Anyone with Utilita, any good? also referral bonus

mbosys

Hi looking into moving to Utilita, on their smart energy.
Whats people thoughts on them?

Also 1st person to PM me who are with them, can do the referral bonus where you get £20 free energy and I get £20 amazon voucher!

/campaigns/refer-a-friend

Thanks all!

mbosys

Same as myself they are the cheapest off peak, have solar and battery storage looking to charge at night if not enough solar and use batteries during the day!

Just wondering how long did your move take and did you new smart meter get installed quickly?

Cheers!

SpotlandRules

If you move to Utilita - and have their smart meters installed - it is added to the database that you have a credit meter. You can then move to credit meters and enjoy cheaper prices.

If you do a quote with EDF energy, it shows what meter you have installed.

When you move to utilita, and the database is updated, your meter will be shown as "STD Credit Smart meter"

Andy_WSM

The actual transfer took 2-3 weeks, was pretty painless. Only gripe was that Utilita never asked me for opening readings but as I had kept my old supplier bang up to date it didn't make any difference as the estimates were pretty much bang on.

From "go-live" I was told it would take 4 weeks for the smart meters to go in, but it was only actually about another 3 weeks. The engineer was here for about an hour and it was all very painless and straight forward.

mbosys

Cheers Andy_WSM!

Question for you and those those on the smart E7 tariff

Day Unit Rate 1* (pence per kWh) 45.816p (First 1Kwh for the day only)
Day Unit Rate 2* (pence per kWh) 15.816p
Night Unit Rate (pence per kWh) 5.108p

what happens if you say are away or don't use any energy in the day but you used some at night.

Am I correct in thinking you would not be charged the Day Unit Rate 1* (pence per kWh) at 45.816p and only the 5.108p /Kwh
or would this take it for the 1st 1Kwh at the E7 night rate?

Also if you only used 0.5Kwh in the day rate you would only be charged 22.908p.

Thanks all !

Andy_WSM

In the unlikely event you used no day rate power at all then you would escape the 45p first kW charge. And likewise if you only use 0.5kW you would only pay the ~23p. This time of year, becase of my solar panels, I have often not used my first day kWh by 8pm in the evening!

The indoor unit you are given on installation shows you which leg of the tariff the meter is currently on and the associated charges. You can also see how much energy per hour has been used and the total energy in the past day/week/month/year with just a few button presses.

edit - out of interest, how big is your battery storage? I guess it is indeed possible to escape the day rate for days at a time?!

mbosys

Thanks Andy_WSM, great to hear!

Currently have about 34Kwh of Lithium with 10Kw inverter, can power the whole house off grid if I like. lasts about 2 day's when full.
currently in grid UPS mode and solar charges bat's and gives back to house when needed, only have 3.36KW solar ran out of room on roof as would of had more!

From tests I have done in grid mode, I use only about 0.1 > 0.3 kwh from 7am till 12pm, then plan to charge over night for the next day if solar has not been able to keep up!

Are you looking into getting battery storage?

Andy_WSM

mbosys wrote: »

Are you looking into getting battery storage?

I've already experimented with a battery system using a 3kW Pure Sine Wave inverter and some leisure batteries to see if I could build something that works in principle. The short and long was that I managed to time shift most of my evening energy usage to the eco 7 period, but realistically the amounts involved are so small it wouldn't be financially viable to buy decent batteries (such as you have!).

You have about twice the battery capacity of my 5 year old Leaf there :rotfl:

aristote33

Just tried to log a formal complaint with their "customer care team" around 6.30pm,

and they refused to do so, arguing that another team is responsible for the problem.

33 minutes over the phone, impossible to obtain a complaint reference number. Unbelievable, right?

Does this sound familiar? Where did you take things?

Do let me know if there is a more suitable board for this sort of situation, please. Thank you.