Economy 7 or Standard Rate Electric?

Dragonbreff

At the moment I have E7.

I have an E7 emmersion heater, 1 combi nightstore heater in my lounge, and one standard nightstore in my bedroom.

My property is about 6yrs old, semi detached, well insulated, double glazed and quite small, and is sheltered from the weather on 3 sides. This last winter I didnt need to use the night store heaters at all, as the bungalow was warm throughout. Infact it gets too warm most of the time, even in winter. I live in the South West so the climates a lot milder than the rest of the UK.

I use most of my electricity during the day, ie; cooker, freezer, fridge/freezer, hoover, kettle, tv. All the light bulbs are the economy type.

I wash up the dishes twice a day, use the washing machine and tumble drier once a week.

I did try putting the washing machine and drier on timers to come on overnight, they both have alarms on when they finish, so that wakes me up.

All my appliances are A rated and fairly new.

Seeing as I don't use hardly any electric over night, when the E7 kicks in, apart from the water heater (immersion), I can't see the point in being on E7.

I can have my immersion heater rewired so that it is no longer connected to the E7 box, and connected to the standard box, and have a timer fitted so I can program it to come on and off when I want it.

I'd say I'm a very low user of electricity.

So do you think it would be wise to swop over to standard electricity?

I'm with EDF's saver plan where the price is fixed til September 2014.

I'm pretty certain I'd save money by swopping to standard electricity rates but just need other people's opinions.

Thanks

Terrylw1

Do you have bills that show actual readings? If so, why not work out the same period using the standard rate and seeing if its higher or lower?

What % of your overall daily kwh is day and night?

Dragonbreff

I get a quarterly statement so can use that, I pay by DD each month. I only moved in here last November.

As for % of kwh is day and night, I'd guess my night % is less than 5% of 24hr total. There's only the immersion that uses it, and thats a dedicated E7 one with 2 elements. I never use the day time booster, I've never needed to.

Terrylw1

The %'s tend to be quoted at 70/30, more recently 76/24.

At 5%, E7 is unlikely to be worth it but be sure first by checking the bill, appliance usage, etc.

Its also worth noting that if you change to stand, it may require you rewiring first to remove the off peak load. Some E7 meters are set up in the industry to switch between E7 and standard and the standard billing is applied to both register readings plus the supplier updates the distributor so any gaining supplier can see you are set up this way. The advantage of this being its quick, no rewire costs and you can switch back and forth as your circumstances change but the disadvantage is that the time switch will still be switching over if its a time switch rather than radio teleswitch meter.

Dragonbreff

Sorry a lot of that went way over my head :eek:

The meter outside is a digital one with 2 digital readouts one for each rate.

Indoors there's 2 consumer units, one for standard one for E7. On the standard consumer unit there's an mcb for 'water heater' which I assume is the daytime boost for the emmersion.

If the E7 consumer unit's main switch is switched off then it can't register anything on the outdoor meter can it?

gyromain

I have a digital E7 meter. The time on it is over +45 minutes in error. Setting timers to come on at 00:30GMT (my E7 on time) caused the meter to charge 3/4 hour at full price. Check the time on the E7 meter.

Dragonbreff

I'm sorry this seems to have gone right off topic.

I don't need to check the time on my E7 meter as it's spot on, it's already been checked by EDF and myself when I first moved here in November.

Thats not the issue.

The issue is, do I change over to Standard Rate electricity and ditch E7

Terrylw1

If your off peak consumer unit is off, the meter can't activate them when its time switch clicks over. So, the 5% is going to be the normal 24hr appliances since they get charged on the off peak register during those times.

If you switch to E7 and there is a load wired to that off peak consumer unit, the engineer is likely to abort assuming out may need it later.

The other method is to see if your meter can be changed on standard or E7 as many can, which avoids the meter change but you would need to keep to standard usage which will be the case with the off peak consumer unit off. This method is not available to all E7 customers as its a data thing in the industry.

Terrylw1

gyromain wrote: »

I have a digital E7 meter. The time on it is over +45 minutes in error. Setting timers to come on at 00:30GMT (my E7 on time) caused the meter to charge 3/4 hour at full price. Check the time on the E7 meter.

I hope you got the difference refunded?

tori.k

It may work out cheaper it did for us,what i did was work out our daily usage and compare the price of our providers E7 to their standard tariff at the time cost wise there was nothing in it so was quids in when we moved to a cheaper online tariff, but i think you do need to think long term as if you did decide to use the night storage it would be expensive, wasn't an issue for us as we only had one storage heater at the time and was replacing the heating& water the following year

HappyMJ

How could you possibly only use 5% during the night. The fridge alone will use 30% during the 7 hours at night. The electric immersion heater uses all it's electric at night which is a large part of my bill. The night storage heaters use a very large part of a bill and if they were used they would use even more at night.

Even when I had gas heating the water and used for heating and cooking my night electric usage was still 20%.