Energy Tariffs

Most homes and businesses are connected to the national grid and have an energy tariff from their energy supplier. These are the entities that bill you every month, such as British Gas, EDF, Octopus Energy, and others. When we install a battery, it is almost always advantageous to charge these batteries from the grid during cheaper times and then use the stored energy throughout the day when prices are higher.

This difference in price is known as the price swing. It’s similar to buying stocks when they are cheap and selling them when they are expensive, except here you are reducing your energy bill every month, sometimes quite substantially. Every week, people email us about the significant savings they have achieved by shifting most or all of their consumption to off-peak, cheaper energy times. The table below shows some available rates that you may consider.

Most of these rates are considered 'smart' tariffs and require a smart meter in your property. This is free and easy to obtain through your energy provider if you do not already have one. There is hardly any reason not to upgrade and many reasons why you should.

Whether you have an older Economy 7 meter (with two separate readings) or a newer smart meter, you can always have an Economy 7 tariff. However, remember that if you want one of the smart tariffs, you will need a smart meter.

Other sources for cheep overnight rates: Well, its not great, I hoped there would be a super government resource for all this info, please get in touch if you find anything.

Money Saving Expert has a longer list, but it is a little out of date (as of 16 June 2024): Money Saving Expert Economy 7 Tariffs.

Confused.com has a search tool for economy 7 rates but its completley wrong. Here is my email to them:

https://energy.confused.com/results site is broken in two fundamental ways.

1. If you select economy 7 and put a day usage in of less than 100 kWh the results have no tarrif info.

2. When you put in a day usage of over 100kWh the tarrif info is available, but the results are not ranked in the order of cheapest at the top because the estimated costs are completely wrong, if I use 11000 for night and 100 for day, over the year, the price should be about £78, but your quoting £235, I dont think your working out the night rates.

We shall see if they respond and ill update this page.