Southern Electric SuperDeal Problem?

pmacaira

Hello,

First I would like to say sorry for the long post and that I will explain my problem and in the end put my questions .

I recently moved to a rented one bedroom flat where everything is electric, so no gas. The flat is small and I have one storage heater in the living room and one in the bedroom. I have an electric shower and an immersion tank. After talking to Southern Electric they told me my plan was the Super Deal. I have been reading to understand this plan and as far as I understand this should work like this:

3 different tariffs: day (18,5p/kWh), night (10,16p/kWh) and storage(8,74p/kWh) and off course 3 different meters. The first time I took the readings I saw this:

17th December
Rate 1: 27061
Rate 2: 05649
Rate 3: 53194

From observing the meter I know that Rate 1 is the day reading and Rate 3 is the night reading. So I suppose that Rate 2 should be the storage heaters readings.

My surprise came when I took some readings 10 days later to check how my consumption where.

27th December
Rate 1: 27134
Rate 2: 05656
Rate 3: 53549

What makes a cost of around 50£ in 10 days, what would make 150£pcm. (Isn't this too much??)

First thing in my mind was to turn off the immersion heater, it is controlled by the low rate and so it comes on at night and +-2 hours at the afternoon, but I feel that it works to much so I thought that it could be consuming to much.
So, I did some tests during the night:
I turned off the immersion tank and I took readings at Midnight:
Rate 1: 27136
Rate 2: 05656
Rate 3: 53555

And then when I got up from bed, at 10am:
Rate 1: 27136
Rate 2: 05657
Rate 3: 53568

Questions and assumptions:
My understanding on all this is that Rate 2 doesn't do anything, I can't really understand what it measures, because in 10 days the changes where 7kWh that represents a cost of 60p. Shouldn't be heaters on this rate?

What I'm guessing is that heaters are also being controlled by Rate 3, because during the night the consumption was 13kWh, that makes a cost of 1,32£. Do you agree with this? So what for the Super Deal if heaters are not in the right rate?

Can someone help me here, and try to explain me what is wrong?

PS: I will turn off the heaters and check the readings during the afternoon off peack hours. One right conclusion (I guess) I got is that the immersion tank is consuming to much being always on the low rate.
I have this system:

photo: [IMG]http://!!!!!!!.com/otuux3x[/IMG]

but the timer isn't working, should I get a new one and programme it to work 1 hour per day? I think it is enough.

famasfilms

Hi,

I also moved into a new property at the end of November 2013, electric only and storage heaters on the Southern Electric Superdeal tariff.

I live in a 1 bed top floor apartment, the kitchen has a heater, the living room has a small heater and a larger combination storage/convector, the bedroom a smaller combination and the hall a small heater

When I gave them my first months metre readings I almost had a heart attack! £178 in one month. From the top of my head they said £100-110 of that was on the heaters and the rest was other appliances.

I work Mon-Fri until 6pm and then go the gym for an hour. I have a PC in living room with 42" TV and a surround sound amp, these are on from 7pm-11pm weekdays and all day weekends. I don't sit there with the living room light on and am very energy conscious, charging stuff at night etc and using washing machine timers.

To make matters worse the heaters in my flat are not very effective...I keep the output dial on zero when I go to bed, wake up and the rooms are 16-17 degrees, turn the output up when I come home from work and they might hit 18 degrees or 19 if I'm lucky - for the amount they cost they do not warm up the flat sufficiently.

I turned off the kitchen heater, the hall heater and small living room to try and bring costs down.

Electrician visiting tomorrow as the kitchen heater stopped working. I will ask him to look at the elements as well because they should be warming the flat up better than they do at present.

I also don't understand why superdeal users are "punished" for not having gas, why should it cost me more to watch Coronation Street than it does everyone else?

Mr-Chris_2

I am all electric too. I use storage heaters on Eco7 , I live in a 1 bedroom ground floor flat. small heater in bedroom, kitchen and hallway. larger heater in living room. all are turned on ie input 5 output 4, they keep me well warm all day/evening and night 24/7. my total cost per day ( in winter ) is £3.50p remember all electric heating. cooking showers ect