Best EV Electricity Plans Australia 2026: The Solar Owner's Guide

Every guide to EV electricity plans in Australia asks the same question: which retailer has the cheapest overnight rate? Fair question. But it is the wrong starting point for most Australians, because roughly one in three Australian homes now has rooftop solar, and that changes the calculation significantly.

This guide answers both questions. First, if you genuinely need an EV-specific plan, which one wins and where. Second, if you have solar, when is an EV plan actually worth switching to, and when are you better off using what you already have on your roof.

The good news is that the gap between a bad charging situation (plugging in at 7pm on a peak tariff) and a great one has never been wider. The difference in annual charging cost between the worst and best approaches for a typical 15,000 km driver is now over $660 per year. That is worth understanding.

An EV electricity plan is a time-of-use tariff with one key modification: there is a dedicated charging window overnight with a very low rate, typically 4.5c to 8c per kWh, compared to the standard anytime rate of 28c to 35c. The logic is simple. Grid demand is lowest between midnight and 6am, wholesale electricity prices are at their lowest point, and retailers can pass some of that saving on to EV owners willing to charge overnight.

Most plans require three things: proof of EV ownership, a smart meter (so usage can be tracked by time of day), and in some cases a compatible charger or app that allows the retailer to schedule charging automatically. The automatic scheduling is how Origin EV Power Up works. You sign up, link your vehicle, and the system figures out when in the cheap window to start charging to hit your desired charge level by morning.

Outside the cheap window, you pay the plan's standard rate, which may or may not be competitive. This is the part most comparison articles gloss over. A plan with a great off-peak rate but a punishing peak rate can cost you more overall if you use a lot of power in the evening. Always look at the full rate structure, not just the EV window.

Most EV running cost comparisons use an outdated petrol price. The national average unleaded is currently $2.27/L — and that is after the federal government temporarily halved fuel excise from 1 April to ease cost-of-living pressure. Without that cut the national average would be closer to $2.53/L/L. Here is what the cost per 100 km actually looks like across every charging scenario.

The honest answer is: it depends on when your car is home. If you are able to charge during the day, you almost certainly do not need a dedicated EV electricity plan. Your solar panels are already generating power that would otherwise be exported at the current feed-in tariff rate of 3 to 8 cents per kWh in most states. Using that generation to charge your EV instead of exporting it is worth 25 to 30 cents per kWh in avoided import costs. That is four to six times what any dedicated EV plan offers.

The situation is different if your car is not home during solar hours. If you commute and the car sits at work from 8am to 5pm every weekday, you cannot capture daytime solar. In that case, the question becomes: what is the best plan for your overnight charging?

There is also a middle case worth understanding. Some solar owners have a 6.6 kW or larger system that generates more than the household uses during the day, even with the car home. In this case, all the excess gets exported at low rates anyway. A home battery changes the maths significantly by capturing that excess and using it to charge the car at night, which is why the solar plus battery plus EV combination consistently delivers the best overall outcome.

Powershop's EV Day Plan and Red Energy's Red EV Saver both advertise free electricity during a midday window. This sounds compelling. In practice, the value is more limited than it appears.

The Powershop EV Day window is 12pm to 2pm daily. At 7.4 kW charging speed (single-phase home charger), two hours adds 14.8 kWh, roughly 90 km of range. If you drive around 90 km per day and your car is consistently home at lunchtime, that covers your daily needs for free. For most households, that is not the case. Most EV owners do not have the car home every weekday lunchtime.

Red Energy's free window is even more constrained: weekends only, 12pm to 2pm. That covers two sessions per week, adding about 30 kWh of free charging each weekend. For a commuter doing 300 km per week, that covers only about 10% of their weekly needs.

Where these plans genuinely shine is as a complement to an existing solar setup. If your car is home during the day on weekends or you work from home, the free midday window stacks on top of whatever solar charging you are already doing. The key question is whether the standard rates outside the window are competitive. If they are not, you may be better served by a plan with a consistently cheap overnight rate.

If you are already getting good self-consumption from your solar during the day, the Powershop EV Day Plan is essentially redundant for solar hours. It does cover you on cloudy days and in winter when solar production drops, which is worth considering if you live in Melbourne or Hobart.

Switching to an EV plan is usually straightforward, but there are a few things worth confirming before you commit.

Every EV electricity plan discussed above is a grid product. The very best of them gets you down to 4.5c per kWh. Your own solar panels can get you to near zero. The combination of solar, a home battery, and an EV is the configuration where all three assets work together most effectively.

Here is the practical flow: solar charges the battery during the day. The battery then charges the car in the evening or overnight, avoiding any grid draw at all. The car's contribution to the household's self-consumption goes from roughly 30 to 40 percent (solar only) to 70 to 80 percent or higher. At that level, your grid import bill shrinks to the point where the plan rates matter much less.

The economics have also shifted with the federal Cheaper Home Batteries rebate, which now brings the installed cost of a 10 kWh battery down to $7,000 to $11,000 in most states. When the battery also serves to power your EV, the payback period calculation changes significantly compared to a battery used only for household load shifting.

We cover the full analysis in our post on daytime solar charging versus off-peak night rates. The short version: if you drive regularly and you have solar but no battery, adding a battery delivers more annual savings than switching EV plans by a significant margin.

If you do not have solar and you charge at night, get on a dedicated EV plan. OVO Energy at 4.5c/kWh is the best nationally available rate right now, with Powershop Night close behind. There is no reason to be paying standard off-peak rates for EV charging when EV-specific plans exist in every major state.

If you have solar and your car is home during the day, you are likely already ahead of any grid plan. Use a smart charger to automate solar diversion and stop thinking about it. The free midday plans from Powershop and Red Energy are worth looking at as a backup for cloudy days or winter, provided the standard rates outside the window are competitive.

If you have solar, are away from home most weekdays, and do not have a battery: this is the highest-value problem to solve. Either get on a good overnight EV plan and accept the grid dependency, or price up a battery to close the loop. The solar calculator can help you model the battery payback for your specific generation and usage profile.

The plans covered here are current as of April 2026 and are all variable-rate products, meaning the rates can change. Check directly with the retailer before switching, and verify that your total bill, not just the EV window rate, is actually lower than what you are paying now.