Pros and Cons of Dual Fuel Energy Supplier with Day and Night Metre

11fernsroad

Hi
I am with Scottish Power we have Dual Energy Supply from them with Electricity meter being separate for Day and Night.
At Present we are on Online Fixed Price Energy January 2016


What are the pros and cons of this supplier and this particular deal?
We use most of the electricity during 6pm -10pm
We used Central Heating from 6pm -10pm
We have combi boiler and use hot water mainly 7-8am and 7-8pm.
Many Thanks

CashStrapped

Two meters for Day and Night readings are usually found in electric only properties with storage heaters. This is due to to a tariff designed for electric only properties called Economy 7.

Economy 7 has two tariffs. An expensive day tariff and a cheap night tariff.

The idea is that the occupier uses as much of their electricity in the cheap periods. Storage heaters charge at night and release their heat during the day.

This quite often the cheapest method of heating an all electric house.

However

You have Gas Central heating. So you are unlikely to be on an Economy 7 electric tariff. Your property may have been electric only in the past but the separate meters have been kept.

What usually happens in this case is that most compaies just add the two meter readings (Day and Night) together so it does not matter.

Some companies do not like to do this, others do not mind.

If you are still on an Economy 7 tariff, for whatever reason, you may want to switch on to the cheapest standard tariff. It will be much cheaper for normal day time use.


For Economy 7 to be worthwhile, you need to use more than 50% of your daily use between 12am to 7am.

With gas central heating, is is not unlikely that you will.

Hope that helps.

redux

11fernsroad wrote: »

Hi
I am with Scottish Power we have Dual Energy Supply from them with Electricity meter being separate for Day and Night.
At Present we are on Online Fixed Price Energy January 2016

Although you only recently got this tariff, their February 2016 is an improvement again.

Robwiz

Scottish Power currently has some of the best rates for both off peak and peak rate electricity on its E7 tariff. If you use a lot of electricity it may be worth keeping E7 and running things like your immersion heater, washing machine and dishwasher on the off peak tariff. But you'd probably be better off on a single rate tariff.

[Deleted User]

I see many people who have a property with GCH with an Eco 7 meter. Many, no most, don t know why its there or even what the rates and switchover times are. The general advice is to get rid of it to a single rate meter, hopefully free, where they can shop around for the best one yearly fixes with a larger supplier base than the fewer who can handle Eco 7. the old analogue 24 timer switches can be so far out of time ( check pointer at bottom ) that the cheap 7 hours falls slap bang in a heavy use period in the evening, so it may be OK with one of those. These are steadily being changed to a digital meter with a built in timerswitch. If you can use approx 30% of the total use on the night rate you can make Eco 7 work

matelodave

If you've go two meters are you on a proper E7 tariff and is your house wired properly to take advantage of the E7 tariff.

If the second (low rate) meter is only feeding what might have been storage heaters then you might find that you aren't getting any benefit at all from E7. Perhaps a photo of your set up and consumer units would help clarify the situation.

My mum had two meters where the night rate one only fed the storage & immersion heaters via their own consumer unit. All the other household circuits were fed via the standard rate meter so she couldn't save by using the washing machine or dryer over night. We stripped out the storage heaters, installed a different heating system and went onto a single rate

Much the same as I've done where I now live as we can't benefit by using sufficient electricity at the low rate to make it viable

Scrounger

sacsquacco wrote: »

...many people who have a property with GCH with an Eco 7 meter. Many, no most, don t know why its there or even what the rates and switchover times are.

So true.

A chap at work was telling me that he was on E7 but his switching times seemed "all over the place" as the clock dial seemed to be set to the wrong time (old analogue clock). When I tried to explain that this could be used to his advantage and how to easily check the position of the tabs for switching times he suddenly lost all interest.

Similarly he has never bothered switching his gas or electric suppliers.

For some people, saving money is simply too much hassle :rotfl:

Scrounger