Official MSE Economy 7 Guide discussion

Tenant0406

Hi

Just moved into my first house, I'm on economy 7 pay -as -you go tarrif.
We have storage heaters in every room with a switch on the wall and an output and input dials. However I just can't figure them out. We seem to be getting through a lot of money very quickly so I have a few questions.

1. Do you leave the wall switch on all the time throughout colder months? Or do you just switch it on at night? If switch is on during day is it using more expensive rates? And does storage heater still give out heat if the wall switch is off?
2. Do you turn input dial down during the day? Whilst output is turned up?


Water immersion heater - not working for me!
- do the main water tanks need to be switched on by the wall?
_do I set the timer to what times during the night I want to heat the water?
_if I heat water all night using timer will it last the next day?
_what does boost do?


Please help!!

Blondie.28

My dad lives in a small 2 bedroom bungalow on economy 7 with radiators and no storage heaters. He runs his heating at 20C from 7am to 10pm. As a consequence of an extremely high electric bill he is no longer heating any hot water. He does have an oxygen generator that runs 24/7. The tv is on all day and he runs the washing machine/tumble dryer a maximum of 2 times a week. He is currently being charged over £200 a month which seems ridiculous to me? Would he be better switching to a standard tariff or an economy 10 tariff?

Flowboy

Some basics:
You should leave the storage heaters switched on at the wall all the time except when you don't need heating - e.g. May to Oct. In the summer, turn 'em off. They only charge at night (automatically at the meter) except *see below. If your storage heaters are working OK they can get very hot to touch (particularly on a high output) setting. If after a full nights charge they are barely warm then they are probably old / worn out / faulty.
In general the economic way to use them is a low output (say 1 on the dial) only turned up a bit when you're in the room & need a bit more heat. The input setting will depend on the weather. Think of it like a battery charger, the higher input, the more charge, the longer it lasts (& of course the more it costs!) Start at say 4 & see how it feels next day. If too cool, set to 4.5 or 5 or even 6 in very cold weather. If too warm then try 3.5 or 3, or even 2 or 1. Usually when you're happy with the amount of charge & day heat you get then leave the input as-is. Just a tweak is required either way the night before a charge, as the weather changes.
Sometimes the heaters are too small for the room so you will never get more than a reasonable background heat effect from them & turning to boost will hurt your wallet. They are often fitted in houses with poor insulation (e.g. a lot of UK housing stock) so they struggle to heat the house as a lot goes out of the building. If you can't change this with uprated insulation then it's wooly jumpers & or thermals for you. Yes I know you like to wear a T shirt indoors midwinter but be sensible or be broke...
*Using daytime Boost setting is expensive;
If you have your heaters turned up at night to warm your bedroom or other rooms, that is like discharging a battery at the same time as you're trying to charge it! Your bedroom will be very warm (but you're snug under your duvet so the bedroom doesn't need the heat) but the next day the heater won't give out much heat or not for very long.
Then people are tempted to turn up the boost on the heater in the daytime & as a result are charged more than the normal daytime rate for it = big bills. Usually well over 100% more than the night charge cost & many, many % more than std day costs per KWh.
This seems to be a common misunderstanding about how E7 works. It charges or runs at cheap night rate anything connected to the E7 meter circuit/s; storage heaters, HW immersion cylinder & any washer / dishwasher. If they are connected to that circuit & you run them in the day it will cost you more than normal electricity. :eek:

Flowboy

Blondie.28,
When you say radiators but not storage heaters, is there a gas fired boiler central heating system? If they are Electric panel or oil filled radiators then they will be expensive to run, particularly trying to achieve 20c all day. Possibly night storage heaters would be cheaper to run but only if charged at night. (see my previous post) Plus of course cost of fitting them... Also the programmable ones seem to be very expensive. The standard manual ones are more difficult to get the best from & need more adjusting.

If his hot water is connected to Economy 7 then HW cyl should be set to come on only at night - say after 2am to be safe (suppliers vary when their E7 comes on) The HW should be on a timer - 1 or 2 hrs a night would probably be enough (some might need more or less depending on baths / showers / washing etc) If the HW is not on a timer it will have a thermostat that would switch off the heat when it has reached 60-65 deg. but this is not ideal as it will come back on again when it cools a bit, so is virtually "on all the time". A timer is best. HW cyl. also needs to be well insulated with a cylinder jacket or 2.

If on E7, the wash/drier machine should be run at night also. If run in the day it will cost more. Tumble driers are notoriously expensive to run, better to hang washing outside or in a room (bathroom?) with washing line that can be aired all day. Definitely cheaper to run on E7 but they are a known fire risk, best to have them come on in the last hour or 2 of E7 night rate (before 6 or 7 am.? - depends when supplier switches to day rate.)
E10 is not as cheap electricity as E7 but you can run some things at certain times of day for extra boost of heat or drier use at the cheaper rate.

warmy

Hi
Hope someone can help .
My mum has just moved into 2 bed bungalow with economy 7 .
She lives there on her own and is the first time she has had economy 7 but she has just got her first bill from British gas and for 35 days usage it totals£270 we were both completely shocked she has used 1463 night units and 318 day units
Does this sound over the top or is it because we are in winter?
Could there be something wrong with the storage heaters?
They are old have been reading the meters daily for about a week and day usage is about 6 units per day and the night is. 44 units
If anyone has any ideas of how we can reduce this please
Thanks

jk0

warmy wrote: »

Hi
Hope someone can help .
My mum has just moved into 2 bed bungalow with economy 7 .
She lives there on her own and is the first time she has had economy 7 but she has just got her first bill from British gas and for 35 days usage it totals£270 we were both completely shocked she has used 1463 night units and 318 day units
Does this sound over the top or is it because we are in winter?
Could there be something wrong with the storage heaters?
They are old have been reading the meters daily for about a week and day usage is about 6 units per day and the night is. 44 units
If anyone has any ideas of how we can reduce this please
Thanks

Just winter I'm afraid. My house used 36 night units today and 45 yesterday.

Maybe mum could find a cheaper supplier?

warmy

Thanks jk0 For your reply
My mum has made the decison to replace the 4 old storage heaters so that should make them efficiant .so will look at changing suppliers and getting the best price per unit

molerat

warmy wrote: »

Thanks jk0 For your reply
My mum has made the decison to replace the 4 old storage heaters so that should make them efficiant .so will look at changing suppliers and getting the best price per unit

Very unlikely that the small energy savings from new storage heaters will come anywhere close to the capital cost of replacing them for many many years but they will look prettier.

And please confirm she is going to fit proper storage heaters and not something with the word "eco" in the name and filled with a magic fairy dust heat storage medium.

jk0

Wot Molerat said.

More efficient storage heaters are going to be about £700 each, and save a max of 20%. Let's say you save £250 per year?

That's a payback of over 11 years, without even installation costs. However, those new heaters will need repairs by then, that will also cost around £250 per year, so mum will never save anything.

Jools17

My late husband insisted we have economy 7 but my electricity bills are huge compared to my neighbours and i think this is part of the reason. I think I’m only using 30-35% nighttime electricity compared to daytime but I dont know how to switch to a normal tariff. My contract is up shortly and i want to reduce my bills as im living alone and away a lot and need the money. Last year I used 15010 kWh (Feb 2016-17). Last period 15 Aug - 21 Nov 2017 was 660kWh on nighttime and 660kWh on daytime and I paid £160 including a standing charge of £21.20 on the iVariable tariff with iSupply. Is this good or bad???