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Recently moved to Scotland - huge electric bill.
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Hi all,
I have recently moved to Perth into a 2 bedroom flat which features a THTC system with electricity provided by SSE Scottish Hydro.
I have contacted them and been quoted £114 per month with an estimated annual usage of 10700kwh. Of course being an estimate I plan to hopefully use much less, however, I would like to swap provider if possible. EDF have provided a quote of £68 p/m and I have informed them about the THTC meter to which they have said “no problem”. I have a feeling it will fall through as the sales person on the telephone seemed to rush into it.
Can anyone suggest another energy supplier that deals with THTC meters and also I’d be grateful if anyone could share their usage and costs of being on this system.
Thanks in advance.
I have recently moved to Perth into a 2 bedroom flat which features a THTC system with electricity provided by SSE Scottish Hydro.
I have contacted them and been quoted £114 per month with an estimated annual usage of 10700kwh. Of course being an estimate I plan to hopefully use much less, however, I would like to swap provider if possible. EDF have provided a quote of £68 p/m and I have informed them about the THTC meter to which they have said “no problem”. I have a feeling it will fall through as the sales person on the telephone seemed to rush into it.
Can anyone suggest another energy supplier that deals with THTC meters and also I’d be grateful if anyone could share their usage and costs of being on this system.
Thanks in advance.
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Comments
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10700kwh seems reasonable for an all electric flat in Perth.
I use 13,000 kWh of gas and 3900 kWh of electricity so a total of 16900 kWh.
Also it is not what you pay by DD that counts, it is what you pay per kWh and standing charge.
How many kWh are EDF going to "give" you for £62 per month?over 73 but not over the hill.0 -
This tariff is a SSE only tariff- your problem may be if your new supplier wants to switch your meter - you will be on a tariff that has 1 meter and 2 rates with night time only
You will go from 8-12 hours cheap heating and hot water power to 8baldly going on...0 -
Why not stay on the THTC for two months:
First month, use the system as normal. (Take meter readings)
2nd month, switch the heating off after the overnight charge. (Take meter readings)
Then you can compare the cost of a month on THTC with a month on E7.0 -
AFAIK THTC has separate circuits for heating, hot water and all the rest and you get a variable amount off-peak leccy than with an E7 set up which could run you into problems if you need to get an electrician in to do some rewiring.
Secondly if your heating has been designed for a 10-12hr energy input then the heaters may not be large enough to store enough heat with just a 7 hour input, so you might end up cold or having to use supplementary heating as well.
jk0 has the best idea, try it out first to see how it performs and monitor your energy consumption in kwh by reading the meters weekly (or even daily) to see how much it all uses.
r2015 makes a very valid point, how many kwh are EDF offering for £68 a month. If SSE are estimatiog around 10,700 kwh then that's what EDF should be using to get a like for like comparison.
You should use the same number of kwh for all estimates otherwise they are meaningless.
Be very very waring of accepting a low DD (and £62 is low) as you could end up being £100's in arrears in a very short timeNever under estimate the power of stupid people in large numbers0 -
Don't trust any energy provider who glibly tells you you can swap, just like that, easy peasy. Even SSE call line helpers don't always grasp what their THTC tariff is! This is a tariff exclusive to SSE and to Northern Scotland mostly, areas where there is only electric. To be on it you have to have 60% of your heating through storage heaters, and a focal point of heat is allowed also. ALL your heating and water heating are on the THTC meter which is a radio telemeter, and your fridge, washing machine etc are on the other meter and the higher tariff. If you use a lot of non-heating appliances then this is going to be costly for you, but the heating and water is not expensive unit by unit. You will get up to about 13 hours a day in input from SSE, varying with the weather forecast. These boosts do not all come during the night, they are designed to help people who are in during the day as well. If you go to Economy 7 you will not get anything during the day on the heating, which may mean your house isn't as warm by the evening, also I think everything will be on the same metre, so you will need the THTC meter removed and rewiring done. Electricians don't always get the rewiring right. Everything heat wise on THTC is wired into the white telemeter. SSE now allow you to change the meters around free for this purpose but you still have to pay the electrician. ALSO The estimated usage from SSE is usually way out. They always grossly underestimate mine. You need to be absolutely on top of your two meter readings, do them every day for the first few months to see how many Kw hours you are using on each meter a day, and do your own costings once you have lived there a few winter months. Make sure you have set your storage heaters correctly..don't touch the boost or output dials, leave them at zero, experiment with the input dials till you find what works. I live in the Cairngorms in a place where there is only electricty, and I inherited a bunch of ancient storage heaters and this legacy tariff and after three years of being obsessed with my electricity bills which are £1900 per annum (!) and endless researching, I still think it is better financially to stay on this tariff, than to change while ever I have the storage heaters. If you can afford to get rid of the storage heaters and can switch to oil or if there is gas available, that might be cheaper depending on your needs, but you will be dependent on the price of oil and you will have installation costs which may cancel out any savings in real terms.0
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Welcome to the forum realamandal1 - lots of good points.
Could you use paragraphs please - some readers are turned off by huge blocks of text.Never pay on an estimated bill. Always read and understand your bill2 -
I’m with SSE can I knock my water heater off and not use that as don’t need that hot water on all the time please help0
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matelodave said:Secondly if your heating has been designed for a 10-12hr energy input then the heaters may not be large enough to store enough heat with just a 7 hour input, so you might end up cold or having to use supplementary heating as well.
I have no experience of storage heaters so that makes no sense to me unless you actually meant 'not small enough'.0 -
danaflett30 said:I’m with SSE can I knock my water heater off and not use that as don’t need that hot water on all the time please helpWelcome to the forum.Unfortunately you have revived a three year old thread. This is never a good idea because it soon gets very confusing when the replies to several different posters have to be untangled. Indeed, this has already happened: the latest replies are not in response to your post.It would be better to start a new thread (click on the red New Post icon in the upper left corner) and to delete your existing post if your privileges allow you to do so.0
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nottsphil said:matelodave said:Secondly if your heating has been designed for a 10-12hr energy input then the heaters may not be large enough to store enough heat with just a 7 hour input, so you might end up cold or having to use supplementary heating as well.
I have no experience of storage heaters so that makes no sense to me unless you actually meant 'not small enough'.
However if you've got an E10 supply which is say 5 hours over night (15kwh) 2 hours in the afternoon (6kwh) and 3 hours in the evening (9kwh) you have the potential to store or use up to 30kwh and use it over 14 hours, ie just over 2.1kwh/hr which obviously means that come the evening when most E7 heaters are running out of heat, you get the benefit of an extra 9kwh boost when you need it most
If your room needs an average of 2kwh/hr to keep you warm then your stored 21kwh could easily get dissipated over 10-11 hours or less (by around teatime) so you'd need to use peak rate supplementary heating to make up the extra 9kw to keep you going to bedtime.
The alternative is to get larger or more heaters to store the shortfall - to store 30kwh in a seven hour charge requires a heater rated at 4.3kw (or at least 2 x 2kw instead of one 3kw unit)
Some THTC controls may give you even more that 10 hrs depending on the temperature
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large numbers0
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