Storage heaters and Southern Electric FlexiHeat

hoppycantstoppy

Hi guys,

My first post here. We've just moved in to a rented flat, and I'm completely new to the concept of storage heaters although I'm doing a lot of research on them. We have the Southern Electric FlexiHeat tarriff which defines the 'stored heat' charge as off-peak electricity between 7:30pm and 7:30am - I guess the equivalent to Eco 7.

I have investigated the models of our heaters and I believe we have three Creda Sensair 3.4kW ones. We've recently had our bill through and it's an astronomical £106.50 for 25 days of usage. As our meter has three different readings (daytime, 'other', and 'stored heat') since we're on Southern Electric's FlexiHeat tarriff, we determined that over £60 of the bill was just on 'stored heat' (which Southern Electric defines as for storage heaters and water heaters (which we have too)).

As an experiment, this morning we took the 'stored heat' readings and did the same this evening (12 hour period). Surprisingly, the meter was up by 16 units, compared to 18 units for the duration of last night (12 hours again). I'm assuming that there is something horribly wrong with this, as the whole point of storage heaters are that they charge themselves at off-peak times, so the readings taken between this morning and this evening should surely be the same? These findings would also tally with the fact that we find the storage heaters *very* warm throughout the entire day and night.

With all this in mind, is it possible that the wiring is incorrect? I also looked at the reading again tonight, and it doesn't look like the clock is set - would this be an issue? I assume all modern day digital meters are radio controlled?

And just so I understand, if the meter was properly working then the 'stored heat' circuit should only kick in during the hours of 'stored heat'? There isn't possibly an *on-peak* 'stored heat' tarriff (much like I've read about Eco7) where the cost of running it during the day is vastly more?

Thanks for any help in advance

H

Premier_2

What is flexiheat?

If you have a Flexiheat meter your home will have electric heating. It’s best if you use most of your electricity during the evenings and at weekends. Like the Evening and Weekend meter, this is only available in some areas.
Flexiheat meters record electricity on three meter readings, one for ‘day’, one for ‘night’ and one for ‘stored heat’.
The night reading records all night time usage including panel heaters and hot water ‘top ups’. During the week, the night rate covers the period between 7:30pm to 7:30am and from 7:30 pm on Friday night till 7:30am Monday morning.
The ‘stored heat’ meter reading records for seven hours, this is to charge your storage heaters. The times vary depending on where you live, contact us to find out what they are.

http://www.southern-electric.co.uk/GasAndElectricity/YourMeter/DifferentMeterTypes/

You appear to have confused the timings for 'other' and 'stored heat' rates.

hoppycantstoppy

Thanks for the reply, Premier.

After speaking to SE, apparently our electric water heater is also wired exclusively to 'stored heat' (although we have two circuits - one for 'off-peak' times and one for 'top-ups'). Since the 'top-up' service has access to the 'stored heat' throughout the day, we reckon it's probably this that is accummulating 'stored heat' units during the daytime.

Joshes

HI hoppycantstoppy
I stumbled upon this and though it's late, I figured I might share with you our experience in the event that it could potentially help you with your billings.

We just recently went through an issue with our flexi heat meter. We suddenly went from using 24 units a day for our storage heater to a whopping 51 units per day! We don't have our immersion heater plugged into the third tariff as it works out cheaper and easier for us to use the booster part and have it on a timer to switch on during the night time rate. We did a bit of research and discovered that the flexiheat meter that we had installed (I googled the meter name etc) can suffer from signalling problems. So when we called up Southern Electric to find out what the signalling times were, we were informed that our signal was on for 24 hours. This of course is wrong and we had our old meter pulled out and a new meter installed. The correct times for my area is 02:30am to 07:30am and 14:00pm to 16:00pm for the top up. Subsequent to this meter being changed and our account being readjusted (they adjusted it according to the consumption of the new meter), we went from owing £54.95 to £60.61 in credit with SSE.

On a 3.5kw storage heater and used effectively (maximum input, minimum output), you should be using 7 units during the 2 hour day period and 17.5 units during the 5 hour night period. We are currently spot on for that after having changed our meter. For the past two weeks, we've dropped our input to 2.5 (we have a 5 point dial) and kept the output to 1. We are now down to 11.56 units per day.

I take meter readings often (at least once every two weeks) and because of this, we found the problem quite quickly. I recommend that if you can, do a meter reading every hour or two over a weekend so you can see what the meter is actually ticking over. Check with SSE on your signalling times and confirm that they are sending a signal down correctly. Also (if you haven't already done so) change your storage heater settings to a minimum output setting.

Hope that helps.