Help Please With Night Storage Heaters, Related Meters And Huge Electricity Bills

char58

Our last year's electric bill amounted to 10,592kwh (4860 day 5732 night). We live in a small 3 bedroomed 1950's semi detached house and when we moved in four years ago we installed the maximum amount of solar panels, a wood burning stove, new dimplex quantum heaters downstairs (3) and just ordinary wall hung electric radiators upstairs (only one has been on for a maximum of 2 hours on probably a dozen times in our bedroom). Ever since living here our usage is more than any other property we've lived in and this house is the first one we've lived in without our 4 children. The solar panels were causing our day time meter to go backwards to start with and NPower came out and put two new meters in which stopped this but our bills have continued to mount up. I might add my husband works full time and I work three full days. What is going on? I've even just noticed that our related night time meter which we were told only works to charge the night storage heating has been going up even during the summer months when the night storage heaters were switched off. Please can someone help. 

Gerry1

Welcome to the forum.

Why do you have two meters?  You should be on Economy 7 (one meter with two registers).  If you have E7, all night usage is at cheap rate so the reading will increase throughout the year.

Are the readings estimated or actual?  Photos of the meter and bills please, with personal info redacted.

tim_p

Immersion heater would surely cause the E7 to increase. 

Robin9

Your day time use if it based on actual readings is high.  Night time may be right.

1) Check your immersion heater switches - there should be two - one controls an element in the bottom of the tank so that it heats up at night and should be ON - the other the top element and should be OFF as it uses electricity at the higher on peak rates.

2) Have you an electric shower ?  Cut down on the length of the showers.

Read your meters NOW and look back on your bills for about 12 months ago and see if you can find some with ACTUAL readings on them.

macman

Hang on everybody. The OP's consumption is perfectly normal (in fact, rather low) for a 3 b/r semi with all-electric heating. And 54% of usage is on night rate, which is more than sufficient. If there is actually a billing issue, we need to be given more info, because it's not down to excess consumption. OP needs to tell us what their annual spend is, what E7 tariff, etc. 'Huge bills' tells us precisely nothing.
The only thing I would query is the folly of putting convectors into bedrooms and then having E7, but, since they're hardly used, that is not an issue at this time.
Properties of that era had minimal insulation, so I'd also be looking at the loft insulation and getting cavity wall insulation installed if not already present.

char58

We have two meters which are called related meters. We'd never seen or heard of them before. It seems that they were installed in houses that had night storage heaters in so that the night time meter only works between 12.30am - 8.30am to charge the heaters. NPower won't change them to a day and night meter because I've asked unless we get an electrician to change all the wiring to the meters which we've been told costs several hundreds of pounds. I will check the immersion heater, but the solar panels are supposed to be heating our water, or that's what we were told at the time of installation so it should be being heated in the daytime. We have tried to change to another company but a lot won't take on related meters. NPower have now as from the 1st October put our night time rate up from 10 to 16 which is more than we're paying for the daytime meter.

Swipe

char58 said:

We have two meters which are called related meters. We'd never seen or heard of them before. It seems that they were installed in houses that had night storage heaters in so that the night time meter only works between 12.30am - 8.30am to charge the heaters. NPower won't change them to a day and night meter because I've asked unless we get an electrician to change all the wiring to the meters which we've been told costs several hundreds of pounds. I will check the immersion heater, but the solar panels are supposed to be heating our water, or that's what we were told at the time of installation so it should be being heated in the daytime. We have tried to change to another company but a lot won't take on related meters. NPower have now as from the 1st October put our night time rate up from 10 to 16 which is more than we're paying for the daytime meter.

At those rates it might be worth paying to get the meters changed.

Talldave

How do the solar panels fit into the equation?  Which meter is measuring their output?  How is the output from the panels heating the hot water?  That last question is getting at the fact that solar panels are normally just feeding into the home's electricity supply - feed whatever's running and the rest goes back into the grid.

It would be interesting to see monthly consumption figures for day and night.  Is the 10,592kWh after the deduction of whatever your panels are generating?

macman

You don't need to change 'all the wiring' to the meters. It's simply the wiring from meters to the CU, so unless they are distant, it's not a big job. As above, you may well get the money back in a single heating season.

tim_p

Presumably the panels are heating the water using a diverter like an Immersun or IBoost.  You can’t rely on it all year round but it should be fine between around Mar - Sept, depending on number of panels and orientation, even then there will be days when you need something extra. 

Gerry1

char58 said:

We have two meters which are called related meters.

Similar issues have been covered extensively - search this forum for THTC, E10, "Comfort Plus White Meter (and similar DTS experiences)" and such like.

Restricted Meter Good Practice Guide.pdf