Economy 10 confusion

Lennon

I've done some searches on this but i'm still confused after reading the threads...

I'm even more confused about how i've managed to get a bill for £745 (for 6 months)!

We are on economy 10 with Npower. We live in a new build flat (about 3 years old) which has storage heaters, panel heaters and an electric water tank.

I believed we use very little electricity, no one is in during the day, nothing is left switched on - i've always gone so far as to switch all the plugs off at the wall every night. Everything is energy saving etc etc.

Yet I have this crazy bill! We actually took a reading ourselves on 23 January because we hadn't had a bill for so long and npower turned up to read the meter on 25 February, so on my bill it's actually split this month period separately. The cost for this single month appears to be £296 !! To be fair this was the first month I really turned the storage heater up (as the input half way instead of minimum). We only use a single storage heater, we have never even turned the panel heaters on and suffered the cold in the bedroom all winter. The hot water is only heated for 1 hour each day at 4am.

I guess the issue is I just don't understand the tariff with regards to the cheap rates. I was of the understanding the storage heaters were only supposed to kick in when it was the cheaper rate? But no matter what time of day I turn it on, within about 4 hours it starts getting hot. Or if I turn it on at say 4pm it gets hot at 8pm, then it's cold by morning as though it's not charged overnight then charges again during the day at peak. It's like it's just heating at the peak charge all of the time.

The meter and the bill just have a "night" and "day" rate and we barely use anything at the "night" rate - £100 of the £745 bill is at this rate.

I'm really confused, can anyone offer any suggestion as to where to go from here?

HappyMJ

Do you have the boost turned on? Some modern storage heaters have a second electrical supply to be able to supply a late evening boost whenever needed. You could be using this expensive boost function without realising it.

Are you sure it's E10? I only ask as they usually have 3 time periods. Day, Afternoon and Night. E10 is a bad tariff you need to think about switching to E7 which has day and night rates or a standard 24/7 electric tariff. This may require some rewiring.

Maybe borrowing an energy monitor from someone might help you track down what is using so much.

Lennon

As far as I know it has no boost option. It just has a switch at the wall and the input/output knobs and that's it. I do actually have some instructions for it too but they don't mention anything about a boost. Even if I manually turn it on at say 12 midnight, it gets hot by about 4am, will be cold by say mid day, then gets warm again as it starts charging as soon as it's cold... so even turning it on manually at the "correct" time doesn't seem to work.

Switching to E7 might not be an option if rewiring is required because we are in a rented property and would need to get the landlord involved. Not really sure if we will be staying here long term either (which may resolve the problem I suppose!!)

HappyMJ

Do you have the output turned to zero? The output controls the heat being emitted so you shouldn't be feeling too much at 4am as it all stored in the bricks. When you turn the output up later in the day then the heater should feel warm.

Lennon

Yeah, pretty much keep it the output on the lowest setting except when it's very cold and require some extra heat.

Terrylw1

There are 2 types of e10 and you need to understand which it is first.

If its e10 with 1 MPAN you have an e7 style set up but the boost is an extra 3 hours and maybe seperated in some way.

If you have 2 mpans, you will have a 3 rate style bill with day, night and heat. The day and night control the usual devices in your home but the heat is just for that.

Your supplier can tell you which and the boosting times, but they differ by meter and by region. So, its very common for call centre staff to be unaware due to poor management/training.

There is a website you can look that up on but to do it you would need your supplier to give you a code known as SSC which tells them what you meter does. This then links to data on a website they use, but they can do that...its just an area a lot don't understand.

If your meter switches via the distributor because its a radio teleswitch, there is no nation documentation. On this and its a subject of discussion in the industry due to smart metering but you could then check with the distributor as they control the nightly broadcast timings.