Help with electricity

victor2

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

- ""14p through the night"" - is high to extortionate, who are you with and what tariff are you on ?
- ""not that we use it during the night"" - is a mistake, that's where the cheap stuff is !
- - the timer others speak of is irrelevant, its out of your control, it is controlled by your leccy company !
- - you must have space heating in addition [should be storage] to water heating, what heating do you have ?

NOTE1: the timer others spoke of was before you declared you were on E7.

NOTE2 : if your water .. .. but not heating is on E7 you are on the wrong tariff, you need to use at least 40% of all of your electric energy on the night rate on E7 in order to break even.

NOTE3: you are using the manual [ day rate ] over-ride on your immersion heater.

With or without Economy 7, a timer for the immersion heater is highly relevant. Only running it for reduced hours will cut cost. You may choose to manually switch it on and have a reminder or alarm to switch it off, which could work if you don't have economy 7. If you do, then a timer is more relevant as you will benefit from timing the immersion to run during the night on cheaper electricity.

If you don't have storage heaters, it is highly unlikely you will benefit from Economy 7 anyway, as you'll be paying a premium rate for the electricity you use for heating in the day or evening.

Norman_Castle

P.s We've just turned the immersion off and I'll put it on for half an hour every few days to make sure it keeps working right

You do not need to run your immersion heater regularly to keep it working. They are not complicated, just an oversized kettle.

BeckyC2be

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

- ""14p through the night"" - is high to extortionate, who are you with and what tariff are you on ?
- ""not that we use it during the night"" - is a mistake, that's where the cheap stuff is !
- - the timer others speak of is irrelevant, its out of your control, it is controlled by your leccy company !
- - you must have space heating in addition [should be storage] to water heating, what heating do you have ?

NOTE1: the timer others spoke of was before you declared you were on E7.

NOTE2 : if your water .. .. but not heating is on E7 you are on the wrong tariff, you need to use at least 40% of all of your electric energy on the night rate on E7 in order to break even.

NOTE3: you are using the manual [ day rate ] over-ride on your immersion heater.

When we moved in we were told that the heaters we have are storage heaters - we then learned they werent but when i told npower (who i switched to because theyre online quote was cheapest) before i'd learned they werent storage heaters, the guy said it would be economy 7. I'l ring up and tell them we dont have storage heaters.

The immersion tank is just to heat the water, we have electric heaters for the house. We dont use the electric during the night because we're both asleep!

We're with Npower, and its called the flex saver 2013.

Thankyou for posting by the way!

BeckyC2be

I dont think we're being charged for economy 7, I've just gone over the letters and bills and it seems you were right (sorry i think it was frugal but i cant remember who said it)

The letter says 16.73p for the first 728kwh and then 13.43p thereafter.

(I know i said 16.203p but that was for the first month with the other company, the 16.73p is after the switch)

victor2

BeckyC2be wrote: »

I dont think we're being charged for economy 7, I've just gone over the letters and bills and it seems you were right (sorry i think it was frugal but i cant remember who said it)

The letter says 16.73p for the first 728kwh and then 13.43p thereafter.

(I know i said 16.203p but that was for the first month with the other company, the 16.73p is after the switch)

Those look like the rates for standard electricity, which confirms you're not on an economy 7 tariff.
So, concentrate on what you're running unnecessarily, such as the immersion heater. Electric heating is expensive to run, but you could still look into ways of economising on your use of that.
There's probably a penalty for switching away from npower before the end of your existing tariff, but you've got plenty of time to build up a picture of a realistic annual usage between now and when it ends to look at deals available for whatever your annual usage turns out to be.

pothole50

Finally we have all the information, so your not on E7 so its the heaters using all the electricity, based on your figures you are looking at £200 for 50 days electric not £250 as calculated by yourself. Yes concentrate on getting the immersion heater on less, but your main problem will be the use of the electric heaters, you need to use those more economically can you turn some off or set the thermostats lower.

BeckyC2be

yes pothole, firstly thanks for your reply. the heaters are 2000w but we can have them at either, 2000w, 1250w or 750w, (we do only use the one in the living room mainly. the one in the bedroom comes on at shower time) I have recently invested in a couple of sleeping bags, so i reckon we'll just have the heaters on for a couple of hours around the time of our showers and then just use the sleeping bags

Thanks again to everyone who posted, and sorry for being a bit slow and not putting everything i knew in the original post, i know that would have saved time and not had you all trying to get blood out of a stone! thanks

HappyMJ

Sleeping bags? You would be better off investing in a thick 15 tog winter duvet and an electric blanket. I have those and it is so warm at night despite the room temperature dropping below 8 degrees on some of these cold winter nights.

I've put the thermometer between the blankets before and it's over 30 degrees C. Very hot...

Richie-from-the-Boro

BeckyC2be wrote: »

When we moved in we were told that the heaters we have are storage heaters - we then learned they weren't but when i told npower (who i switched to because they're online quote was cheapest) before i'd learned they weren't storage heaters, the guy said it would be economy 7. I'l ring up and tell them we dont have storage heaters.

The immersion tank is just to heat the water, we have electric heaters for the house. We don't use the electric during the night because we're both asleep!

We're with Npower, and its called the flex saver 2013.

Thankyou for posting by the way!

Your immediate starting point is to ask nPower to :

- change your tariff from two rate metered economy 7
- to their cheapest single / combined rate tariff

Make sure you specifically ask for [ say the word cheapest ] cheapest ! then let [STRIKE]us[/STRIKE] the group know what they offer [ including any penalty charges ] before you commit.