Economy 7 - which appliances use it, please?

keiran

Hi

Can any expert inform me as to which electrical appliances "work" with Economy 7?

I've been given different answers. Some say that ALL electricity use is charged at the lower rate during those 7 hours. Others say it's JUST the nighttime storage heaters and nighttime water cylinder heating that's included, pointing out further that these items are on a separate "circuit" with different fuses.

Knowing the correct answer would be very helpful as I wouldn't then have to run machines, etc during the night cheaper hours

Thanks in advance for answers

HappyMJ

The entire house runs at the cheap rate for 7 hours at night.

[Deleted User]

also, if you have an old mechanical type of timer which controls the 7 hours of night rate, check that the timer is set at the correct time as most of them are miles out.this will then skew the cheap rate time into a more advantagous time for you rather than the 12.30 pm to 7.30pm ( approx)

Terrylw1

The storage heaters are wired to the night circuit so thy only come on when the switchover time arrives. However, the rest of your usage also switches to the night rate recording hence all power consumed between whatever your e7 hours are, are at cheap rate. When the nd of the night hours comes, the night dial stops, the heating switches off and the day recording dial begins. This assumes no private time switching.

keiran

Thanks for replies.

I did an experiment! I plugged in a stand alone heater, and watched the meter /dial. And very clearly this showed that during the Economy 7 hours, the low rate meter dial moved, and outside of that time, the normal rate meter moved. In fact it switched at the moment expected
(6 30 am in this instance.)

Hope all this may help any one else who has had conflicting information.

Cardew

keiran wrote: »

Thanks for replies.

I did an experiment! I plugged in a stand alone heater, and watched the meter /dial. And very clearly this showed that during the Economy 7 hours, the low rate meter dial moved, and outside of that time, the normal rate meter moved. In fact it switched at the moment expected
(6 30 am in this instance.)

Hope all this may help any one else who has had conflicting information.

There will be conflicting information because both situations described in your opening post can happen depending on how your house is wired.

Most houses these days with Economy 7 have all electricity on off-peak for 7 hours and all electricity on daytime rates for the other 17 hours.

However some properties are wired so only storage heaters and immersion heater use off-peak electricity for the 7 hours and all other electricity is at peak rates 24/7.

This used to be the old 'White meter' set-up, but in a recent thread on just this subject people posted that their modern flats have that arrangement.