EDF E7 - what hours?

[Deleted User]

Hi Haalam, you are correct the meters keep the same time on their digital clocks, 12.30 to 7.30 am, however with the hour added for bst the meter does its switchover at 7.30 am but in real time for the occupier its now 8,30am. start of day rate.
I would like to know what type of eco 7 meter road_hogs got. If you have got the very common, still,mechanical type timer, the supplier can t help you at all with the times and neither can the distribution company without an expensive home visit,that is if its just advice needed.Any fault on the timer controling the switchover times will be dealt with through your supplier who will contact the distibution company in your area.If you can give me a better desciption of your meter I can save you a bit of hassle probably,pm me if poss

Road_Hog

sacsquacco wrote: »

I would like to know what type of eco 7 meter road_hogs got.

I looked at it today, I'm going to phone the distributor tomorrow.

I have the old fashioned spinning discs, but (I was surprised) when I checked the garage today, I have a teleswitch (obviously added afterwards) box next to it.

Terrylw1

sacsquacco wrote: »

Hi Haalam, you are correct the meters keep the same time on their digital clocks, 12.30 to 7.30 am, however with the hour added for bst the meter does its switchover at 7.30 am but in real time for the occupier its now 8,30am. start of day rate.
I would like to know what type of eco 7 meter road_hogs got. If you have got the very common, still,mechanical type timer, the supplier can t help you at all with the times and neither can the distribution company without an expensive home visit,that is if its just advice needed.Any fault on the timer controling the switchover times will be dealt with through your supplier who will contact the distibution company in your area.If you can give me a better desciption of your meter I can save you a bit of hassle probably,pm me if poss

And in some cases they go into a reverse bst mode. I didn't know this until I found about 20 types of SSC set up with some distributors.

If its time switch, the elexon website holds every setting as they are held in common market domain. Providing the meter operator set it up correctly, it will reflect these times as they are agreed times to the SSC for all suppliers for meeting in their specified regions. A visit would show otherwise if they had been set wrong by the meter operator or if it had slipped over time, but given the many millions out there its not gong to be the case a lot since the number of time switch queries would be a known industry problem if it were.

Terrylw1

Haarlem wrote: »

If you meter is controlled by a teleswich the E7 times are the same all year round.

Mechanical timers can vary, and only your Distribution Company can tell you.

Its the other way round. Time switch meters are configured on the bench using software that uses industry market domain times which are strict, but can vary across the year if set to.

Teleswitch are configured on the bench to a standard time end then they are updated nightly by the distributor via arqiva operating over the BBC signal. I've seen some that change daily, by season or nothing like what the meter should do when compared to the tariff e.g. redring tariff which has always been 18 hours off peak but if you access the signal times you will see it only delivers 17.5 hours off peak. I doubt many people know that.

Haarlem

Terrylw1 wrote: »

Its the other way round. Time switch meters are configured on the bench using software that uses industry market domain times which are strict, but can vary across the year if set to.

Teleswitch are configured on the bench to a standard time end then they are updated nightly by the distributor via arqiva operating over the BBC signal. I've seen some that change daily, by season or nothing like what the meter should do when compared to the tariff e.g. redring tariff which has always been 18 hours off peak but if you access the signal times you will see it only delivers 17.5 hours off peak. I doubt many people know that.

Having worked in the industry I check the switching by teleswitch regularly, and in the East Midlands it is 01.00am to 08.00am all year round.

As far as mechanical time switches, certainly when the Distribution Companies installed them in areas especially where there were many storeage heater installations or industrial load they staggered the on/off times to even out the load on a particular substation. There maybe a "theoretical" time code applied to a property, but it could be as much as 2 hours out.
The only sure way is to check the settings on your mechanical time switch.

utility_csa

Terrylw1 wrote: »

And in some cases they go into a reverse bst mode. I didn't know this until I found about 20 types of SSC set up with some distributors.

