Economy 7 meter and tariff

ps2mint

Hi all,
Moved into a new house 6 months ago and it has an economy 7 meter. Our old supplier charged us the same rate both day and night. Switched supplier and was automatically put on an economy 7 tariff as they don't have the ability to charge the same rate which I thought was poor. We don't have storage heaters and our water is heated by gas. Am I doing the right thing to have the meter changed to a single rate one so that we can be put on a single rate tariff?
Help much appreciated!
Thanks

footyguy

ps2mint wrote: »

Hi all,
Moved into a new house 6 months ago and it has an economy 7 meter. Our old supplier charged us the same rate both day and night. Switched supplier and was automatically put on an economy 7 tariff as they don't have the ability to charge the same rate which I thought was poor. We don't have storage heaters and our water is heated by gas. Am I doing the right thing to have the meter changed to a single rate one so that we can be put on a single rate tariff?
Help much appreciated!
Thanks

Consult a comparison site
Run it in both E7 mode and single rate mode.
The cheapest annual cost will then be obvious.

If it helps, we too don't have storage heaters and our water is heated by gas.
However we use about 25% low rate without even trying. 7/24 = 29%
Been like this for years - almost always been better off on E7.
Using currently available tariff figures it would cost us about 1% more to remain on E7. We'll take the hit! Maybe it'll encourage us to make more use of the low rate?
But figures will vary by suppy region - hence consult a comparison site

EnergyFun

From an industry perspective, you can definitely use an E7 meter as an unrestricted meter - like you say, it just requires the Supplier to charge the same usage price across both registers. The only quirk to this is that the meter is still settled centrally as an E7 meter but this would have no impact on you as a customer.

It must be a supplier system issue - perhaps you can ask for them to upgrade their systems or give you a free meter, whichever is cheaper for them (meter!).

Alternatively you can wait until SMETS2 meters are out. It should be fun to see how many tariffs suppliers can come up with once they have 48 registers to play with.

Chrishazle

Certain suppliers can handle E7 meters and single rate tariff, there's a couple of threads on here showing who they are. I know BG/Sainsburys and Affect Energy can (I have an E7 meter on single rate, been with both BG/Sains and now switching to Affect). Some years ago I tried to switch to Scottish Power, at that time they could not.

Cardew

In addition to those above, E-on and OVO can charge a single rate(adding both registers) Scottish Power still cannot.

footyguy

EnergyFun wrote: »

From an industry perspective, you can definitely use an E7 meter as an unrestricted meter - like you say, it just requires the Supplier to charge the same usage price across both registers. ....

I don't think it's that simple actually due to regulations, despite the fact that some suppliers are obviously breaching those terms.

However, from an industry perspective, if you want a single rate tariff, just get yourself a single rate meter

(But consult a comparison site first to see how much more it might cost/save you)

matelodave

We had our E7 meter changed to a single rate one - the fitter came with a computer, reprogrammed it and then notified the supplier and central database. So it's now a single tariff meter and we have no problems changing suppliers.

The problem with haveing an E7 meter on a single rate tariff is that although some suppliers will be happy to add the regisers together some aren't.

The central database will still have it recorded as an E7 meter which can cause problems in the future if you want to swap suppliers.

I'd try and get it swapped if I were you.

Although our change sounded simple it wasn't quite as straight forward. We moved in on an E7 tariff but wanted a single rate one as we were stripping out the storage heating, we also wanted to swap suppliers. As far as i can remember (it was nearly seven years ago) the sequence was as follows.

We swapped suppliers who actually fitted another meter but insisted that they could only fit a like for like (ie an E7 meter on an E7 tariff) then they came out again and reprogrammed the meter to make it a single rate one.

I can't remember why the original meter was changed but I think it was because the storage heating had its own fuseboard with a separate timed feed from the meter. I had the replacement meter wired to feed both fuseboards from a common point as we run all our stuff including heating from a single rate supply.