Comparing costs: standard electricity on cheap tariff v. Economy 10 on expensive one

sheps

good to know scottish hydro should not charge me if we do decide to change from E10 meter, after it is fitted, really wish i could find a way to work out if i should by pass it and contact them and ask for standard meter before they come fit the E10 one, just have feeling this could be a rather costly winter if we do stick with E10 and use another kind of heater for livingroom in peak times when needed as i guess rest of house should stay at a reasonable temp if we careful how we use the heating. Hope the switch does give you the saving you expect op

sheps

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

- we can't help till we know what you've got, and how its installed and your tariff type with your leccy supplier

the council arranged scottish hydro to install E10 peak 14.8p low rate 10.53p and standing day charge 16.45p (incl vat) off peak times 12-5am 1pm-4pm 8pm-10pm

i have 2 boilers and hot water one is also connected to 2 solar panels. the base temp is taken from my hall rad and controls when the others via a therom i can adjust on wall, the other rads are adjustable.

sorry this is not my area of expertise but hope thats enough info, i guess if you need the model of boilers and the air thing i could go look on them it got to be written somewhere..

what i really want to know is if it be cheaper to have this on a standard tariff where it on all time or keeping e10 and warming everything up as much as poss on cheap rate and letting things cool and only using if we have to on peak, due to health issues i need at least livingroom at a temp that bearable to people who feel the cold (due to health), all day most days.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Three types Ground source / Air source and Water source. The cheapest two retro fit space heating are air & piped [radiators] water which is what yours is.

Assuming :

.1. - the dwellings have been properly assessed and heat loss [ insulation ] attended to first the installed system should match the dwelling, for example a two bedroom flat will be different from a 4 bedroom house
.2. - additionally because the 'seasonal performance requirement' will be quite different in Braemar 6.5cpa compared to the warmth of St Helier at 12.1cpa I assume their choice of system will cope with your needs

Now the answer to your question is I don't know. What I do know is most of those costs you can control yourself will be down to 'lifestyle' issues. A 4 bedroom home with 4 kids in and out of the open doors all day and each using the bath at night will be very expensive. A 2 bedroom house with both parties out all day till 7pm and using a shower will be very cheap. Retired or disabled and in all day will need constant extra daytime heat for 4 months of the year in addition to a 50" plasma and electric cooking etc.Either way it should give a minimum 10-20% saving on average costs - more to those who use less etc.

The E7 E10 or standard non-E lifestyle question.

- both E7 & E10 will give a tank full of cheap insulated boiling water every night including most of the year when the panels should be supplying it

- if [winter] however the panels have already supplied the tank with the volume of water it holds the E7 / E10 will only [draw] very little electric cost

- there are no space heating costs [winter] on E7 / E10 for most of the year as there is no storage, once again it will [draw] very little electric cost

- the system itself however uses electricity 24/7 so its really down to lifestyle.

If I was a reasonably well off pensioner / disabled and mainly 'home alone' all day for most of the year I would go E10, put simply its the luxury expensive end of E7 which supplied daytime bursts of extra cheap electricity.

If I was a reasonably well off family with 2 teenage girls all 4 of us using the bath every night I might consider E10 but should go for E7

If I was a not very well off pensioner / disabled and mainly 'home alone' all day for most of the year I could certainly manage on the cheaper E7 with a supplementary heater as required, and it will be required.

If I had an UBER insulated airtight eco house I'd go with the cheapest low use standard [non-E] rate supplier I could find.

If I were you I'd suck~it~and~see for the first 13 weeks at least, check all others see how they fared with their lifestyle & tariff choice and see the domestic installations research that comes out after the first 3-6 months .. .. then make a much more informed choice, which is always safest after the event. The bottom line is if your cheap units do not form at least a minimum of 20% of your total units you should be neither on E7 nor on E10.

NOTE : a pensioner reasonably well off or otherwise who is disabled and mainly 'home alone' all day for most of the year [particularly the winter] might consume a large amount of day priced units regardless of E7 / E10 / standard tariff because of the need for bursts of 'supplementary' extra heating,

Hope this helps.

Richie-from-the-Boro

gterr wrote: »

Just reporting back as the OP:

I have now had E10 meters removed from two different properties: one heated by an air source heat pump and the other by an electric boiler (Amptec) and wet rads. I have switched both properties away from Scottish Hydro: one on to an EDF Blue+ fix (no longer available) and the other on to Scottish Power's 2-year fix. (It took me longer to get the meter exchanged on the second property by which time the previous 3 top fixes had gone).

I am expecting between 15% and 22% savings based on the same yearly kWh usage. But I also think I can achieve additional savings by no longer having the E10 tariff. In the case of the air source heat pump we were using way too many peak units because this system is basically 'on' all the time. In the case of the property heated by the Amptec boiler I had the timer set to try to make use of the off-peak hours for heating the hot water, but also needed it on a lot of peak hours to keep the house warm. I can now reduce the hours the central heating's on to suit the usage of the house (a couple of hours in the morning, and 6 or 7 hours in the evening). Time will tell, but I'm confident we'll use fewer kWh in both properties and make even bigger savings.

