Do you need to be on Economy 7?

mprice1988

Hello All,

At work recently (I am a customer service adviser for Scottish and Southern), I have been noticing a lot of customer's who have Economy 7 meters and gas central heating.

Unless you use around 20% of your energy consumption at night, you are probably paying more for your electricity as Economy 7 day rates are more expensive than the General Domestic prices.

So it might be worth asking your current supplier or working out yourself if its cheaper to be on General Domestic? It would require a meter change but that's a small inconvenience to pay as this would reduce your bills by a fair amount.

Cardew

Good advice; although the 'break even' point of 20% you quote varies according to the area in which you live and company/tariff you have.

In the past some companies did not require you to even get a new meter; I don't know if that is still the case.

I was on E7 with BG and changed to a 'normal' tariff and still have the same E7 meter. They simply add the two readings together and I am billed for both at the same rate. e.g E7 200kWh, daytime 1,000kWh so I am billed for 1,200kWh at the general domestic rate.

Incidentally at that time the 'break even' point was 30% on an annual consumption of approx 5,000kWh.

Froglet

I changed from economy seven 2 months ago to a normal rate meter.This was through Atlantic.It cost me nothing to get a new meter but they said they could not add the figures together,apparently some companies do ,they don't.I used about 27% overnight but my electric bills were still too high and i am waiting for my next bill to hopefully see an improvement.

stewie_griffin

Cardew wrote: »

In the past some companies did not require you to even get a new meter; I don't know if that is still the case.

You don't need to get a new meter with Powergen they just add your day and night rate together and charge you the same unit rate for both.

Terrylw1

Same with Npower, they just bill you as day & night and change the prices although their latest billing system had issues with this and they may be reluctant to do it without a meter change. Thats free anyway and your right to request...

You tend to find that the gas central heating has been added later.

Cozworth806

However beware that if you are with Powergen and you then change to a diffenet company it can cause all sorts of problems!

The same thing happened to me after we got a combi GCH instead of an immersion. Powergen added the figures, but EDF kept billing us for economy 7 until I made an official complaint and they arranged for the meter to be changed.

SO my preference is to have the correct meter for the correct tarrif.