npower - inappropriate meter

Badgers_Mount

I pay the utility bills for my elderly mother in respect ofher one bed flat. She has electricity only with night storage heaters, thesupplier is npower and she has an economy 7 tariff

In Sept 2012 her meter was changed after the old one wasdeemed faulty by an npower engineer.

After a few months I noticed that the meter readings wereshowing higher than normal day usage, up by over 400%. On closer inspection ofthe new meter I saw that it had a sticker showing the timing patterns as

R1 night 22.30 –00.30 & 02.30 - 07.30

R2 day 00.30 – 02.30 & 07.30 – 22.30

Clearly these timings were not in line with those thatshould be applicable to a user on an economy 7 tariff. R1 (night) should have been 00.30 - 07.30. 2hours at night was being allocated to day usage and more importantly the day tariff.At the time the tariffs applicable were 21.95p for day usage and 5.08p fornight usage so this meant a large increase in the bill and because my motherhas night storage heaters the bills would be even higher over the remainingwinter months.

After numerous phone calls, letters and a bit of a battlethe situation was resolved, The meter (designated code 0093) was removed andreplaced by a meter (0151) with the correct timings for an economy 7 user i.e.Night usage 00.30- 07.30. Npower evenreimbursed me for the period when the incorrect meter was in operation.

So problem sorted but I have never had a satisfactoryexplanation as to why the wrong meter was installed. I could be that this was aone off error but a meter with a designated code of 0093 should not beinstalled if the user is on economy 7 and especially if they have heavy nightusage. I am not even clear why a meter that allocates 2 hours of night usage toa day tariff should even exist at all.

I wanted to make members of this forum aware of this issue and wondered if anyone else has had a similar experience?

Hominu

Economy 7 just means 7 hours of low-rate electric, it doesn't mean 7 contiguous hours. The actual times are set by the network operator.

As you are now aware, group code 57 times are 22.30 - 00.30 and 02.30 - 07.30, so if you have these timings set, don't set your storage heaters or hot water boiler to come on before 2.30am!