E7 v Standard rate electricity

NCO

Hello,

My first post to what looks like an excellent website!

I have just moved house (3 months ago) and am looking to switch electricity suppliers after receiving my first 1/4 bill.

(I do not have gas at the property)

I have an economy 7 meter and doing the maths in the last 1/4 I used 32% on E7 and the rest on standard rate. I do not have any electrical night time heating. (Oil boiler)

Looking at the figures on British Gas (current supplier) and Npower websites it appears I would be better off without E7. The price structure of E7 means my 'day rate' is higher than the standard non E7 rate at a 32% E7 usage.

The last 1/4 I used 701KWh - 472KWh on normal rate and 229KWh on E7. I reckon on a non E7 plan I would save about 20 pounds per year.

Has anyone ever tried getting the E7 electrics removed and gone back onto a standard rate meter? Is this possible? Does it cost anything?

Many thanks
Neil
:beer:

HappyMJ

It's quite simple you just ring the supplier and change the tariff to a standard tariff and read the meter twice. All units will be charged at the standard rate and you can switch back at any time. Not every supplier will do it but most have in my experience. When you compare don't tick the box that asks if you have an E7 meter and you'll be switched to the standard plan. It's quite useful when you quite close to 30% night usage to compare using both E7 and standard tariffs. They know you really have an E7 meter and will ask for two meter reads each quarter.

andyrpsmith

Yes. I was on E10 with southern electric. I have two meters, the heating E10 and the normal meter. I just requested the E10 to be disabled (they took out a big fuse) and it is then taken off the MAPN system. It must be taken off the MAPN database or you cannot move to another supplier. I then moved to OVO at a single rate tariff of 8.61p inc vat (from 8.84p E10 meter and 12.1p normal). I saved £1000 by changing supplier and not using storage heating over last 12 months.

macman

Interesting that although you have no storage heaters, you are still managing to use 32% of your electricity at cheap rate, which is why you are quite near the break even point between E7 and standard.
You could put things like washing machine/dishwasher on a timer setting and run them on E7? But overall better probably just to switch to standard.

NCO

Its hard to use +40% of your electricity at night without storage heaters. Even if you put the washing on, dish washer etc.

Economy 7 with a gas or oil boiler rather than storage heaters isn't economic. Putting the washer and dish washer on at night to just break even using E7compared with standard tariff is inconvenient.

I will be switching to standard non E7

Neil