What types of heating can be run with THTC?

the-saucepan-man

I recently moved into a house with storage heaters on the THTC tariff with SSE and have noticed that the bills are rather large, so I'm looking for ways to minimise my energy use and take advantage of the "heating control" rate.

At present I have 4 storage heaters (1 x Creda Supaslim Combi 3.4Kw, 1 x Creda Slimline 2.55Kw, 2 x Creda Slimline 1.7Kw), 2 small panel heaters (Creda 85301 0.6Kw) and a fire point in the living room that's currently unused. None of the storage heaters have had their input above 2 since I moved in and that's been fine to heat the house.

I have 2 small 0.7Kw oil filled radiators from my last house and was wondering whether these could be wired to the heating control meter as a replacement for the 0.6Kw panel heaters - I'm assuming they'll keep the heat longer than the panel heaters? Is this allowed?

Also, how accurate are the input dials of the storage heaters? For example, if I have my 3.4Kw storage heater set to 2 and the dial goes up to 6, can I assume that I'm using 1/3 of the energy rating, in this case ~1.13Kw? Or is that just wishful thinking?

Thanks in advance for your help and advice.

FestiveJoy

the-saucepan-man wrote: »

I recently moved into a house with storage heaters on the THTC tariff with SSE and have noticed that the bills are rather large, so I'm looking for ways to minimise my energy use and take advantage of the "heating control" rate.

At present I have 4 storage heaters (1 x Creda Supaslim Combi 3.4Kw, 1 x Creda Slimline 2.55Kw, 2 x Creda Slimline 1.7Kw), 2 small panel heaters (Creda 85301 0.6Kw) and a fire point in the living room that's currently unused. None of the storage heaters have had their input above 2 since I moved in and that's been fine to heat the house.

I have 2 small 0.7Kw oil filled radiators from my last house and was wondering whether these could be wired to the heating control meter as a replacement for the 0.6Kw panel heaters - I'm assuming they'll keep the heat longer than the panel heaters? Is this allowed?

Also, how accurate are the input dials of the storage heaters? For example, if I have my 3.4Kw storage heater set to 2 and the dial goes up to 6, can I assume that I'm using 1/3 of the energy rating, in this case ~1.13Kw? Or is that just wishful thinking?

Thanks in advance for your help and advice.

Any help?
https://sse.co.uk/help/electric-heating/other-two-meter-tariffs

The secret of getting the best from any multi rate tariff is to minimise your usage of higher rate, and maximise the lower rate instead ... so crank those storage heaters up if they are not providing you with enough heat to keep warm, and keep those other heaters off

It would be unusual to have any non-storage type heater attached to the limited time, low rate only circuit, as they would only opeate when low rate operated ... which kind of defeats their purpose.

Also, installing any non-storage heater in the hope it will provide better heat storage functionality than a dedicated storage heater is designed to do doesn't make any sense either, sorry.

As regards the basic operating dials of storage heaters, I think it's wishful thinking on your part ... but I'm not sure what the relevance is here either?
A storage heater rated as 3.4kW means that the maximum charge rate is 3.4kW. Whether it takes 1 hour at 3.4kW, or 3 hours at 1.13kW to reach the required charge - it's the same cost.
The input dial controls the amount of heat loaded to the storage heater.


:xmastree::xmastree::xmastree::xmassign:

the-saucepan-man

Thanks, but I think you kinda missed a few points.

1. I wasn't suggesting using the oil filled radiators in place of the storage heaters, I was suggesting using them in place of the panel heaters which have a similar rating as I think the oil filled radiators would hold heat longer. I do understand that they would only operate within the THTC times, but that's the same with the panel heaters. The question here, is whether the THTC tariff allows the use of oil filled radiators.

2. In regards to the relevance of the input dial, are you suggesting that if I turn the input dial to 6 it will use up the same amount of energy over the period of one day as it would if I have it set at 2? I'm guessing this is based on the assumption I need it fully charged to heat my home? That I could understand, however, I mentioned that the house is warm enough when the input dial is set to 2, so surely I'm using less energy than I would if I set it to 6?

The link you gave is helpful, but doesn't quite answer my questions.

matelodave

If an oil filled radiator hold the heat for longer then it will take longer to heat up so if you had a 1kw panel radiator and a 1 kwh oild filled rad and you turned them on for one hour, you'd get exactly the same amount of heat out of them but at slighly different times.

The panel rad would get up to temp in say five minutes and then cool down in approx 5 minutes, whereas an oil filled rad would take possibly 10-15minutes to get hot and then 10-15 minutes to cool down, so you'd have to turn it on earlier and then turn it off earlier than you would a panel heater to heat the space up in the same period but it wouldn't cost any less to produce the same amount of heat.

Regarding the imput control of a storage heater, they are usually designed to take a full charge over the normal 7 hour e7 off peak period so a 3.5 kw heater on for seven hours would store approx 24.5kwh of heat which gets dissipated over the next 17 hours = approx 1.5kw per hour.
If you turn down the charge control to say 1/4 then the internal control would only charge it to around 6-7kwh before it shut down down so it would cost less to charge it but you would have only stored 6-7kwh of heat to last you for the next 17 hours.

E10 gives you 10 hours of off peak energy usually 5 hours over night, three hours in the afternoon and two in the evening so potentially you can store up to 35kwh if you use all the heat up when the unit isn't energised

THTC does it slightly different insofar as the amount of off-peak energy is controlled by the electrictyy company and is determined by the weather forecast and when they have a surplus of energy. You dont get a standard 7 hours overnight. so you can't actually determine when or how much energy you'll get so you may not get enough charge stored if you turn the imput control down too low. However that said, if you do use the energy and the supplier gives you more at varying times of the day you may find that there's enough being put in to balance what is coming out.

The only way to really determine aht is happing is to either read your meters very frequently or get an energy monitor which can store and graph your consumption over time to see what happens

the-saucepan-man

Thanks for explaining that, no use switching them out then. I was under the impression that oil filled radiators were more efficient than standard electric panel heaters, not quite sure where I got that idea from.

And yes THTC is a bit different from E7 or E10 as it comes on intermittently which seems to mean I don't need to have a full charge as it gets topped up throughout the day and night. My only quibble is that the supply times can vary between 5 and 12 hours a day depending on weather. I asked if the hours are posted anywhere online so that customers could see the daily timings, but I was told this is not currently possible. So really it's the energy company (SSE) who has total control over how much energy you use.

I reckon an energy monitor might be a useful tool to have. It would certainly help me figure out where I'm wasting energy. Thanks for your help.