Radio Telewitch use by social landlord and Power Company

Mollie90132

Can anyone tell me if they know if Power Companies can switch White Meter storage heating on (even if it is turned off at wall or turned to 0 on input dial)? ie the customer didn't want heating at that time and switched off. But found that electricity was being consumed during very cold spells.

I think it is something done via Radio Teleswitch.

regards
mollie

Wywth

Mollie90132 wrote: »

Can anyone tell me if they know if Power Companies can switch White Meter storage heating on (even if it is turned off at wall or turned to 0 on input dial)? ie the customer didn't want heating at that time and switched off. But found that electricity was being consumed during very cold spells.

I think it is something done via Radio Teleswitch.

regards
mollie

If your heaters are turned off, there is no way to turn them on remotely that I know of. Certainly not by anyone other than you for safety reasons.

Teleswitches may be used to decide when you get the low rate electricity to power the heaters, which are on their own separate cicuit.

So if you have the heaters turned on, they will only heat up when the cicuit becomes live which may be by use of a Teleswitch.

Mollie90132

Found the case below on the web.

..... energy7 account with Scottish power. So i have Creda storage heaters in all rooms which only have one on/off switch at the wall, on each of them.
My radio teleswitch has 2 on/off switches. During the day both these switches are off. However at about 9pm one of these switches goes 'on' [the one on the right],and all my storage heaters start charging up, although my supply at this point is 'normal' and therefore very expensive!
at about 11 pm both switches are 'off' and later in the night about 1 am, one of them come 'on' [on the left] and my storage heaters start charging up on the 'low' tarrif. How can i prevent the storage heaters from charging up on the earlier expensive tariff without manually switching off at the wall? .....

But as you say this guy had them on and the teleswitch turned on before cheap rate.

Basically, I am looking into why someone's useage went up quite a bit in cold weather and she was away. She is quite on the ball as to useage and had an idea of what actual useage was.

Vague explanation given to her over the phone (so no written proof of what was said) was that it was turned on/up on extreme cold weather by some sort of agreement between power company and landlord (not private).

She did manage to get some money back from power company. But nothing written to explain rebate or to explain this cold weather agreement.

But is this ethical, a power company can turn on your electricity useage without making it clear to you when it does? Or is her case just a one off and it does not generally happen?

regards
Mollie