Official MSE Economy 7 Guide discussion

OwenDibhing

QrizB said:

OwenDibhing said:

I am, I believe, an expert on E7 tariffs

There's something very off-putting about a brand new poster who declares themselves to be an expert on something.

Particularly when they go on to make unsubstantiated claims and use those claims to propose changes to the energy market that would benefit them.

It shouldn't be off-putting. I have been using off peak electricity for heating for over 35 years and feel sorry for those not able to navigate the E7 minefield. Many are just not able to calculate the costs of various E7 tariffs which providers vary in devious ways to catch out users. What is needed is a way of allowing competition from energy companies without the unfairness we have now.

QrizB

OwenDibhing said:

TheElectricCow said:

OwenDibhing said:

I am, I believe, an expert on E7 tariffs and know how to make the best of it. I have had off peak electric heating for 35 years (Nightstor 100) and an electric immersion water heater and also use washing machine and dishwasher overnight. I now also have an electric car which charges overnight.
For those who also use a lot of energy at night, there is a significant unfairness in how we are billed. 
With wind power becoming a major source of electricity, using electricity  to heat bricks at night and then using the heat it in the daytime is a major benefit to the grid. It is therefore daft and very unfair to make E7 users pay more for daytime electricity than those who use gas, oil, wood or coal for heating. In fact some energy providers offer lower electricity tariffs to those who have both gas and electricity from one supplier.

Why are E7 customers being punnished?

I will be writing to OFGEM to make the case for better treatment of E7 customers who use off peak electricity for heating. The Country needs more of them, not fewer. I will draft the letter and post it on this forum so that others here can make the same case. Perhaps Martin can join in.

Believe me, I’m all for a good E7 tariff, but what exactly is it you’re suggesting? That the off-peak rates should stay as is while peak rates are lowered to the same level as single rate tariffs?

If that’s the case, the cheap rate electricity won’t stay particularly cheap for very long once everyone in the country starts using it with no drawbacks.

Yes I am proposing that. People need to be encouraged to use off peak electricity particularly as wind and nuclear become predominant.

You might have been an E7 user for 35 years, but you're a bit out-of-date with the electricity market. Unlike the 80s when coal plants ran 24/7, it's no longer a given that there will be a surplus of electricity overnight. As a result, E7 is "old hat" as far as cheap time-of-use tariffs are concerned and E7 tariffs do not efficiently match energy demand to surplus supply.

Smart tariffs - which better match your laudable goal of using cheap electricity when there's a surplus - are where all the savings are to be made. Energy is priced every 30 minutes, and can on occasion be negatively priced (you are paid to use it).

See, for example, this screenshot from https://energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-southern-england/ showing the half-hourly pricing over last seven days:

You'll see that electricity was cheaper on Saturday and Sunday afternoon than it was at any time (including E7 hours) on Friday, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.

OTOH from 0100-0430 today, you would have been paid to take electricity off the grid's hands.

OwenDibhing

What you say about variability of electricity generation is true. It was really nuclear that drove the move to off peak tariffs and E10 + Night Storage Heaters, and this was considered to be the way forward for domestic heating. Then the gas and oil was discovered on the north sea.
The wind blows all the time somewhere in the UK, and the future yet again will have increasing nuclear power.  Because of the natural diurnal variation in electricity consumption, storage will be key. Storage of energy as heat in peoples homes will be key to leveling up consumption and is easily the most efficient way of storing energy. E7 is pretty good for now at helping achieve this but increasing complexity of TOU tariffs will make it impossible for consumers to compare costs from different suppliers who will, no doubt, enjoy bamboozling the public and the government.

QrizB

OwenDibhing said:

Storage of energy as heat in peoples homes will be key to leveling up consumption and is easily the most efficient way of storing energy.

I would suggest that storage of energy as electricity in people's EV batteries is more efficient and less time-dependent.

A 50kWh EV battery will store more energy than a typical house-worth of storage heaters, and you can get it back as electricity.

I don't think you can plug your TV into your storage heater!

OwenDibhing

There's nothing wrong with storing energy in people's EVs. Vehicle to home would enable me to move all of my electricity use to E7. Not sure what is holding it up. However it is intrinsically less efficient than converting electricity to heat only once.
More importantly, the cost of the hardware is much less when amortised over say 35 years. Bricks used in modern storage heaters do not degrade, batteries do.

OwenDibhing

Also, to add, the whole issue of electricity use and storage will revolve around the move away from fossil fuels for domestic heating. Light bulbs and TVs are insignificant in comparison.

TheElectricCow

OwenDibhing said:

TheElectricCow said:

OwenDibhing said:

I am, I believe, an expert on E7 tariffs and know how to make the best of it. I have had off peak electric heating for 35 years (Nightstor 100) and an electric immersion water heater and also use washing machine and dishwasher overnight. I now also have an electric car which charges overnight.
For those who also use a lot of energy at night, there is a significant unfairness in how we are billed. 
With wind power becoming a major source of electricity, using electricity  to heat bricks at night and then using the heat it in the daytime is a major benefit to the grid. It is therefore daft and very unfair to make E7 users pay more for daytime electricity than those who use gas, oil, wood or coal for heating. In fact some energy providers offer lower electricity tariffs to those who have both gas and electricity from one supplier.

Why are E7 customers being punnished?

I will be writing to OFGEM to make the case for better treatment of E7 customers who use off peak electricity for heating. The Country needs more of them, not fewer. I will draft the letter and post it on this forum so that others here can make the same case. Perhaps Martin can join in.

Believe me, I’m all for a good E7 tariff, but what exactly is it you’re suggesting? That the off-peak rates should stay as is while peak rates are lowered to the same level as single rate tariffs?

If that’s the case, the cheap rate electricity won’t stay particularly cheap for very long once everyone in the country starts using it with no drawbacks.

Yes I am proposing that. People need to be encouraged to use off peak electricity particularly as wind and nuclear become predominant.  Domestic storage heating is the best way to store excess energy which will be produced at night.
Even more radical, why not have a different provider for off peak and the rest.

While the idea might make a degree of sense in principle this would rely entirely on there always being enough excess electricity being generated overnight to outweigh all demand. 

The increasing prevalence of things like heat pumps and EVs over the coming years will keep pushing off-peak demand higher and higher. By freely giving everyone, say, half price energy at night we may soon find ourselves in a situation where such an excess of supply no longer exists, resulting in the gap between peak and off-peak rates closing significantly.

OwenDibhing said:

Because of the natural diurnal variation in electricity consumption, storage will be key. Storage of energy as heat in peoples homes will be key to leveling up consumption and is easily the most efficient way of storing energy.

Using heat may well be a great way to store energy, but only so far as situations where that energy is to remain as heat when it is ultimately used for its intended purpose. For most people I imagine this would amount to a few kWh each day for hot water and a couple of months heating the home over winter, with little use for large amounts of heat energy the rest of the time. 

Having a large box of bricks at 600c in the living room would be of quite counter productive in the height of summer when someone may instead prefer that energy be used to run an air conditioner, for example.

OwenDibhing

Without getting too detailed, I respond to the above points.
It's not clear why heat pumps will push off-peak demand. EVs - Yes for those who can charge overnight, but there will also be daytime charging at the workplace and car parks where owners leave their car during the day. 

I am really just talking about heat storage for do.estic heating but much work is going on to develop thermal storage for industrial use with core temperatures up to 1500 deg C.

Domestic storage heaters are well tried and tested and there are newer more adaptable domestic thermal stores that circulate water round conventional radiators. I have one that is 35 yrs old. For details see the Tepeo website.