When I phoned Scottish Hydro to request a meter change on the second property the customer services lady said very sadly "Are you planning to switch away from us?" I then feared she might say there would be a fee for the meter swap, but she didn't. It took 10 days for the change of meter/tariff to appear on the national database, and I had an agonising wait for this before I could initiate the switch.

- thanks for keeping the group informed gterr
- as you have seen others need to know and appreciate your input

sheps

cheers richie, guess we just have to wait and go with e10 until we have something to work with. We are in a 3 bed 50s built stone bungalow (thick stone internal walls and closed off chimnneys). The boilers all in an out building (heating has not got a storage tank it tiny wee tank compaired to water one, and the water one is only big enough for one half filled bath i found out today. A family of 6 with one child under 1 and 3 school aged. We are both disabled, but not really well off, so sounds like it going to cost us a lot to run this all the time so maybe we better just using it as little as we can and heat main room with a seperate heater when we need top up. With storage we estimated to pay scottish hydro were £1800 in next 12 months with new prices going on previous usage, so as long as it the same or better guess we just have to get on with it for the now and keep an eye on how much we use to try and avoid getting a huge bill at end of winter. Dont like thought of been tied to hydro for e10 tbh, but guess no choice after hearing ops experiences. Just hope the installers have set up system correct for house as by what i can gather it makes all the difference. I do see timers not at same time in boiler room as one in kitchen and they had immersion switched on so i switched it off...(hope i did right) they here tomorrow or tues to finish conecting solar panels so i will ask as many questions as i can think of then and hopefully learn a bit more about how it all works and how best to set it up .. thanks for all the help and thanks so much op for your post, i glad i not only one who wondered this, and now feel i have a wee bit more confidence to move forward and in time make best choices for our family.

Richie-from-the-Boro

sheps wrote: »

cheers richie, guess we just have to wait and go with e10 until we have something to work with. We are in a 3 bed 50s built stone bungalow (thick stone internal walls and closed off chimnneys). The boilers all in an out building (heating has not got a storage tank it tiny wee tank compaired to water one, and the water one is only big enough for one half filled bath i found out today. A family of 6 with one child under 1 and 3 school aged. We are both disabled, but not really well off, so sounds like it going to cost us a lot to run this all the time so maybe we better just using it as little as we can and heat main room with a separate heater when we need top up. With storage we estimated to pay Scottish hydro were £1800 in next 12 months with new prices going on previous usage, so as long as it the same or better guess we just have to get on with it for the now and keep an eye on how much we use to try and avoid getting a huge bill at end of winter. Dont like thought of been tied to hydro for E10 tbh, but guess no choice after hearing ops experiences. Just hope the installers have set up system correct for house as by what i can gather it makes all the difference. I do see timers not at same time in boiler room as one in kitchen and they had immersion switched on so i switched it off...(hope i did right) they here tomorrow or tues to finish conecting solar panels so i will ask as many questions as i can think of then and hopefully learn a bit more about how it all works and how best to set it up .. thanks for all the help and thanks so much op for your post, i glad i not only one who wondered this, and now feel i have a wee bit more confidence to move forward and in time make best choices for our family.

The immersion heater is the equivalent of a big expensive and seriously inefficient [see #32] kettle. I can think of no reason whatsoever that it needs switching on ever, other than that extravagant lifestyle one of a large family taking baths I mentioned earlier, in which case stop the baths for all but the bairns and change the lifestyle to suit the long term pocket. If anyone needs to switch on an immersion its because their current heating system is useless for purpose.

I said earlier """- either way I'm envious - I'd love the system""" and I would, I still stand by my earlier assumption that a 10-20% cash savings should be had regardless. The going UK 'real average' for a 2 bedder dwelling according to posts here over the last UK year was about £1100+ most of that cost of course was in the cold 26 weeks. The average hot water needs of a populated 4 bedder is about 250 litres per day.
____________________

Two Scenarios

.1. Myself, as a home owner / home all day / and disabled I would pay extra to have the hot water cylinder changed to a 250 / 290 litre direct and an additional 2.5k-3.4kWh storage heater installed in the main living area in addition to the other work .. .. and wired as E7 .. ,, I would of course keep E7.

.2. Yourself, you are tied I assume 'social sector' rented housing and can not do as I would have done. However if you are both disabled you should be on a Scottish Power Carefree type register and on a Scottish Power type Warm Home scheme. If yourself or your other half can make the claim that as part of your disability you have additional hot water 'hygiene' needs you should contact your local authority [O/T assessment] and GP to see if you can be assessed with a view to having an additional stored cheap E7 hot water supply fitted.

Best of luck sheps !

sheps

thank you again for the useful info, i will look into what you have said. i found out this year about the warm home scheme and applied. I dont know anything about the other things you mentioned but they sound like they might be very useful to us, but lack of space means we would struggle to have another heater in main room that was not small and portable like a halogen heater (my partner does like to have this anyway as he feels the direct heat if it is sat next to him helps with his pain). lots to think about, thank you again.