Worth paying £150 to have two rate meter installed?

The_Walker

We've just moved into a flat with storage heaters but a one rate meter. Obviously this is wrong. Storage heaters charge overnight on a cheaper second rate, that's the whole point of them. EON estimated usage at £2000 per year, which sounds OTT for a small one bedroom flat, and that could be explained by the one rate meter being present.

I contacted EON and they offered to change the tariff and meter, but for a charge of £150. That seems a bit OTT, even though I suspect I would recoup that amount in savings from a two rate tariff? Smart meter installs are free of charge, so how come EON want to charge me?

What do you think? 

QrizB

Your flat is all-electric? I would guess you'll use between 5000-10000kWh/yr, and at the upper end of that range you could be paying close to £2000/yr depending on tariff. On the plus side it's almost summer so your heating demand shound be fairly low; you don't need to rush into this.

You could possibly get a smart meter and then move to a time-of-day tariff that doesn't need a dual-rate meter, like one of the Octopus Go / Go Faster tariffs?

How are your storage heaters wired, do they have a dedicated circuit that could be switched with a dual-rate meter or do they have their own time switch(es)?

The_Walker

How are your storage heaters wired, do they have a dedicated circuit that could be switched with a dual-rate meter or do they have their own time switch(es)?

They have their own timers. They don't have a separate consumer unit.

Verdigris

They'll fit a smart meter for nothing. You will have all manner of TOU (time of  use) tariffs available to you, then.

[Deleted User]

The_Walker said:

How are your storage heaters wired, do they have a dedicated circuit that could be switched with a dual-rate meter or do they have their own time switch(es)?

They have their own timers. They don't have a separate consumer unit.

Hi,

are you sure these are storage heater and not panel heaters?

It's unusual for storage heaters to have individual timers.

Can you stick up a photie, please.

stewie_griffin

If you can't take photos then provide the make/model of the heaters. They don't sound like storage heaters to me.

macman

It takes just a few seconds to run the figures through any comp site, once for E7 and once for single rate. Add £150 to the E7 annual cost and you can immediately see what the payback period will be. I suspect less than one year though, if you are running NSH's on single rate.

The_Walker

frugalmacdugal They are "dry inertia stone heaters" made by Kingfisher. Model HJDXK10GT46T.

The_Walker

Verdigris said:

They'll fit a smart meter for nothing. You will have all manner of TOU (time of  use) tariffs available to you, then.

Yes that occurred to me too. I'm not sure why they didn't offer one in the first place. Companies are usually very keen to install them.

Gerry1

That's not a storage heater, it's just a convector.  It uses daytime electricity, so nothing is more expensive !  All you can do is damage limitation which means forgetting all about E7, just use the cheapest single rate tariff you can find.

And move before winter kicks in, assuming you are renting.

MWT

Not night storage heaters then, just another attempt to confuse people and sell them a panel heater with dubious extra capabilities...