Economy 7 - Help!

DJ_MPH

Hi MoneySavingExperts! :-)

As you can see i'm new to the threads, though have been a long time reader. Right now i need the help of some people in the know!

Me and my partner recently had the unfortunate experience of renting a flat through Bridgfords lettings :doh:

The flat was all electric and ran on economy 7 tariff through e-on. For 2 months of our tenancy the overnight element wasnt in working order (though we had informed Bridgfords of this, but thats a story for another day!) so we were left with having to use the "boost" switch 24/7 for 2 months.

Now we know this option is much more expensive, what we're trying to work out is roughly how much more expensive is it to run the "boost" rather than the overnight element? We tried emailing e-on but they say without knowing which boiler it was they cannot give any figures. We are no longer at the property so finding out the make and model of boiler is simply not an option. We need a rough measure of accuracy or educated guesses so we know how much to request for undue heating costs.

Any help please?

grahamc2003

It's quite simple to come up with some sort of reasonable estimate.

A first cut approximation would simply be the ratio of your daytime cost per kWh to your nighttime cost. So for example, my night rate is about 5p/kWh, day rate about 12p/kWh, so a reasonable ratio would be 12/5 = 2.4 i.e. a first approximation is you have spent 2.4 times as much as you needed to.

That is a little crude, so we can refine it a bit with a second cut approximation by taking in the next important factor. You may well have used some daytime electrcity anyhow, or at least it's reasonable to assume you would for this purpose. Finger in the air stuff, but let's guess that it's reasonable that you'd have used 10% of your heating anyhow in the daytime. The distributiuon of heating at night also leads to a penaly which should be taken ncare of (i.e. heating at night leads to some wasteage, and you probably used less units than you would have done had you only heated at night). I'd allow another 10% for that. I think taking into aco!!!! thoise factors gives a very good basis for a refund.

So, say you used 1000kWh (and this figure doesn't matter, it could be 100 or 345, I'm just using 1000 for convenience. Let's use my rates of 5p and 12p, so you would have spent £120 for full daytime use.

If you could have used nighttime rates, then you would have had to have used 100 daytime units, and 900+10% nightime, to alloow for the above factors. This would have cost you £12 (daytime element) and about £50 nightime element, making about £62 overall.

So you spent £120 because of full daytime use, yet you would have spent £62 if you could have heated at night, leaving a ratio of more or less 2. I'd say a very fair refund from your landlord would be about 1/2 of your actual heating costs.

DJ_MPH

Great answer, thanks - but can i please ask how dividing the day rate by the night rate gives a rough idea of the extra costs? I'm not implying that its wrong by any means, just would like to know why so i can explain it to the agency/landlord. Our day rate was 26.39p/KWh and our night rate was 6.08/KWh. so 26.39/6.08 = 4.34. . . .


The added trouble is that we didnt have access to our meter and eon never came to read it. So we have a reading for the beginning of the tenancy, a reading for the end, but nothing accurate for inbetween, so its hard to accurately judge how many extra units we used over the period in question.

Do you think its fair to assume that because we cannot accurately depict how many units were used over the said period that the rate of spending 4.34 times what what we would have normally used would be a fair assumption?

Sorry for the confusion, its confusing for me so i'm trying to get it down on "paper" as clearly as i can.

Naf

First look at those figures, change your tarriff
I'm on E7 too, and because I had no clue of my expected usage I decided to go with the coop so I wasn't tied in. Even then I get 13p day rate and 7p night rate, and others on here have to me that I need to change to a better plan. 26p day rate is really high!
To get a better figure, how often have you had to actually switch the boost on per day, roughly?

HappyMJ

Are you sure 26p is not the primary rate. Usually that's only charged on the first 2kW per day. The secondary rate should be at least 10p cheaper.

Being charged double on peak rate as opposed to night rate is the normal calculation as explained in great detail earlier.

DJ_MPH

Naf wrote: »

First look at those figures, change your tarriff
I'm on E7 too, and because I had no clue of my expected usage I decided to go with the coop so I wasn't tied in. Even then I get 13p day rate and 7p night rate, and others on here have to me that I need to change to a better plan. 26p day rate is really high!
To get a better figure, how often have you had to actually switch the boost on per day, roughly?

Well we have moved from the property now and are no longer on E7 thankfully.

Both the electrician and the plumber that the letting agency sent said that it was just as economical to leave the boost on permanently to save the element having to heat up large amounts of water when switched on. Their reasoning being that the boilers are so well insulated these days that they retain a lot of the heat.

So it was switched on 24 hours a day 7 days a week for a little over 2 months :undecided

HappyMJ

DJ_MPH wrote: »

Well we have moved from the property now and are no longer on E7 thankfully.

Both the electrician and the plumber that the letting agency sent said that it was just as economical to leave the boost on permanently to save the element having to heat up large amounts of water when switched on. Their reasoning being that the boilers are so well insulated these days that they retain a lot of the heat.

So it was switched on 24 hours a day 7 days a week for a little over 2 months :undecided

So just water then. Hardly makes any real difference complaining about it now. Water heating in my house uses 3kWh per day...I don't have a timer it's left on 24 hours a day. My day rate is 18.501p and my night rate is 5.775p. 1kWh of the heating for water is used at night and 2kWh is used during the day. I could save 25.45 pence per day by installing a timer and moving 2kWh of water heating onto the night rate. The savings should be similar in your case.

