For most of the last decade, the advice to a Dutch EV driver was a single sentence: charge at night. The night was cheap, the day was expensive, and a timer set to 02:00 was a small but reliable saving. That advice no longer holds — not because nights have become expensive, but because the cheap hours have stopped being predictable. This piece is the new advice, walked through with the consumption profile of a typical household.
What changed
Three things, in sequence. First, the share of wind in the Dutch electricity mix passed 25 per cent in 2024; the cheap hours now follow the wind, not the clock. Second, midday solar generation, when the sun is unshaded, regularly clears the spot price below €0.05/kWh — a band that used to belong only to the deep night. Third, the day-ahead price curve has flattened on average and steepened on the margin: most days are cheap most of the time, with sharp spikes at peak hours that the night does not protect against.
The practical consequence: the cheapest six hours of any given day in 2026 are roughly half the time in the small hours (02:00–05:00) and half the time around solar peak (11:00–14:00). The right charging window depends on the day, not the clock.
The 40 kWh-per-week household
An EV driver covering 12,000 km/year in a vehicle averaging 17 kWh/100 km draws roughly 2,040 kWh/year — about 40 kWh/week. Charging at 11 kW takes 3.6 hours, at 3.7 kW takes 11 hours. Either way, the question is not can it fit; it is where in the day does it sit.
On a 2025-vintage Dutch dynamic contract, the per-kWh price for the same 40 kWh varied as follows, depending on charging strategy:
| Strategy | Avg price (€/kWh) | Annual cost |
|---|---|---|
| Plug in on arrival, charge immediately | 0.31 | 632 |
| Fixed timer, 02:00–06:00 every night | 0.18 | 367 |
| Daily 6-hour trough, chosen 16:00 the previous day | 0.11 | 224 |
| Smart charger, full forward-curve optimisation | 0.09 | 184 |
The first row is what a driver who does nothing pays. The second is the old advice. The third is the new advice with no special hardware. The fourth is what a smart charger with day-ahead-aware firmware buys you. The interesting figure is between rows two and three: €143/year, won by spending thirty seconds at 16:00 the day before to glance at tomorrow's curve and shift the charge window.
What a smart charger actually does
"Smart" is doing a lot of work in the brochure. The minimum, in 2026, is a charger that pulls the next day's EPEX prices at 16:00 CET and schedules the cheapest contiguous N hours for a given target SoC by departure time. The capable ones additionally:
- Take a household-level peak-shaving constraint, so the charger backs off when the dishwasher and induction hob fight for the same kVA.
- Co-optimise with a home battery or heat-pump schedule, so all three flexible loads cluster in the same hour rather than spreading and each capturing a different price.
- Surface the realised price per kWh in the app — the only metric that matters for verification.
The €184/year row above assumes all three features. The difference between it and the manual €224/year row is €40/year — useful, but not transformational. Most of the saving is in the strategy, not the hardware.
The case for charging at midday
For a household with solar, midday charging is no longer a curiosity; it is the dominant strategy. A 4.5 kWp roof in spring and summer covers a 7 kW Type-2 charger almost entirely from generation. The kilowatt-hours that would otherwise have been exported to the grid for €0.07 are absorbed at €0.30 of avoided import. That is a €0.23/kWh saving on every shifted kWh — substantially better than any night-time spot price.
The 12,000 km/year driver who can charge between 11:00 and 15:00 on weekends, two days a week year-round, captures roughly 800 kWh of solar-shifted charging — a €184/year saving on top of whatever the smart charger negotiates for the rest of the week.
What about the grid?
Dutch grid operators have begun pricing in transport-tariff structures that reward consumers who avoid the evening peak. Even on a non-dynamic contract, a charger that defers to 22:00 or later sees lower capacity charges than one that starts at 18:00. This is independent of the spot price; it is the regulated grid layer doing the same job, more bluntly.
What to do with this
If you charge once a week, set a habit of glancing at the next-day price curve at 16:00 on the day before. If you charge nightly, a smart charger with day-ahead-aware firmware pays for itself in roughly a year for any household that drives more than 10,000 km. If you have solar, prioritise daytime charging on weekends and let the spot price decide on weekdays.
The wizard above takes your driving profile, your home tariff, and your panel orientation, and tells you, in one number, what each of the four strategies above would have cost you over the last twelve months of Dutch electricity. That figure is harder to argue with than any general rule, including this one.
