TurningCircle
1 October 2026updated 09:13

Photograph: Pexels

Charging

The energy price cap is live: what it means at the plug

Ofgem's new cap started today. What it changes for electric car drivers at home, why an EV tariff still beats it by more than two thirds, and where the cap does not reach.

By The TurningCircle Team 5 min read

The new energy price cap took effect today, 1 October, and it sets the ceiling on what suppliers can charge for every unit of home electricity between now and 31 December. For the roughly two thirds of EV drivers who charge at home, those two numbers on the bill matter more than anything happening in the new car market this month. Ofgem's unit rates table for the new cap period puts the average direct debit electricity rate at 26.32p per kWh, up from 26.11p, with the daily standing charge falling to 54.83p from 57.19p. The typical dual-fuel bill the cap is built around is £1,723 a year, a 4% rise on the summer quarter.

We ran the numbers in our preview of the October cap three weeks ago, so today is less about the announcement and more about what the arithmetic looks like now that the rates are real. The short version: the cap moved almost nothing for electric drivers, the VAT cut did more than the cap did, and the gap between the best and worst ways to pay for a mile is wider than it has ever been.

What actually changed today

The headline rise sounds dramatic until you look at which fuel carries it. Gas goes up 8.7% in unit terms while electricity rises just 0.8%, and the standing charge on electricity actually falls. One reason is a policy that starts today alongside the cap: household electricity carries no VAT from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027, a temporary zero rate that Ofgem says would otherwise have added around £45 to the cap. Ofgem's table now notes plainly that the figures include VAT on gas only, because there is none on electricity for the next six months.

For a driver on a standard tariff, that means the price of home charging is close to frozen through the winter. A car using 4.5 miles per kWh buys about 222kWh to cover 1,000 miles, which comes to £58.49 at the new average cap rate, or 5.8p per mile. At the summer rate it would have been £58.10, and that comparison flatters the change less than it should, because the previous figure included 5% VAT and today's does not.

The tariff that leaves the cap standing

The cap exists to protect people who do not switch, and it is the wrong number to judge home charging by. Time-of-use tariffs sold for EV owners sit far below it. Octopus Energy's Intelligent Octopus Go, the country's most popular EV tariff, is charging 8p per kWh for smart charging from today, with six hours of the same cheap rate guaranteed for the whole house between 11:30pm and 5:30am. Octopus's own arithmetic, checked against the cap it quotes, puts that at up to 69% below the 26.32p average unit rate.

The same 1,000 miles that cost £58.49 on the cap costs £17.77 on that tariff, which is 1.8p per mile. A full charge of a 50.8kWh family hatch battery, the size fitted to the Vauxhall Corsa Electric, comes to £13.37 on a standard capped tariff and £4.06 overnight. If you charge the same car on a typical EV home tariff of 8.6p per kWh, the rate Zapmap's price index found across the market in August, it comes to £4.37, still about £9 less per full charge than the capped rate. Anyone weighing up hardware alongside the tariff can see what installation involves in our wallbox cost guide, and households adding storage can push more of their ordinary evening use into the same cheap window, as we covered in our piece on home batteries.

There is a catch worth naming, because it decides who can get these rates. Smart time-of-use tariffs need a smart meter and, usually, a compatible car or chargepoint. Ofgem counted 653,000 households on EV time-of-use tariffs in its most recent state of the market data, which is a large number and still a small fraction of the homes that could benefit. If your meter is not smart yet, the cap is what you are paying, and the case for booking the upgrade is now worth about £40 a month at typical mileages.

Where the cap does not reach

The cap is a domestic retail instrument. It covers the electricity a household buys from its supplier, and it has no effect at all on what public chargepoint operators charge. Rapid and ultra-rapid pricing is set by the networks, and the most recent Zapmap price index put the weighted average for rapid and ultra-rapid charging at 77p per kWh in August. That is why the same 1,000 miles costs about £171.11 on a rapid charger at 17.1p per mile, roughly three times the capped home rate and, per the AA's latest EV readiness index, about 15% dearer per mile than running a petrol car.

That divide is the practical story of the cap for EV drivers. At home, the state has intervened to hold your unit price near 26p and the market is offering you 7.6p. Away from home, no cap applies, and the price you pay is whatever the operator and the landowner have agreed. We mapped the full ladder from home tariffs to supermarket charging in the public and home price gap, and the supermarket middle rung is worth a look if you cannot charge at home.

What to do on day one

Three things are worth ten minutes today. Check which tariff you are actually on, because around 35% of households are on fixed deals and will not see the new cap at all, though the VAT cut still applies to their electricity automatically. If you are on the cap, price a fix: Ofgem noted at the August announcement that fixed tariffs were available meaningfully below the October level, and certainty through winter suits some households better than a floating cap. And if you have a smart meter and off-street parking, work out what your annual mileage would cost on an EV tariff rather than assuming the cap rate is the going rate, because the difference this winter is the difference between 5.8p and 1.8p a mile.

The next cap change lands in late November for the January to March quarter. Between now and then, the price of a home-charged mile is set, the VAT holiday runs to 31 March, and the cheapest electricity in British motoring is still available to anyone with a driveway and an app: 5.8p a mile on the cap, or 1.8p a mile on the right tariff.

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