Family saved £850 on electricity bills last year with simple EV charging tip

One Surrey-based family saved over £850 on electricity bills in 2022 by charging their electric vehicle (EV) during the night to take advantage of lower off-peak rates. The whole charging process was managed automatically by their Andersen EV charger, which has built-in smart functionality to track when off-peak tariffs start and end, activating charging at the cheapest times.

Leonora, a mother of one, explains: “We can’t control the increases in electricity prices, but we can limit their impact. The Andersen unit helps us charge the car the same way we charge our phones – at home, overnight. It helps us save money and avoid joining the queues for expensive public charge points.”

The average annual mileage for a UK family is now 7,400 miles a year* – a figure that has declined considerably since the pandemic due to the shift to home working, online meetings and environmentally conscious travel. With this kind of mileage, using Leonora’s as an example, lower-cost charging at home would allow the average EV driver to save around £850 a year.

“It took a while to get away from the mindset that we always need a full battery before pulling off the driveway,” adds Leonora. “After all, you don’t always have a full tank of fuel, do you? With the Andersen charger, we can tell it to only charge during the very low tariff off-peak hours overnight – that’s the difference between paying 3p or 15p per mile. We’ve recently worked out that over the two years we’ve owned this car, the ability to ‘smart charge’ has saved us around £1,700.”

Even at today’s historically high electricity prices, driving an electrified vehicle is cheaper per mile than a petrol or diesel equivalent. Electricity prices vary almost as widely as the number of vehicles available but, in Leonora’s case, even charging at peak times would cost only 15 pence per mile – significantly lower than the 21** pence it would cost to drive a mile in the average petrol car.

“We rarely use more than 80% of the battery capacity in one day, and if we do go on a long journey as a family, it’s inevitably to a destination with a charger we can use on arrival. In fact, we have only ever had to stop to use a high-speed motorway charge point once in two years!” she concludes.

The Andersen charge point comes with a suite of features that facilitate smart scheduling and energy management. It can also be integrated with solar panels to reduce the cost of charging even further by reducing the reliance on electricity from the grid.

The Andersen A2 unit was the first to feature a hidden cable and plug, and comes with a choice of customisable front panel and body colour combinations to blend discreetly with the exterior of any home. It is compatible with all electric and plug-in vehicles and is the recommended installer for a number of luxury EV marques.