Official MSE Economy 7 Guide discussion

hotnuts21

Hi MSE Team,

The Guide currently has the following listed.
Cheapest rates
Off peak rate (midnight-7am) = 7p per kWh
Peak rate (7am-midnight) = 13p per kWh

highest rates
Off peak rate (12am-7am) = 10p per kWh
Peak rate (7am-12midnight) = 16p per kWh

Npowers fix April 2015 Tariff and the one I am on is as follows which is both cheaper than the cheapest and slightly higher than the highest, but as 70% of my elec use is at off peak, it works out well for me.

Standing charge £ 0.0960 Day
Peak Day rate 18.530p kWh
Off Peak Night rate (E7) 5.960p kWh

Cardew

hotnuts21 wrote: »

Hi MSE Team,

The Guide currently has the following listed.
Cheapest rates
Off peak rate (midnight-7am) = 7p per kWh
Peak rate (7am-midnight) = 13p per kWh

highest rates
Off peak rate (12am-7am) = 10p per kWh
Peak rate (7am-12midnight) = 16p per kWh

Npowers fix April 2015 Tariff and the one I am on is as follows which is both cheaper than the cheapest and slightly higher than the highest, but as 70% of my elec use is at off peak, it works out well for me.

Standing charge £ 0.0960 Day
Peak Day rate 18.530p kWh
Off Peak Night rate (E7) 5.960p kWh

What Guide?


What area?


What consumption at peak rates?


What consumption at off peak rate?


What discounts are available? Payment method, dual fuel etc.


The difficulty these days - with the 'simplified' tariffs! - is that unless you know all those factors, you cannot work out the cheapest tariff for any individual.

awizzbang

We are a EON heatwise customer (economy10) and have just received their price increases. The E10 unit price has just gone up from 7.382p per unit to 8.694p per unit a massive 17.8% increase. There don't appear to be any other companies that have a similar tariff hence no chance of changing companies. How can EON justify such an increase especially given they are talking aabout increases overall of 3-4%.
Any ideas of a way forward?

John_Pierpoint

Upwind wrote: »

John,

I've got the bill in front of me

It shows the following:

Economy 7: Day Charge

Followed by two readings a Start Reading and an End reading

It then shows the Units used: 439 KWh

This is further broken down into two Consumption Charges reflected as so:

Consumption Charge, secondary 232 KWh x 12.596p = £29.22
Consumption Charge, primary 207 KWh x 22.362p = £46.29

This reading matches the indicator on my digital meter that flashes with a small 1 to the left of it.


Underneath this there is a further section that says:

Economy 7: Night Charge.

Followed by two readings a Start Reading and an End reading

This is reflected as follows:

Consumption Charge, 199 KWh x 5.778p = £11.50

There is then a Total Charge Box = £87.01

This reading matches the indicator on my digital meter that flashes with a small 2 to the left of it.

These figures are then added to my Gas charges (+ Vat) to form my bill.

My (Essex) flashing 1 means night rate
and the flashing 2 means day rate.
In the past this has caused extra chaos, in addition to being billed for the wrong meter, because on the tablet, that the meter readers use to record the readings, the flashing numbers are the other way round. (*)

So at least you don't have that problem;),

Can I assume that those figures cover a 3 month summer quarter ?

The higher charge for the first chunk of "units" measured in kWh (kilo Watt hours where the Watt is the power (flow rate) and h is the hours you got that delivered) is in effect the standing charge.
The power companies have managed to retain the standing charge, which does make sense as we need to build masses more network to connect all the diverse new generators, be they off shore wind farms or new atomic power stations. However it means that the bill is that much more complicated.

You could go onto a comparison web site and play with your relatively low consumption figures and work out your economy 7 break even point and or try to switch more electrical consumption to the night time.
Anything producing heat is a candidate for delaying with a time clock: Washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, freezer (?) and obviously use of kettles and microwaves if possible. [Breadmaker ?].

(*) We have other examples of failing to standardise correctly - sometimes it is "not invented here" and other times it is simply lack of management: For example the chunky 3 pin plug and the BT phone plug where the "females" are wired the opposite way round from their "males".



http://www.wppltd.demon.co.uk/WPP/Wiring/UK_telephone/uk_telephone.html

aurion22

I've just read here: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/economy-7#meterchange that Scottish Power is one of the companies which will change a meter FREE if you move from E7 to standard tariff.

I asked about this only yesterday and Scottish Power told me it would cost me £50!!

There's also very little difference between the daily rate I'm on (14.571p/kWh fixed till Aug 2014) and the current daily rate of 14.349p/kWh so it's not worth my while paying £50 to change the meter.

Now that I have solar panels I'm hardly using any electricity at night and the woodburner keeps the chill off.

Cardew

aurion22 wrote: »

Now that I have solar panels I'm hardly using any electricity at night and the woodburner keeps the chill off.

Not understood!


Your solar panels don't generate anything at night; they only generate in daylight hours.

aurion22

Cardew wrote: »

Not understood!

Your solar panels don't generate anything at night; they only generate in daylight hours.

Well spotted, Cardew! :-)

Sorry I wasn't very clear: as I now have solar panels I'm using convector heaters during the day.They also keep the place frost-free at night but that doesn't use anything like the amount of electricity I used to consume when I was running the storage heaters.

Amazingly, with the woodburning stove as well, I'm only using about the same amount of electricity during the day as I was this time last year and almost nothing at night.

I was looking for alternatives and was just confused at seeing on MSE that Scottish Power would change the meter FREE but they'd just told me that it would cost £50 to move from Economy 7. It didn't seem worth the effort and expense to change as SP's standard rate is only marginally cheaper than I'm paying now during the day but, obviously, much more expensive during the night. I'd hope to find some objective info on heaters which combined storage with convector heating.

Thanks for proving that you actually read my post. Any suggestions?

Loretta

John_Pierpoint

You must have lots of mirrors trained on your panels at this time of year, to be able to turn on more than a third of a convector heater, without sucking in full price electricity?

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/64075655#Comment_64075655

aurion22

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

You must have lots of mirrors trained on your panels at this time of year, to be able to turn on more than a third of a convector heater, without sucking in full price electricity?

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/64075655#Comment_64075655

Um .. you seem to be replying to a message from another thread.
:-(

John_Pierpoint

Originally Posted by aurion22

Now that I have solar panels I'm hardly using any electricity at night and the woodburner keeps the chill off.

aurion22 wrote: »

Um .. you seem to be replying to a message from another thread.
:-(

I am at a loss to understand how solar panels, be they PV or thermal, significantly reduce the need for night time heating of water at this time of the year?

Is the log burner generating hot water as well as space heating?