Charge your car pre-dawn, between 02:00 and 06:00. A full charge costs roughly €3.25 off-peak versus €10.50 at peak — that's over €7 saved every time you fill the battery.
Your EV is by far the biggest movable load in your home. Getting the timing right is the single largest saving the PVPC tariff can hand you.
Why pre-dawn
PVPC — Spain's regulated tariff — follows a fairly stable daily pattern almost all year:
- Pre-dawn (02:00 – 06:00) — demand is at its lowest and wind generation is usually strong. Cheapest window most days of the year.
- Midday (13:00 – 16:00) — solar generation peaks. In spring and summer this can be as cheap as the pre-dawn window.
The hour to avoid? Evening (19:00 – 22:00) — the worst of the day, when prices can triple the daily minimum. Charging then is just burning money.
The numbers: off-peak vs peak
Take a typical car: a 7.4 kW home charger, a ~50 kWh usable battery, and a daily top-up of ~10 kWh. Using the PVPC anchors (off-peak ~€0.065/kWh, peak ~€0.210/kWh):
| Scenario | Off-peak (02:00–06:00) | Peak (19:00–22:00) | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily top-up (10 kWh) | €0.65 | €2.10 | €1.45/day |
| Full charge (50 kWh) | €3.25 | €10.50 | €7.25/charge |
A full off-peak charge is about 70% cheaper than the same charge at peak. You don't use less energy — you just use it at a different hour.
What that adds up to over a year
A typical driver covers 12,000–15,000 km a year, which works out to roughly 2,000–2,500 kWh of charging. Shifting all of it from peak to off-peak saves around €250–400 a year (an estimate, depending on your mileage).
To put it in perspective: that's like getting a month of fuel free, just for moving the "start charging" button a few hours.
How to schedule the charge
Three ways, from simplest to most complete:
- From the car itself. Almost every EV has a scheduler in its charging menu. Plug in when you get home, but tell it "start at 02:00." The car waits on its own.
- From the wallbox. If you have a wall charger with an app (Wallbox, V2C, Easee…), set the 02:00–06:00 charging window once and it repeats every night.
- With a plug-in timer. If you charge from a normal socket, a €12–15 timer does the job — though for 7.4 kW a proper wallbox is safer.
Set it once and forget it. The price of electricity today is always on the homepage, with the cheapest hour marked green.
Watch the contracted power: your ICP can trip
One important detail. Those 7.4 kW from the charger stack on top of everything else running in the house. Charge pre-dawn with little else on and you'll usually be fine. But if the car charges while the water heater, oven, or A/C are going, you can exceed your contracted power and trip the ICP (your main breaker) — the lights go out for a moment.
Two fixes:
- Check your contracted power. You may want to bump it up a notch — or, if it never trips, confirm you're not overpaying. See our guide on how to lower (or right-size) your contracted power.
- Charge at fewer amps. Most wallboxes and cars let you cap the current (say 16A instead of 32A). You charge slower, but pre-dawn you have hours to spare and nothing trips.
If you have solar panels
With self-consumption (autoconsumo) panels, there's a second good window: midday (13:00–16:00). With the sun filling your panels, charging then can be nearly free using the energy you produce. Without panels, pre-dawn wins.
The short version
Schedule charging for 02:00–06:00, make sure your contracted power can handle 7.4 kW (or dial the amps down), and let the car charge itself every night. That's €250–400 a year that stays in your pocket — without driving a single kilometre less.