Answer
Hive Power+ is an intelligent scheduling feature in the Hive app. Just plug in, tell us when you need your EV "ready by" in the app, and Power+ will schedule your charging accordingly.
Using the Hive intelligent energy platform, we identify when electricity on the grid is cheaper and greener, and use these times to charge your EV when in Power+ mode. By using this feature, you can enjoy a 25% discount on your home EV charging applied as a bill credit straight back to your British Gas Energy bill. You can keep track of these credits in your Hive Wallet after each charging session. After each month of credits earned, they will be summarised and applied to your energy account during the following month. All Power+ credits will show as ‘Power+ EV Credit’ on your electricity bill.
Most customers are billed monthly, are billed quarterly, so they’ll see up to three Power+ credits on each bill, depending on whether they used Power+ to charge each month.
Setting Up and Using the 'Ready By' Feature
Getting Started:
- Set a 'Ready By' Time: During the onboarding/setup journey or at any time via the schedule menu, you can set a 'Ready By' time for Power+. This lets us know when you need your car to be charged and ready to use.
- Default Setting: When you plug in your car and Power+ is enabled, the default 'Ready By' time is set to 08:00. You can adjust this time to suit your needs.
Charging Process:
- Energy Forecast: Once the 'Ready By' time is set, we forecast the amount of energy (in kWh) needed to fully charge your car.
- Optimised Charging Plan: We create an optimised charging plan to ensure your car is charged to the forecasted amount by the 'Ready By' time.
- Continued Charging: If your car is not fully charged by the ‘Ready By’ time, we will continue charging until the session is ended by you. This does not apply to Time of Use customers, where we will only charge within off-peak hours.
Time of Use (TOU) Tariffs:
- Charging Boundaries: With a ToU tariff (e.g. the British Gas EV tariff), we will only charge your EV during the tariff off-peak period (typically 12am until 5am). This is to make sure you only pay the lowest cost for your EV charging when in Power+ mode.
Eligibility
To qualify for Hive Power+, you must:
- Have an eligible Power+ device, see here for more information.
- Have a British Gas credit electricity account.
- Have a communicating smart meter in credit mode
- Agree to British Gas collecting half-hourly readings from the smart meter (this can be done via your British Gas online account)
For full Power+ terms and conditions, please see here.