Switching from eco7 to standard, what happens to immersion/water tank help

af0704

Hi,

I would like to change from edf's eco7 tariff to a standard meter as I only have a water/immersion heater linked to e7. I use most of my electric from 6pm-midnight, and it is pretty expensive during winter when i've got the electric panel heaters on.

I have asked edf if they can swop the meter for free, which they can, and asked if I would need to rewire/program my immersion heater seperately when I go onto a standard tariff, to which I got a reply of 'ideally, there is no rewiring required' They can't quite answer my question and I've asked a few times now.

What I need to know is, if after switching to standard, how will my immersion turn on (it has a bottom switch connected to e7, and top switch for booster at present) will I need a seperate electrician to put a timer in? Will I need a new tank system? Any advise would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

spiro

Your best bet is to get an electrician in to confirm what wiring changs you will need, your supplier will not know how it is wired. You won't need a new tank unless your old one is very inefficient.

matelodave

It depends on what you've got at the moment and no one can second guess that without having a look.

It will depend on whether your tank was controlled from the meter/timer usually via a contactor or had it's own timeswitch usually located near the tank.

Did you previously have storage heaters, if so they would have had a separate off-peak circuit into which the tank would also have been connected.

Do you have two distribution/fuse boards - one for ordinary supplies (sockets, lights etc) and one for the off-peak storage heater & immersion heater outlets, if so then you'll probably have to get an electrician in to sort it out.

Although we were lucky when we had ours changed from E7 and the meter man just paralleled both boards to the meter.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

I would think that as it won't be switching to the E7 night/cheap rate, then you will have to heat your water on the standard rate, what you call 'boost' just now.

If you need hot water on rising in the morning, then you could switch it on before going to bed, or get a timer fitted and set to come on an hour or so before you get up.

The immerser is thermostatically controlled, so won't be boiling all the time it will get to set temperature, cut out, then cut in again when temperature of water drops.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Get a sparky to check - restricted and unrestricted
.

af0704

I only have one fusebox, and the water tank switches on when off peak kicks in on the meter (radio controlled) No timing controls in my flat whatsoever. Never had storage heaters, and I know the off peak wiring runs into the same meter as on peak. Everyone seems to have a different system, and it would be good to know what others have done before switching to a standard meter, and what financial cost it could lead to. Many thanks

CashStrapped

You can easily work out the financial cost before you make any changes.

You just need to compare your annual KWH use on E7 with that of a standard rate.

Do you have your annual KWH figures?

At the moment you have a "night use" and a "day use" in KWH

To work out the cost for a comparison site you add them together and then work out what percentage of your total use is at night.

Example:

Over a year you may use 3500KWH (cheap night rate) and 3000KWH (expensive day rate).

Add them together and that makes 6500KWH in total.

To get the percentage we divide 3500/6500 and that gives you 0.53 which is 53%.

Use this percentage in a comparison site and get the total annual cost for your use on E7.

To compare this with a competitive standard rate, ignore the E7 percentage option and just put year annual use as 6500KWH.

That will show you the cost for the same usage on a standard rate.

Obviously you need to work out what your own night use percentage is. It may be higher or lower than my example, which will affect comparison results.

--

With regards to your hot water tank operation.

Is there any type of immersion switch in the flat?

With your current setup you may have two heating elements for the hot water tank.

One that goes in near the bottom. This is the main heating element and may use the E7 rate.

Then you may have a smaller boost element near the top for a quick boost on the expensive day rate.

Is that the type of set up you have? Do you have any immersion heater switches for either of the heating elements?

footyguy

af0704 wrote: »

Hi,

I would like to change from edf's eco7 tariff to a standard meter as I only have a water/immersion heater linked to e7. I use most of my electric from 6pm-midnight, and it is pretty expensive during winter when i've got the electric panel heaters on.

I have asked edf if they can swop the meter for free, which they can, and asked if I would need to rewire/program my immersion heater seperately when I go onto a standard tariff, to which I got a reply of 'ideally, there is no rewiring required' They can't quite answer my question and I've asked a few times now.

What I need to know is, if after switching to standard, how will my immersion turn on (it has a bottom switch connected to e7, and top switch for booster at present) will I need a seperate electrician to put a timer in? Will I need a new tank system? Any advise would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

Are you certain you want to change the meter?
Don't take a short term view. Yes you would be using panel heaters in winter, but you don't in summer, yet you will presumably want hot water all year round.

Check using a comparison site using your anticipated annual consumption in kWh (and your anticipayted annual consumption at low rate) if there are any E7 deals better than EDF single rate, or even if there is another supplier that will not necessarily need a meter change to provide you a single rate tariff (but a comparison site may not mention this).

Anyway, if you've decided, then assuming your immersion heater is on a circuit that only currently comes live during low peak supply, then hopefully when the engineer fits a new meter, it will become live contantly (otherwise it won't work at all!)

You then may decide you want a timer fitted to restrict how long during the day it's actually on ... butr remember whenever you do have it on will cost 2-3 times what you are probably currently paying.

Bark01

You don’t need to do any calculations yourself to work out if it’s cheaper (but it wouldn’t hurt to). The ‘Could You Pay Less’ found on the right hand column on the front page of your bill will calculate if you’d save money by swapping from an EC7 meter to a Standard meter. If the ‘Cheapest Overall tariff’ wording mentions something like ‘you may need to change your meter to receive this saving’ then you’d save money by swapping.

If you see this message you can also utilise a totalised set up. With this set up EDF will bill you as if you were on a stand meter without actually changing your meter, they just charge your day and night rate at the standard meter price. Saves you the hassle of having an actual meter exchange.

footyguy

Bark01 wrote: »

You don’t need to do any calculations yourself to work out if it’s cheaper (but it wouldn’t hurt to). The ‘Could You Pay Less’ found on the right hand column on the front page of your bill will calculate if you’d save money by swapping from an EC7 meter to a Standard meter. If the ‘Cheapest Overall tariff’ wording mentions something like ‘you may need to change your meter to receive this saving’ then you’d save money by swapping.

But that only will display the suppliers own tariff.

Where for example a single rate may work out the cheapest option with one supplier, you may well find you could save even more by switching to another supplier and staying on E7.

Bark01 wrote: »

If you see this message you can also utilise a totalised set up. With this set up EDF will bill you as if you were on a stand meter without actually changing your meter, they just charge your day and night rate at the standard meter price. Saves you the hassle of having an actual meter exchange.

I'm pretty sure EDF will not supply a single rate tariff when you have a dual rate meter (many suppliers won't) but EDF will change the meter for no charge (most suppliers would charge)

I only know one post that suggests otherwise
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=59813407&postcount=5
(Oh, it was you who made that post too)

Bark01

Not sure if you’re having a pop with that

In 2013 Totalisers weren’t really promoted. If the call centre agent knew about them then they might have offered one to customers. Since RMR Totalisers are automatically promoted via the supplier cheapest messaging so their use is a lot more prevalent.

Not all EC7 meters can be totalised but most can, it depends on the specific SSC of the meter, the only way for someone to know if they can be totalised or not is to ask their supplier. Not all supplliers offer the functionality to totalise.

As EDF don’t charge for a meter exchange but cover the costs themselves it makes sense for EDF to promote Totalisers as they don’t carry a cost to implement.

From the OP’s point of view if they totalise, it’s easy to go back to EC7 so they don’t need worry about losing any future functionality and you don’t have to be in for a meter exchange or have any worries over what will happen to the immersion heater.

The EDF bill won’t say if the OP can save money by swapping supplier but if they sign up to a blue tariff they will have access to an EDF web page that will tell the customer if they can save more by swapping.