day when you would normally be importing electricity at 14p per kWh. That would represent a 64% saving over the day rate.

If you are interested in signing up to Octopus Energy Go, you can use our referral code to get £50 off your first bill.

Tesla Energy Plan

The Tesla Energy Plan is a really good option for both (a) Tesla car drivers and (b) home-owners without a Tesla car.

There are two versions of the plan:

Tesla Energy Plan: Tesla car owners

If you do have a Tesla car, you need to meet all of the following criteria to be able to access this electricity tariff:

• Own or lease a Tesla car.
• Have a dedicated EV charging point.
• Have solar PV panels.
• Have a Powerwall battery storage unit (the latest 13.5 kWh ‘Powerwall 2’).

If you are in the lucky position of having the car, the charger, the solar panels and the battery, then you will enjoy:

• A rate of just 8p per kWh for any electricity you import, 24 hours a day.
• The same rate of 8p per kWh for any electricity you export to the grid, 24 hours a day.
• No daily standing charge.

Exported electricity could be from either your solar panels or your Powerwall battery storage. In other words, you are being paid a very generous rate for sending electricity to the grid. Normally, under the Smart Export Guarantee scheme, you would only be paid a maximum of about 5.5p per kWh for exported solar electricity.

The Tesla Energy Plan import rate is also the lowest single rate tariff currently on the market, by far. If you drive a Model 3, Model S, Model X or soon Model Y, this is the tariff for you.

Tesla Energy Plan: for people who don’t own a Tesla car

If you don’t have a Tesla car – in fact you don’t need to have any electric car at all – you can still benefit from the Tesla Energy Plan, but the rates are different.

Eligibility criteria are:

• Have a Powerwall battery storage unit (the latest 13.5 kWh ‘Powerwall 2’).
• Have solar PV panels.

You then get:

• A rate of 11p per kWh for all the electricity you import from the grid, 24 hours a day.
• The same rate of 11p per kWh for electricity you export to the grid, 24 hours a day.
• No daily standing charge.

So, on the one hand, you have to pay more for your imported electricity than Tesla car owners do; but on the other hand, you get paid more than Tesla car owners for electricity you export.

UK Tesla Virtual Power Plant

These tariffs are unique in the market. But there’s more to it than just rates. With the Tesla Energy Plan, you are effectively becoming part of a ‘virtual power plant’. What does that mean?

Basically, all the homes signed up to these tariffs form part of a connected grid. You then share your renewable solar energy to other connected members when you have more solar electricity than you need. If your solar generation is low in relation to your home’s needs, extra stored electricity will be delivered automatically by your Powerwall, and/or electricity will flow in from the grid.

The Tesla Virtual Power Plant concept ensures as much renewable energy is generated, stored and shared as possible, in order both to lower your bills and help the environment.

Octopus Agile

The word ‘unique’ is overused these days, but we can apply it to the Octopus Agile tariff with confidence.

Octopus Agile is basically a commercial ‘half-hourly’ tariff applied to a residential setting. The rate you pay for your electricity as a home-owner varies every 30 minutes. The 48 daily tariffs are tied to the wholesale cost of electricity.

The tariff encourages you to avoid importing electricity between 4pm and 7pm each day. These are the peak hours for energy demand around the country when the grid is under stress.

On Octopus Agile, you pay a very high rate between 4pm and 7pm. It could be 24p per kWh, for example. But outside of those peak hours, the tariffs drop and can go as low as 2p per kWh.

In fact, there are occasions when Octopus will even pay you to use electricity! If the grid has too much renewable energy such as a wind and solar, Agile Octopus will set a negative rate for that half hour period, and you will be paid for consuming energy. Radical stuff.