If its time switch, the elexon website holds every setting as they are held in common market domain. Providing the meter operator set it up correctly, it will reflect these times as they are agreed times to the SSC for all suppliers for meeting in their specified regions. A visit would show otherwise if they had been set wrong by the meter operator or if it had slipped over time, but given the many millions out there its not gong to be the case a lot since the number of time switch queries would be a known industry problem if it were.

Its quite annoying all the different ssc's per GSP Area...

The most annoying ones though are Dynamic E7s.

Midlands area you should be on SSC:0151 for domestic properties i believe.

Terrylw1

utility_csa wrote: »

Its quite annoying all the different ssc's per GSP Area...

The most annoying ones though are Dynamic E7s.

Midlands area you should be on SSC:0151 for domestic properties i believe.

0151 is the most standard in Midlands, in some other regions they are very different though. The teleswitch are a bit of a nightmare and the switching times can be delayed. In some cases after reviewing the switching patterns, I've seen meters that show no real pattern at all over a year.

Recently an industry paper came out showing that other than the distributors, it was unclear how these meters are set up.

Terrylw1

Haarlem wrote: »

Having worked in the industry I check the switching by teleswitch regularly, and in the East Midlands it is 01.00am to 08.00am all year round.

As far as mechanical time switches, certainly when the Distribution Companies installed them in areas especially where there were many storeage heater installations or industrial load they staggered the on/off times to even out the load on a particular substation. There maybe a "theoretical" time code applied to a property, but it could be as much as 2 hours out.
The only sure way is to check the settings on your mechanical time switch.

If the meter is a time switch type, it has to be set using the published industry market domain data that is covered in the BSC. So if the distributors have done that, they have not complied to the mdd rules. This isnt all surprising though given the distributors were not classed as BSC parties until about 6 years ago so elexon can now audit them.

There is no theoretical time code, its on elexons website and its been available to every party receiving the D0269 flows. The mdd is based on the 1998 trading agreements so if the distributor has done that, they were wrong but that does not reflect any meters fit by a meter operator who depend on mdd.

How do you check the teleswitch times given they can change daily? Suppliers can source how the meter should work from the distributor but if you check it against the daily D0029 files, they dont always work as they should or how the suppliers tariff is explained to the customer.

Haarlem

Terrylw1 wrote: »

How do you check the teleswitch times given they can change daily? Suppliers can source how the meter should work from the distributor but if you check it against the daily D0029 files, they dont always work as they should or how the suppliers tariff is explained to the customer.

How do I check the teleswich times? - by looking at the position of the indicator on the teleswich.

For 3 mornings this week I have seen the indicator on my teleswitch move from "on" to "off" at 08.00.10. each day. This seems very consistant, but I will keep checking and let you know of any variation.

Terrylw1

Haarlem wrote: »

How do I check the teleswich times? - by looking at the position of the indicator on the teleswich.

For 3 mornings this week I have seen the indicator on my teleswitch move from "on" to "off" at 08.00.10. each day. This seems very consistant, but I will keep checking and let you know of any variation.

Hopefully it should be, but because the times are sent each night if your look at the daily data flows the supplier and NHHDC receive, its full of problems.the file is based on the SSC so it would cover every customer where the meter holds that SSC from a data perspective with the distributor. I saw some SSC's in a recent study over 12 months using this daily data that had in excess of 20+ pattern changes so it was impossible to tell customers how they should work.

Another example is the Redring boilet tariff which suppliers quote as 18 off peak. Using my 12 months of daily signal data, I could see it was 17.5.

This is why I asked becsuse off my experience, suppliers and their staff just don't know how a lot of these meters are working...especially outside of their old host regions.

Checking the meter manually is fine on e7's if you are prepared to put the effort in but when you GT into differential switching, 3 rate e10 and other more complex meters that include weekend and bank holiday settings its a lot of work and may not even help. Some e7 meters even advance the opposite way in bst and then back to gmt for some wacky reason!

Call centre staff often use handouts that can be years out of date as well so it can be hard for customers to get anywhere.