Scottish Hydro Total Heating Total Control

mgourlayabz

We have just moved house and so decided to move our electricity supplier to give us the best price available for us. We shopped around and of course came in here to get advice. We found a supplier that best fitted our needs and our budget and moved to E-On. We then started to have problems with our hot water and heating. On some investigation we discovered one of the heating elements in the tank seemd faulty. It was replaced and we still had no hot water unless we used the boost function on our heating control. It turned out e-on only had part of our supply. We were told they would sort it out. We have since discovered that we have THTC (Total Heating Total Control) which is exclusive to Scottish Hydro. So we seem to be stuck with them and another 4 to 6 weeks before they can get our supply and heating back to normal. Does anyone have any experience of this? Is there a way to switch to another supplier WITHOUT changing meters?

Terrylw1

There are a lot of meters out there that are region specific or classed as protected. However, this just means they are only installed in certain regions, it does not prevent any Suppplier from billing you. What stops Suppliers is the fact they just don't want all of these types of meters/tariffs, so they stick to easier options and don't create tariffs. So they turn your business away unless you change the meter.

You need to do some checking on who can bill THTC types as not all probably will. So, this will restrict you from switching.

The other option is to determine if you would be better off on a more standard tariff such as E7 that allows you to move around more. However, you need to way up how much THTC costs vs E7 and also you may need some changes to wiring for this. If THTC is wired other than via a day & night circuit to the meter, then wiring changes are likely unless it's similiar to E10. I'm less familiar with THTC to be quite honest in terms of how they are wired.

By part of the supply, do you mean Eon only took one of your MPAN's? Do you have 2? If so, Eon need to register the other.

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Hi mgourlayabz,

I completely agree with Terrylw1, I think the first thing to do would be to contact E.ON to ask if they can support the sort of meter that you have, if they can you can request they take the other MPAN if this is the case.

As Terrylw1 says, you may want to look in to changing your meter to a more standard set up, as this will give you the option of more tariff's, but you must check your system as the wiring may need to be changed.

Helena

dunloadin

I can help on THTC a wee bit, as I've mentioned in an older post it's the bain of my life.

You should have two meters, both have just one read.

One is an ordinary meter which is connected to your domestic supply (sockets, lights etc.) - this records ALL consumtion of the domestic element of your bills 24/7. It does not switch to cheap rate as no heating is connected to it, so dont use plug-in heaters (they'll be charged at the high rate) or wait to put your driers/washing machine on late at night (there is no switching to cheap rate)

The second meter is a radio telemeter (a meter with inbuilt teleswitch), this also has a single rate, but has three (sometimes just two) live wires connected to the heating supply.

One live is on 24/7 and powers any convector/panel heaters/towel rails...normally found in the rooms least used i.e. bathrooms/bedrooms.

The other two lives are switched via the telemeter; one will have the storage radiators connected to it (80amp), the other will have the immersion heater for the hot water tank (25-30amp)

ALL heating on this meter is charged a the low rate, no matter what time of day it is used.

This is assuming you have a credit system (pay by DD), if you have a key meter then it gets even more complicated!

As to your present situation, you will probably find that the meter that has been changed to E.ON is the domestic one, as that has a single rate SSC that their system will handle...the second meter may not have been included as you (or the salesman) failed to recognise it as a meter when you switched. The second meter will have a 'telemetering' tariff, which is single rate and can cause mahem to your bills....it's not unusual to end up being charged the day rate.

The only company that can bill the meters correctly is Hydro, as this system is their baby, so I would suggest that the second meter is probably on their billing system. If you changed to E.ON from any other company than Hydro then expect a nightmare trying to sort it out.

If you have an old token meter with two reads on it, or are using a pre-pay key meter then let us know, that will change things a bit.

Hope this helps.

Terrylw1

That fills in the blanks for me then. It was Dunloadin I was hoping would spot your post!

So, it's got 2 SSC's, hence must have 2 MPAN's.

The new Supplier has to take both of them but as Dunloading says, they get missed by sales agents and often customers themselves. There is no real way for a Supplier to know that until later down the line when the Meter Operator (who maintains your meters) sends them a copy of your current meter details. The SSC then should point this out, however as I'm less familiar with these (and would need to check how the SSC code is represented to the Supplier), it could just come across as a 24hr standard domestic and the off peak radioswitched meter has the SSC to show it as THTC.

This might sound like industry jargon, but it's why it normally goes wrong.

It's the same for 3 rate E10, Heatwise, Supertariff and all the others out there that are region specific.

In terms of Suppliers, you won't find this on comparison sites but you would need to approach Suppliers as it's a bit specialised.

As long as a Suppliers billing system can handle a dual MPAN set up, they only need an agreed set of tariff rates to bill you on. The dual MPAN part was not standard to all Suppliers at de-regulation hence their billing system would not handle them as they never had them in their old board regions. Thats moved on a bit since so it's worth doing some checks. Don't take the first persons word that they can support it though since it's specialised and not known to all staff.

In terms of support, all Suppliers should support every combination of meter in this industry. Thats part of their agreement to be members of the Balancing & Settlement Code, however it's only for the ability to register you, not bill you hence some don't develop tariffs for the meter type.