What deal will mean I'm not spending a fortune?

Kirkingly

Hello,

I just recently moved into a 1 bedroom terraced house. It's a lovely place but when I moved in, it had a pre-payment system which, I find an absolute pain so I'm having moved over. I'm with Scottish Power in the Manweb region and prices aren't cheap.

I'm a web developer so I'm home working from any time between 7am and 9am till sometimes gone 11pm and therefore I'm house-bound for a lot of the time. My computer only uses ~200 watt, so isn't that expensive to run however, with the winter approaching the house is horribly cold and I only have storage heaters (as at the moment I'm on an E7 package). But I'm asking myself, overall, will I be spending a lot more money on E7 by the fact 90% of my electricity will be used in the day?

There is only me here and I'm already spending £50 a month and that's without the heating even on. Before I moved here, I was previously on the "Online discounted energy" package, but I'm not sure what to go with this time round when I finally have a regular meter fitted. Will it be worth sticking with E7 primarily because my landlord has fitted the house with storage heaters or do I switch onto a different deal and pay more for my heating (which I'm dreading what it'll be!).

Any help I can get I'd truly appreciate it.

Thank you,
Kirk

penrhyn

When you are running your storage heaters the majority of your electricity will be used during the seven hour off peak hours.
Depending on the age of the heaters you may find that by the evening the heat output will be falling off so you'll need supplementary heat.

Get some more insulation.

Kirkingly

I know the heaters will run overnight in the 7 off-peak hours but as I'm working for the remaining 14 hours all day with my gadgets running, having E7 doesn't seem at all beneficial by the fact the day time prices are much more expensive?

They're fairly new.. although I can't vouch at how good they are now because my offpeak board isn't working.

I've been looking at layers I can put on the windows and additional blinds but obviously as it's only rented, I'm not wanting to invest a big deal of my money onto a property that has no value or gain for me, other than being warm, of course

penrhyn

How many storage heaters have you got and what is their rating?
One 2Kw storage heater will consume the same as 10 200 watt PCs.

victor2

Storage heaters on for the off peak 7 hours will us much much more electricity than your computer for 14 hours.
Once they're working and in use, compare your metered consumption figures for day and night over a typical week. That will give you an idea what the split is between day and night usage.
But as penrhyn says, you may need supplementary heating, so you might then find that E7 is not the best for you.

amiehall

How is your water heated? I'm quite a low electricity user and am out a lot of the day. However, I find that, even without the storage heaters on, my E7 immersion water heater means I use 50% at night.

The other point I would make is, is it your Direct Debit that is £50 a month or are you actually using that much when you get bills using accurate meter readings? If it's just the DD, you probably aren't using that much at this time of year. The idea of a DD in this season is to build up some credit on your account to cover the expectation of higher winter bills. You might not actually be spending that much at the moment? How is your overnight use comparing to the daytime use?

edit: On a PPM my mistake!

Kirkingly

penrhyn wrote: »

How many storage heaters have you got and what is their rating?
One 2Kw storage heater will consume the same as 10 200 watt PCs.

I have 1 larger storage heater downstairs (which is where I normally am):
Dimplex FXL24N - 3.4kW / 24kWh storage & 1.5kW boost

One in the bedroom that I'll rarely use as I have a halogen to have on just before I go to bed as I'm never in there, but it is:
Dimplex FXL18N - 2.6kW / 18kWh storage & 1.5kW boost

Only other heater upstairs is in a tiny room which is:
Dimplex XL6N 0.85kW / 5.95kWh storage

The bathroom has no storage heaters, only has this small sort of wall-hairdryer as I call it (which is pathetic).

victor2 wrote: »

Storage heaters on for the off peak 7 hours will us much much more electricity than your computer for 14 hours.
Once they're working and in use, compare your metered consumption figures for day and night over a typical week. That will give you an idea what the split is between day and night usage.
But as penrhyn says, you may need supplementary heating, so you might then find that E7 is not the best for you.

If I do stick with E7, I'm assuming Scottish Power won't be the best to stay with considering their daytime prices so I'd have to see what offers I can get in the area. But I have a feeling I'll have to stay with Scottish Power considering how it took 6 weeks to even get them to change my prepayment meter (still waiting) I'd dread the wait of changing supplier.

Pincher

Take daily readings of both meters over several days.

You can turn on the storage heaters one night to see how much they use.

Storage heater is good for people who stay during the day.

Kirkingly

I took a reading when I moved in and a week later and then a week later. So I've put together a simple spreadsheet just to give me the average day/night consumption and then comparing each package on a quarterly basis, as the likes of discounted energy, fixed price energy offer a cheaper first 225 kWh which I think is going to work out cheapest overall with their E7 option pricing at ~ £145.80 a quarter in comparison to ~£172, £169, £179 for options with standing charges, standard packages, premier plus packages (all E7 of course).

I'll keep writing down my usage until they finally finish my supply swap over and I can get rid of this prepayment method.