Ecotricity UK - change of pricing!

[Tipper]

Just received an email from Ecotricity saying they've reacted to the feedback and lack of use and have changed their charging tariff.

Instead of £6 for 30 minutes whatever your EV it will now be £3 to connect then 17p/kWh up to 45 minutes charge time. Ecotricity residential customers don't pay the £3 connection fee.

So about £4.36 - say 29p/mile for a non-customer charge and £1.36 - say 9p for a customer to charge.

Petrol is about 113p/litre at the moment so about 12-15p/mile

 

[user 816]

Just received an email from Ecotricity saying they've reacted to the feedback and lack of use and have changed their charging tariff.

Instead of £6 for 30 minutes whatever your EV it will now be £3 to connect then 17p/kWh up to 45 minutes charge time. Ecotricity residential customers don't pay the £3 connection fee.

So about £4.36 - say 29p/mile for a non-customer charge and £1.36 - say 9p for a customer to charge.

Petrol is about 113p/litre at the moment so about 12-15p/mile

huh! did they keep the one charge a week limit for Ecotricity customers too?

Why don't they just sell the lot to Polar to add to theirs, they charge 9p a kwh (+monthly fee), Ecotricity clearly are not bothered about it as they left it to rot for ages.

 

[Muddywheels]

I bought a cable when I got my PHEV last September and charge whenever possible provided it is cheaper than petrol - I have covered 8000 miles so far but never used Ecotricity and even with the reduction can't see it's worth doing - I have yet to see anyone using their charge points :?

Hilarious - they blamed Outlander PHEV owners for the rise and must be losing a fortune since :roll:

 

[maby]

I bought a cable when I got my PHEV last September and charge whenever possible provided it is cheaper than petrol - I have covered 8000 miles so far but never used Ecotricity and even with the reduction can't see it's worth doing - I have yet to see anyone using their charge points :?

Hilarious - they blamed Outlander PHEV owners for the rise and must be losing a fortune since :roll:

Hmmm, I suspect that the less they are used, the less they lose.

 

[Muddywheels]

I pay 10p/kw at home (about £1 for a full charge) - presumably they pay less and charged £6 for 80% so I can't see how they could lose - surely the cost of installation is the biggest expense and if they're not being used..........

Then again they probably got Gov't grants to set up the network and have already made lots of money by inflating the cost of installation :roll:

 

[maby]

I pay 10p/kw at home (about £1 for a full charge) - presumably they pay less and charged £6 for 80% so I can't see how they could lose - surely the cost of installation is the biggest expense and if they're not being used..........

Then again they probably got Gov't grants to set up the network and have already made lots of money by inflating the cost of installation :roll:

They may have received some government grants to help set it up - I don't know about that. I do know that I was working for a major outsourcing company at the time that the London charging network was being put out to tender and we did some rough calculations in order to decide whether or not to bid. We reckoned that we would have had to charge over £6 per session to make any profit - and that assumed that the level of usage didn't drop from the levels that TfL were seeing while it was free. They will be getting the power cheaper than you or I, of course, but by no means free. Reliability seems to be a problem - when we looked at the London network, a high proportion of the charging points seemed to be broken at any point in time. Hence, I am only speaking half in jest when I suggest that they lose less if the network is used less - at £6 per session, they would probably be making a moderate profit provided that the level of usage remained the same as it was when it was free. At much less than £6 per session, the cost of keeping it all working could easily exceed the income.

 

[user 816]

Then again they probably got Gov't grants to set up the network :roll:

Even worse! according to the stickers on most of the the EU gave them grants, so we indeed did pay for them
(as a vast net contributor) and then they tried to fleece us and boost company profits to use them, fortunately failed!

This is why I think the government has every right to take them over and assign them to an operator that actually gives a damn!

 

[geoffshep69]

Not a big deal for me as I only ever used Ecotricity once before they introduced charging, but I still don't understand their strategy.

Our local IKEA has two points, and previously they were pretty much always occupied, but since the introduction of charging I haven't seen one car use them.

Now, I fully accept that they can't give electricity away for free and stay in business, but having spent vast sums installing their network surely they can come up with a pricing model which at least gives them some return ? Forget the installation costs, they are sunk, and charge something which gives them a small return over and above whatever wholesale cost they incur for the electricity.

I reckon PHEV users who want to use these points would be prepared to pay a reasonable sum for the electricity, provided its still cheaper than petrol. As it stands, the cost is still prohibitive for us to want to use their points.

Surely a reasonable price, which generates some small profit, is better than an unrealistic price which generates nothing ?

I do know that they also have to cater for the complication of pure EV cars and potentially a different charging model, but can't be that hard to work something out surely ?

 

[Lance]

Just picking up on the ikea point - ikea will refund the cost against your purchases so this effectively remain free to use.

I'm more than happy to pay to charge, so long as the cost is less than or equal to the cost of petrol. In my head with man maths, that means the a full charge should cost no more than approx £2.75 and a rapid to 80% around £2.20.

Using my Polar plus card, I recently charged at the Reading park and ride empty to 80% all for 65p - bargin!

 

[maby]

It's extremely difficult to come up with a price structure that is both attractive to PHEV owners and makes enough profit to make it worthwhile for a commercial company to operate it. I put the following together in Excel as an experiment - it completely ignores the cost of maintenance or administration - just takes into account the wholesale price of electricity. If they set up a pricing structure that makes electricity comparable to petrol for a PHEV owner, they might make £11,000 profit per annum per ChaDeMo installation. Include a realistic figure for maintenance and the cost of administering the system and it simply is not a commercial proposition.



Electricity price 4.5 p/kwh
Fixed price 200 pence petrol price 118 p/litre 531 pence per gallon
sell at 12 p/kwh
fuel consumption 40 mpg
profit 7.5 p/kwh
petrol price per mile 13.275
number of sessions per day 12

PHEV draws 7 kwh EV range 24
cost of a charge 284
profit per PHEV 252.5 pence electricity price per mile 11.83333333

profit per day 3030 pence

Profit per annum 11059.5


I have assumed an average of 12 charging sessions per day. Personally, I think that is optimistic averaged out across the network. There will be some that are more heavily used, but many will be less heavily used given the current size of the EV population of the country. Even if you double it to 24 sessions per day, the profit is very low for the investment - and EV owners are not asking for the status quo to be maintained - everyone wants a significant expansion of the charging network.

As I said above, we modelled this some time ago to decide if we wanted to bid to run the London network. We came to the conclusion that it simply didn't make commercial sense and there were too many unknowns such as the probable effect of increased usage charges on the takeup of the service.

P.S. this forum does not display Excel well - sorry.

 

[Muddywheels]

I registered with charge your car as they cover my area and happy to pay £20 pa for access card and 15p/kW - costs me around 70p for chademo and £1.20 for full charge but some were free

They've now introduced £1 connection to free points but I would still pay that

Ecotricity are way off the mark

 

[maby]

I registered with charge your car as they cover my area and happy to pay £20 pa for access card and 15p/kW - costs me around 70p for chademo and £1.20 for full charge but some were free

They've now introduced £1 connection to free points but I would still pay that

Ecotricity are way off the mark

At those prices, they will be lucky to break even - no hope of expanding the network.

 

[Bob]

Remember, Ecotricity generate their own electricity using wind generators/solar and with, as yet, only a small customer base they are probably selling electricity to other suppliers, not buying it, so they are probably making a reasonable profit. I am an Ecotricity customer and charge my car overnight on Economy 7 at about 8.5p per KW/H so their charges won't stop me using their Electric Highway, their flaky phone app might though. As a customer I will still get my free 52/annum charges until my annual contract finishes, about 10 months.