Economy 7

MarkyMarkD

Davidboy wrote:

Can I just say Guys and Phil, I am afraid Economy 7 does not work like that, there are 3 tariffs, Tariff 1. which is ONLY connected to things like hotwater tank and night storage heaters, that is your cheap rate. Tariff 2 is day time so all other things charged at a high rate during that day, then there is Tariff 3 which is the night rate which is cheaper than day rate but NOT as cheap as Tariff 1.

So what I am saying is night rate is NOT cheap storage rate as you are thinking Phil.

Hope that makes sense.

D

That might be how it works in some areas, but it's not how it works in most areas.

For example, we have Ec 7 with 2 tariffs. Everything in the house runs on cheap rate between 12.30 and 7.30 overnight and everything runs on expensive rate between 7.30 am and 12.30 at night.

Ec 7 is around 3p a unit; normal rate is around 10p a unit.

So it's well worth running anything you can overnight.

Davidboy

MarkyMarkD wrote:

That might be how it works in some areas, but it's not how it works in most areas.

For example, we have Ec 7 with 2 tariffs. Everything in the house runs on cheap rate between 12.30 and 7.30 overnight and everything runs on expensive rate between 7.30 am and 12.30 at night.

Ec 7 is around 3p a unit; normal rate is around 10p a unit.

So it's well worth running anything you can overnight.

Ok sorry I stand corrected. However MY rates are as stated above, so I think the thing to remember is, if you are going to use cheap night time electricty then beware and know which economy system you have.


D

Glad

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Cardew

MarkyMarkD is correct for Economy 7.

There are some tariffs called various names by different companies(E10, NP Super tariff etc) that work like Davidboy states - these normally have a top up period in the afternoon. The 2 cheaper rates tend to be more expensive than E7.

Someone recently posted this:

We recently moved into a house that has Npower's Super Tariff. The previous owner left me a file with original details and terms of use etc. I have checked this out by staying up late and getting up early and this is how it works in my house.

I have two meters each of which has a low and high rate setting. One supplies the heating ie storage rads, immersion heater and electric Aga. The other does everything else.

A couple of nights ago the heating one clicked over to "Low" at 1.30 am and the supply board started to hum and the meter turned very fast, it clicked off at 6.30 am. The night light came on the Aga at 1.30am and went off at 6.30am. It therefore looks like the heat side meter acts as a switch and the heating circuits are only supplied during this time and 2pm to 4pm in the afternoon. The original Northern Electric terms say that you get a 5 hour supply at night and a 2 hour boost in the afternoon at times of the companies choosing.

The "everything else" meter clicks to low at 12 midnight and back to normal at 7am, just like normal Economy7. The only difference is that this does not supply your heating.

The current tariff rates are:

First 728 units 21.68p
Normal Day 10.48p
Normal night 4.21p
Heating 5.07p

Note you pay 5.07p for heating even at night.

Edinburghlass_2

studentphil wrote:

Probably because we have switched providers that we might not have an econ 7 price plan now.

Which provider are you with then and perhaps we can tell you if you still have Ecomomy 7

Madmel

Sorry to jump on this thread, but we moved in here in September. Part of the house has storage heaters which we thought were heated on Economy 7. DH has pointed out on the meter there is an old SWEB card stating the times for the low rate (11pm - midnight, then 1am til 7am). He had the storage heaters on from 1am-7am to take advantage of this.

Today we had a massive electricity bill (well it seems massive to me as I think I'm quite frugal) I rang EDF energy who have taken over SWEB and are the suppliers. The advisor couldn't tell me the times for our low rate as "every property is different". He rang through to the power distributor and apparently the low rate is now midnight - 1am, and 2am - 8am.

Can power companies change these arbitrarily? We had no idea of the low rate times and were simply going off the card which was left on the meter. Sorry if this sounds naive, but I have never used this system before and find it extremely confusing, especially given the confusion over the times.

MarkyMarkD

The meter says on it what the times are, certainly if it is an old fashioned dial type one it will have a little clock thingy in it which shows the on/off times.

Because the clock is fixed, the times will change by one hour when summer time ends.

I am not sure that I believe this "midnight-1am and 2am-8am" thing - that sounds unnecessarily complicated and also unlikely to be possible with the old sort of meters.

You are slightly worrying me now, though - we have had our meter replaced and I haven't checked what the new one tells us, if anything - it's now an all-digital one. I will check later on maybe.

Edit: I've gone out in the dark and checked. The meter has been changed but the Economy 7 timer is a separate unit which hasn't been changed. The Economy 7 times on our meter are set to be 12.30am to 7.30am, but the clock on the timer seems to be running a bit slow meaning that Economy 7 is actually more like 1.00am to 8.00am during the winter (GMT).

And if my "spring forward, fall back" is right, it'll be 2.00am to 9.00am in the summer (BST).

It's quite hard to see which meter is running at any point of time, to confirm the exact switch-over time.

This Kirklees council PDF (Acrobat) file seems to suggest that the 12.30-7.30 and 1.30-8.30 in the summer is the general rule.

Conversely, EDF Energy's FAQs suggest that the time varies by area but will be 7 hours somewhere between 0000-0800 GMT.