Off peak/ Peak Electricity usage

999mph

Recently a colleague at work was telling me that she has making a daily saving on her electricity by using most of her electricity at off peak hours. We are with EDF. Is there such a thing as off peak/peak electricity usage?
Cheers.:beer:

Fluffi

Sounds like your colleague is talking about Economy 7, where electricity is cheap late at night and through to the early hours of the morning, e.g. between 11.30pm and 6.30am (although it depends on your supplier).

The night time rate tends to be significantly cheaper than the day rate (my day rate is about 25p for the first 900KWh, then 10p for the rest of my day units and my night rate is a flat 5p an KWh).

You need a meter that is capable of recording both day and night time readings, do have you got a meter with 2 dials? Else you might need a new meter from EDF.

You can save lots of money by washing clothes at night time rates compared to day time, as long as the washing machine doesn't wake anyone up! My flat has E7 meters from when it used to have night storage heating. All depends on whether you have anything you need to run at night!

spiro

999mph wrote: »

Recently a colleague at work was telling me that she has making a daily saving on her electricity by using most of her electricity at off peak hours. We are with EDF. Is there such a thing as off peak/peak electricity usage?
Cheers.:beer:

Yes its called E7 or Economy 7 but is designed for people with electric central heating who use more overnight that during the day. Before moving to such a tariff I would try and see how much you use overnight compared to during the day for a 1. Overnight is typically something like 11pm to 6am or 12 midnight to 7am.

999mph

Cheers. I'll have to get that checked.

Radarjet

I have 4 adults living in my house. Just as the last round of elec/gas hikes happened this spring, I brought us all together and requested that we do all our clothes washing/drying at night using a cheap timer setter that comes on at 01.00 plus set the dish washer to run at night time.

Using these measures, plus being sensible with turning off stand bys I managed to keep our bills to almost exactly the same as they had been pre price hike so I guess in reality we reduced our day amount used by about 15-20%.

Dunno what we can do this time round, maybe only watch TV and use computers at dead of night too....

BexTech

When on E7 your daytime rates will be higher than standard rates on a single rate meter / service.

E7 will only really save you money if you have storage heaters, if you don't then it's not worth switching to.

owain.davies

Your company should exchange your meter for free if you want to go on to E7, BUT you need to use at least 30% of your power in the off peak period to save any money, assuming you've got an average usage.