How much did you use on the day rate and how much on the night rate?

DJ_MPH

HappyMJ wrote: »

So just water then. Hardly makes any real difference complaining about it now. Water heating in my house uses 3kWh per day...I don't have a timer it's left on 24 hours a day. My day rate is 18.501p and my night rate is 5.775p. 1kWh of the heating for water is used at night and 2kWh is used during the day. I could save 25.45 pence per day by installing a timer and moving 2kWh of water heating onto the night rate. The savings should be similar in your case.

How much did you use on the day rate and how much on the night rate?

Not sure how a lot of things work, but i assume dishwasher, washing machine and shower/bath (ie hot water) were all using the element. Not sure if anything else would?

With regards to how much was used for any particular period is impossible to say. We only had 2 readings, one when we moved in and one a year later at the end of our tenancy.

12559 - Day reading when we moved in
35182 - Night reading when we moved in

14124 -Day reading when we moved out
40920 - Night reading when we moved out

You were right HappyMJ, there are 2 day prices on the bill, but most of our day units have been estimated as being used on the higher tariff, like this one (copied and pasted from my online bill)

Charges
Day units used 224 kWh at 26.39p each £59.11
Day units used 20 kWh at 15.71p each £3.14
Night units used 918 kWh at 6.08p each £55.81

HappyMJ

DJ_MPH wrote: »

Not sure how a lot of things work, but i assume dishwasher, washing machine and shower/bath (ie hot water) were all using the element. Not sure if anything else would?

With regards to how much was used for any particular period is impossible to say. We only had 2 readings, one when we moved in and one a year later at the end of our tenancy.

12559 - Day reading when we moved in
35182 - Night reading when we moved in

14124 -Day reading when we moved out
40920 - Night reading when we moved out

You were right HappyMJ, there are 2 day prices on the bill, but most of our day units have been estimated as being used on the higher tariff, like this one (copied and pasted from my online bill)

Charges
Day units used 224 kWh at 26.39p each £59.11
Day units used 20 kWh at 15.71p each £3.14
Night units used 918 kWh at 6.08p each £55.81

That's your bill....

Forget complaining that's fine. Most of your usage is as it should be at night.

There may be a switch always on but it has been connected to the E7 circuit so only operates at night. If the boost button was always on on the top element then it will only heat the water when it's really cold...i.e after you run a full bath. Generally the bottom element is set to 65 degrees and the top element set to 50 degrees so hardly ever comes on and just gives you enough water to wash hands and dishes.

Your entire year day usage is 1,565kWh which is about half the average.

Dishwasher heats cold water, washing machine heats cold water. Shower depends on the shower...mine heats cold water.

DJ_MPH

HappyMJ wrote: »

That's your bill....

Forget complaining that's fine. Most of your usage is as it should be at night.

There may be a switch always on but it has been connected to the E7 circuit so only operates at night. If the boost button was always on on the top element then it will only heat the water when it's really cold...i.e after you run a full bath. Generally the bottom element is set to 65 degrees and the top element set to 50 degrees so hardly ever comes on and just gives you enough water to wash hands and dishes.

Your entire year day usage is 1,565kWh which is about half the average.

Dishwasher heats cold water, washing machine heats cold water. Shower depends on the shower...mine heats cold water.

Well thats good news that its been connected to E7 Thanks

Both my partner and I used the shower every morning, and by the time I got out of the shower (I was always second so never got the REALLY hot water ) the water was running cold. As i'm a landscaper I also had to shower when I got home, as well as using dishwasher, washing machine etc. So the tank was being heated from cold maybe twice daily, as well as heating itself when necessary. Would this have made any impact over the course of 2 months. We were rarely in during the day and never used the heating.

Also does the night usage seem normal? Seems a little high considering all that was happening at night was the heating of the water and charging mobile phones overnight. . . It was a 2 bedroom flat if that makes any difference due to size etc.

EDIT: And its not necessarily the price of the bill that bothers us, but the fact that we potentially have had to pay a lot more than we perhaps would have had, had the boiler been working as it should have been.

HappyMJ

DJ_MPH wrote: »

Well thats good news that its been connected to E7 Thanks

Both my partner and I used the shower every morning, and by the time I got out of the shower (I was always second so never got the REALLY hot water ) the water was running cold. As i'm a landscaper I also had to shower when I got home, as well as using dishwasher, washing machine etc. So the tank was being heated from cold maybe twice daily, as well as heating itself when necessary. Would this have made any impact over the course of 2 months. We were rarely in during the day and never used the heating.

Also does the night usage seem normal? Seems a little high considering all that was happening at night was the heating of the water and charging mobile phones overnight. . . It was a 2 bedroom flat if that makes any difference due to size etc.

Not much difference at all. The cylinder is ually 150 litres plus. It would not have reheated it all. A shower would use only a third of that...unless she had really really long showers. The water would not have been very cold it would have still been warm at the top of the cylinder.

The usage to me seems low but as you say you didn't use any heating so could be high. Are you aure there wasn't a storage heater turned on giving you a small amount of background heat not requiring you to turn on any additional heating. It does get quite cold in the evening how did you keep warm?