How does it affect the cost of recharging your electric car at home?

As of today, February 1, 2023, the regulated electricity rate has increased by 15%. What does this mean for charging your electric car? We did the calculations.

You shouldn’t have missed it, but a little reminder is always welcome: this Wednesday, February 1, regulated electricity rates will increase by 15%. It is no longer a price increase that will go unnoticed as it affects 20 million French households as well as several hundred thousand businesses.

What increase for electricity?

After the 15% rise in the price of gas in January, it is the turn of electricity in February. The increase will also be 15%, as foreseen by the government as part of the energy tariff shield. This 15% increase seems high, but it is well below the actual increase for electricity. Without the energy shield, it would have been necessary to have an increase of 35 to 100% in electricity rates.

The increase is valid for the three main offers, the basic one, the one that operates with a system of peak hours (HP) and off-peak hours (HC), and finally the offer Tempo marketed by EDF. Obviously, we are talking about regulated rates, it is important to refer to the characteristics of your current electricity contract.

For information, based on your annual electricity consumption and the power of your meter, it is necessary to consume between 35 to 50% of electricity in off-peak hours to make HC/HP offerings profitable. We explain how to choose the most interesting offer according to your environment.

Prices before the increase

Prices after February 1 increase

temporary rates

The rates with the Tempo option depend on the color of the days, blue, white or red. Certainly, it is absolutely necessary to avoid charging your vehicle on red days in HP (0.6712 euros per kWh). On these days, please remember to charge off-peak hours, otherwise the option Tempo lose all interest. Indeed, electricity is cheaper than with the regulated rate most days of the year, but for 22 days the rate is exorbitant.

What price increase for recharging a vehicle at home?

As a reminder, charging for an electric car is calculated based on the price per kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity. Of course, the consumption of an electric car is different depending on the models, your driving style, the weather conditions, the route you are going to take… There are many variables to take into account. Therefore, we will take an average of 15 kWh per 100 kilometers in our calculations.

For example, for a Tesla Model 3 (Propulsion, 60 kWh in LFP), the cost of charging from 10 to 80% (which is recommended to optimize charging time and cost), that is, 42 kW to recover. Note that this calculation is the same whether you have a dedicated charging station or simply plug your car into a household outlet.

The above table includes all the calculated figures, the last column compares the price increase per 100 km traveled with an average consumption of 15 kWh. Obviously, these figures correspond to home charging, which is the most widely used charging method.

Increases also for public top-ups

The price increases also affect private and public terminals, although it was assumed that the energy shield had been extended to the latter. Prices are going up everywhere. While some companies have lowered their prices in recent weeks, due to a slight drop in the cost of electricity, they are still too high for most.

Unsurprisingly, Tesla increased the prices of its Superchargers at the end of January 2023, and this is the case for many networks, including west charge as you can see below.

So expect an increase in the prices of the public terminals, as well as the private terminals of the big networks (Allego, Ionity, Fastned, Tesla, etc.). It is interesting to see if the top-up cards are interesting.

One service is trying to simplify this whole EV charging jungle: Chargeprice. Based on the information provided by the community in addition to the charging operators, Chargeprice lists the rates applied by the different electric mobility actors in each terminal where it is possible to pay with their services.

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