Do I keep or ditch economy 7?

craggybuk

We are due to come out of a fixed term contract for our electricity in the next month and I'm wondering whether we should get rid of Economy 7 and go onto a standard meter. We dont have any storage heaters which I believe are the benefits of E7 and we use approx 20-25% of our energy during the Economy 7 period.

Any advice would be appreciated.

macman

Get your exact E7 cheap rate/peak rate kWh usage and percentage split from your annual statement. Armed with those figures, go to any comp site and see what the comparative costs are for an E7 or non-E7 tariff-it will take a couple of minutes.
If you don't have storage heaters, then I'm wondering how you are managing to use as much as 25% on cheap rate, it's presumably for hot water only via an immersion heater?
20-25% is 'on the cusp'. so it will depend on region, tariff and usage-the comp site will reveal all.

Cardew

macman wrote: »

Get your exact E7 cheap rate/peak rate kWh usage and percentage split from your annual statement. Armed with those figures, go to any comp site and see what the comparative costs are for anE7 or non-E7 tariff-it will take a couple of minutes.
If you don't have storage heaters, then I'm wondering how you are managing to use as much as 25% on cheap rate, it's presumably for hot water only via an immersion heater?
20-25% is 'on the cusp'. so it will depend on region, tariff and usage-the comp site will reveal all.

If you are an early riser you can use quite a lot of electricity in the morning. In my area cheap rate finishes at 7:30 in winter, 8:30 in summer

[Deleted User]

good advice from Cardew, especially if you ve got an electric shower. One check to make before ditching E7, is, if you ve got an old style mechanical meter which is controlled by a timer clock ( not radio teleswitch ) check what time it thinks it is, because they are nearly all well off the correct time and you may get the cheap rate in peak periods.

Cardew

sacsquacco wrote: »

good advice from Cardew, especially if you ve got an electric shower. One check to make before ditching E7, is, if you ve got an old style mechanical meter which is controlled by a timer clock ( not radio teleswitch ) check what time it thinks it is, because they are nearly all well off the correct time and you may get the cheap rate in peak periods.

Indeed, mine has 'slipped' 30 minutes so it changes at 9am currently - and we use an electric shower

Terrylw1

Once you've done Macman's check, if you need to change to standard be careful how its done. Some E7 meters are allowed to bill on either but some are not and must be changed.

Some suppliers are acting non compliantly by not changing some of them and the new supplier you could switch to later won't honour the agreement.

No point advising how to ensure they do this right until you do the check though.