Gridio is thrilled to announce that Spanish electric vehicle drivers can now benefit from automated smart charging based on the popular PVPC tariff!
The Gridio app is free to use and works with major EV brands such as Tesla, Volkswagen, Audi, Kia, Hyundai, Mini, BMW, Cupra etc. Just download the Gridio app here for iOS and here for Android, connect your vehicle and you are ready to smart charge.
Este blog también está disponible en español aquí.
Super cheap hours of electricity in Spain
The surge in renewables and especially solar generation has led to record low electricity market prices in Spain in 2024 - offering huge savings opportunities for electric vehicle drivers that schedule their charging based on the market prices.
The PVPC tariff is one such very popular market-indexed tariff in Spain, regulated by the government. It comprises both the market prices and taxes and distribution fees, giving customers a price that changes almost every hour. The market price in 2024 is 75% driven by hourly electricity prices and 25% by more stable forward electricity prices, which removes some volatility that really hurt Spanish consumers during the energy crisis of 2022.
Other market-indexed prices on the free market are also available where the market price component is 100% based on hourly rates - which for EV drivers with smart charging can be even more attractive.
To illustrate the attractiveness of these tariffs, let’s look at the PVPC hourly prices in the 2nd week of April. Throughout the 7 days, there were a total of 24 hours, when the energy prices were below €0.05/kWh! With an average EV driver needing about 10 hours of charging per week, it would have cost as little as €2.4 to charge up your car for the whole week - if you scheduled it at the right time! As the PVPC prices are published each day at 20:15, scheduling your charging every time can be time-consuming, especially as the cheapest hours are not the same every day.
That’s where Gridio comes in!
The Gridio app automatically schedules your electric vehicle to charge at the cheapest hours available, before your morning departure time.
All you have to do is:
- Download the app. (iOS and Android)
- Pick Spain PVPC as your market and sign up
- Connect your electric vehicle securely via API to Gridio
- Tells us when you need to have your EV charged by
- And the next time you plug in, your charging will automatically happen at the cheapest possible time.
It only takes 5 minutes to set up, so go ahead and try it out, and let us know what you think!
With electricity prices particularly low during weekends, we allow you to set a maximum price of charging - for example €0.05/kWh. This means that your car only charges when prices are below that market. And to ensure you do not end up with an empty battery, you can ask our app to always have a certain charge amount by the morning - for example 40%.
The case for smart charging in Spain is becoming more clear with the super-low prices driven by renewables - and we hope that our simple-to-use app will help take the hassle out of charging going forward.
Happy smart charging!
Konrad Hanschmidt, CEO of Gridio
