Economy 7 questions

myself321

hi all

i am soon moving out into my own place in around 14 days time for the 1st time ever, who will i now who the Economy 7 provider is at the moment, am sorry if these sound like silly questions but i have never moved out be

can some kind person explain how Economy 7 works and who is the cheapest and best providers many thanks

Cardew

Every supplier has an Economy 7 tariff.

Essentially you get cheap electricity for 7 hours generally somewhere between Midnight and 8am. However you pay more for daytime electricity than you would on a 'normal' tariff.

So you have to see if you savings in the Seven hours, are more than you will pay during the other 17 hours.

Generally unless you have electric storage heating it will not pay you to have Economy 7. With electric storage heating it would be essential to have E7.

Best and cheapest depends where you live.

tripled

To find out the current supplier contact your local MPAS service - more details here.

MarkyMarkD

Either your new property will have an economy 7 meter or it won't. If it does, it probably isn't worth changing and vice versa.

I'm interested in Cardew's view that it's not worth having economy 7 without storage heaters.

Our property has economy 7 - it did when we moved in, and I think most houses in the area had these as standard when they were built. It's never had anything but gas central heating.

On our last bill we used 1,057 day units and 378 night units - a total of 1,435 units.

On a non-economy 7 tariff, it would have cost us (at current prices):

225 units @ 12.02p = £27.05
1185 units @ 9.42p = £111.63
Total cost = £138.68.

On our actual economy 7 tariff, it would have cost us (at current prices):

225 units @ 14.17p = £31.88
832 units @ 10.14p = £84.36
378 units @ 4.06p = £15.35
Total cost = £131.59.

So, we do actually save a small amount of money by trying quite hard to run things overnight on Economy 7 electricity: the dishwasher and washing machine only run overnight on timers and they are the only big electricity users which we have much discretion over time of use.

Even people who don't try to use the Economy 7 hours of elecricity will do so to some extent. Things like fridges/freezers will use around 7/24 of their electricity on the cheap power just because they are on all the time.

Cardew

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

Either your new property will have an economy 7 meter or it won't. If it does, it probably isn't worth changing and vice versa.

I'm interested in Cardew's view that it's not worth having economy 7 without storage heaters.

Our property has economy 7 - it did when we moved in, and I think most houses in the area had these as standard when they were built. It's never had anything but gas central heating.

On our last bill we used 1,057 day units and 378 night units - a total of 1,435 units.

On a non-economy 7 tariff, it would have cost us (at current prices):

225 units @ 12.02p = £27.05
1185 units @ 9.42p = £111.63
Total cost = £138.68.

On our actual economy 7 tariff, it would have cost us (at current prices):

225 units @ 14.17p = £31.88
832 units @ 10.14p = £84.36
378 units @ 4.06p = £15.35
Total cost = £131.59.

So, we do actually save a small amount of money by trying quite hard to run things overnight on Economy 7 electricity: the dishwasher and washing machine only run overnight on timers and they are the only big electricity users which we have much discretion over time of use.

Even people who don't try to use the Economy 7 hours of elecricity will do so to some extent. Things like fridges/freezers will use around 7/24 of their electricity on the cheap power just because they are on all the time.

MMD,
I did caveat my post by saying “Generally unless you have electric storage heating it will not pay you to have Economy 7.”

As you say it needs working at! and the area & company make a difference.
By the way I think you have understated your savings. If my arithmetic is correct you are comparing 1,410kWh on ‘normal’ with 1,435kWh on E7!

I did have E7 in my house but even working at making it pay, it was marginal. So I went on a normal tariff, although I still retain the meter(they simply add the 2 readings together )

Last year I used 17% on E7 times.

I am on BG Price protection 2010 and the prices(including VAT) for my area are:

11.907/7.157p and 15.265/9.834/2.064p
(the dreaded BG always had very good E7 night rates)

Had I stayed on E7 I would have been worse off to the tune of £85. Obviously I could have ‘worked at E7’ but I doubt if I could have made it less than a £40 deficit. Whilst my E7 night rates are very good, the difference between E7 and normal daytime rates is huge compared to yours.

With your consumption(using 1,435kWh) on my rates I still would have been over £10 worse off in the quarter by using E7 - albeit I would pay less than your current prices. (£123 to £113)

However there is another reason I came off E7. Often the dishwasher was not full at night, but not enough room to last another day, so it tended to be put on overnight when not full. Ditto, to a lesser extent, the washing machine. A false economy.

Although not a problem for me personally, I know a lot of people are bothered by the noise of washing machines(particularly when on spin), dishwashers & gurgling pipes coming on in the middle of the night. It is particularly a problem in apartments and is banned in some.

MarkyMarkD

You're quite right that I didn't add up properly - thanks! I won't even bother amending my post as it makes the point anyway.

Your original choice of supplier is influenced by whether you are on Ec7 or not - so comparing an Ec7 based total cost with a non-Ec7 based total cost is probably wrong for both of our calculations. In other words, you chose the best supplier for non-Ec7 and I chose the best for Ec7; they probably wouldn't have been our chosen suppliers if we'd chosen on the alternative basis.

We honestly always fill our dishwasher. The "not enough room to last another day" argument doesn't apply in our house - if it gets full at breakfast time the next day, the rest of the stuff just sits around for almost a day until it can go in the dishwasher the next morning.

And we definitely fill the washing machine - I'm not sure how your argument would apply there. We only ever do washing when we have a full load.

Your point about noise is a sound one - we are fortunate to have a kitchen and utility room which are miles from our bedroom and we definitely don't hear any noise from running the machines overnight. But I'm sure that many people would find the noise a pain.

Thanks for your comments.