Charging at night is cheaper

Electricity is cheapest when fewer people use it and demand is lower. This is typically late in the evening and at night, during off-peak hours between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Electricity prices rise again in the morning when people wake up, shower and make coffee. This goes for the hours in the afternoon and evening too – when people come home from work, make dinner and start doing the laundry. 

What about safety – is it safe to charge my car at night? 

As long as you’re using an EV charger with a dedicated circuit and not a regular household socket, the answer is yes. Contrary to a socket, an EV charger can handle a much higher load over a longer period of time. Charging with a socket can lead to overheating, or in a worst-case scenario – a fire. 

Charge with low power over a longer period 

In 2022, a new grid rent model was introduced in Norway. The new model has a lower fixed proportion of the fee with a higher part of the charge linked to total consumption, meaning homes that use more power will pay higher grid rent, while those that consume less will have lower bills. 

 

In simpler words, the new model makes it expensive to use a lot of electricity at once, e.g. if the hot water tank is on at the same time as the electric car, the underfloor heating, and the stove. It’s therefore cost-effective to charge with low power over a longer period of time (for example, with Amina 1), to avoid those high peaks of simultaneous consumption. 

 

The current advice (and recommendation from electricity providers) is to charge as slowly as possible late in the evening and overnight. Electricity prices are almost always lower at night, and by spreading your electricity consumption over several hours, your grid rent charge will be lower. 

Won’t charging slowly at night affect the range? 

No, most people will wake up with more than enough electricity in their car battery even if they start charging right before going to bed. In fact, you have a much lower charging requirement than you think. 

 

An example: If you charge your car at 7,4 kWh, the car will charge the battery with 37 km per hour*, which is well above the 31 kilometers an average Norwegian drives per day. If you charge for a whole night (8 hours), you’ll have a range of 296 km in the morning. In comparison, it takes 26 hours of charging to reach the same range with a regular household socket.