How much does it cost to charge an EV at home?

The Energy Saving Trust suggests that charging a pure electric vehicle costs between 2p and 4p a mile, you will make the biggest savings by taking advantage of  an off-peak overnight electricity tariff.

The actual cost you will pay overall will depend on :

• what you’re paying for electricity
• if you have ‘time-of-day’ tariffs
• when you charge,  the amount of daytime v overnight charging, and
• if you have a solar PV system, on how much can be used to charge your EV.

Off-peak and ‘time-of-day’ charging

Currently, you will save most by charging your EV as much as possible when tariffs are at their lowest most likely overnight, these include Economy 7 and ‘smart’ Time of Use (TOU) tariffs and we advise switching to one of these if you can.

Some ‘smart’ Time of Use tariffs offer the lowest prices when demand is least, prices can be as low as 5p per kWh in the middle of the night (‘super off-peak’).

EV tariff bundles

There are some attractive EV tariff bundles available,  linking discounts with EV Charger installation or membership of a public charger network.  Citizens Advice have recently analysed a number of these and found that regular tariffs are often cheaper although the discounts offered in some EV tariff bundles could offset this, so we strongly advise you work out the savings before signing up.