Daily guide · RS · 2026-07-25
Charging an EV in Serbia this week: what the prices actually said
All numbers computed from the week's published auction results at publication and frozen — this article is an honest snapshot, not a page that rewrites itself. Reproduce via the API.
The pattern this week is unusually clear: a midday cheap window that opens around 11:00 to 12:00 sits far below evening prices. The window averaged 45,05 EUR/MWh across the seven days, while the evening peak averaged 161,90 EUR/MWh. That is a gap of 72 percent, which is wide enough to matter for anyone deciding when to plug in.
The week was not uniform, though. The weekend of 18 and 19 July offered the deepest midday troughs, at 15,16 and 11,83 EUR/MWh, whereas 20 July jumped to 80,08 EUR/MWh in the same window and 197,63 EUR/MWh in the evening. So the midday habit paid off best early in the week, but even the pricier days kept the daytime slot below the evening.
The concrete takeaway: shift charging into the midday window rather than the evening peak. On 150 kWh a week, that discipline is worth 17,53 EUR this week and roughly 911 EUR over a year. If your charger supports scheduling, set it for the late-morning slot and leave it there.
Every day at 13:00 CET, an auction sets electricity prices for every hour of tomorrow — separately, for each European bidding zone. Those prices routinely differ by a factor of two to three within a single day, because solar floods the middle of the day and demand peaks in the evening. If you charge an EV, that spread is money: the car doesn't care when it charges, only that it's full by morning. This is what the spread looked like in RS this week.
72%
cheaper to charge in the best 3h window than at the evening peak, on average this week
45.05 vs 161.9
€/MWh: best window vs 18–21h evening habit (week average)
≈€911
a year on the wholesale component, for 150 kWh/week of charging at this week's gap
Day by day: when the cheap window actually fell
| Day | Cheapest 3h window | Window avg €/MWh | Evening 18–21h | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-18 | 11:00–14:00 | 15.16 | 157.7 | −90% |
| 2026-07-19 | 11:00–14:00 | 11.83 | 151.05 | −92% |
| 2026-07-20 | 11:00–14:00 | 80.08 | 197.63 | −59% |
| 2026-07-21 | 11:00–14:00 | 63.37 | 196.01 | −68% |
| 2026-07-22 | 12:00–15:00 | 35.5 | 163.2 | −78% |
| 2026-07-23 | 12:00–15:00 | 54.38 | 144.35 | −62% |
| 2026-07-24 | 12:00–15:00 | 55.03 | 123.38 | −55% |
Local time. Notice the window MOVES — sometimes after midnight, sometimes midday when solar peaks. A fixed night tariff catches some of this; following the auction catches all of it.
Automate it in ten minutes
You don't need to read auction results at 13:00 every day — ask the API for the cheapest window and let your wallbox follow it. One call:
curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"zone": "RS", "duration_minutes": 180}' \
https://voltcast.com/api/v1/optimize/cheapest-windowHome Assistant users: the Voltcast integration exposes the same window as a sensor you can automate against; evcc users get a ready-made tariff config. The Home plan (€9/mo) covers one zone of your choice with 7-day forecasts — the free tier lets you test everything on DE-LU first. And if you want to charge on a forecast of tomorrow before the auction even publishes, that's the P50 curve — scored publicly every day so you know exactly how much to trust it.
Method & citation. Prices are hourly means of published day-ahead auction results (native 15-minute periods averaged; ENTSO-E/SMARD, attributed). Wholesale-price component only — grid fees and taxes come on top and vary by supplier. Cite as "Voltcast Research, voltcast.com/guides/ev-charging-rs-2026-07-25".
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