E7 E10 off-peak hours nightmare

saqqar

stewie_griffin said:

The E.ON E10 times are 00:00 - 05:00, 13:00 - 16:00 and 20:00 to 22:00. These are GMT so likely to be an hour later at the moment.

Thanks, that seems to be exactly what I have at the moment, but why they are sending the engineer next month then? 

QrizB

saqqar said:

frugalmacdugal said:

what kinda heaters have you got, seems odd to have no input/output controls?

Can you stick up a couple of photies, please?

What I meant by saying no controller earlier, is that no central controller to set the temperature on the whole system, but of course, each radiator has its own control panel that has been set to the lowest efficient possible setting that I can set.

shinytop said:

How many heaters do you have?

We have six Dimplex DuoHeat radiator units. With different sizes and outputs. For a 3 bedrooms 45 years old 95sqm flat.

OK, so turn down the energy input control on the storage heaters and they will store less heast andf use less energy.

For the size of your flat, your energy use isn't that crazy. I had a 70 sq. m. house of a similar age to yours with E7 heating. We would get through 9000kWh/yr. Checking my notes, however, our "day" energy use was roughly 1/3rd of yours, 200kWh/month not 600kWh!

stewie_griffin

saqqar said:

stewie_griffin said:

The E.ON E10 times are 00:00 - 05:00, 13:00 - 16:00 and 20:00 to 22:00. These are GMT so likely to be an hour later at the moment.

Thanks, that seems to be exactly what I have at the moment, but why they are sending the engineer next month then? 

Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe they're fitting a SMETS2 meter. On your bills do you get charged for different unit prices for the day and night rate or are both the same?

MWT

saqqar said:

frugalmacdugal said:

what kinda heaters have you got, seems odd to have no input/output controls?

Can you stick up a couple of photies, please?

What I meant by saying no controller earlier, is that no central controller to set the temperature on the whole system, but of course, each radiator has its own control panel that has been set to the lowest efficient possible setting that I can set.

shinytop said:

How many heaters do you have?

We have six Dimplex DuoHeat radiator units. With different sizes and outputs. For a 3 bedrooms 45 years old 95sqm flat.

This is starting to make sense, if you have these mixed mode heaters installed then they are going to use both low and high rate power to keep the temperature at the level you set on each heater, so you cannot tell if they are triggered by the off-peak E10 turning on or just a lower temperature in the room...

This sort of system should have been installed with a central controller, so you can turn them all on and off if there are regular periods when you will not be at home.

These are also very small units, can you check and see what the rating is for each of them as it is likely that E7 will not be a good match if they are mostly of the smaller size.

QrizB

MWT said:

This sort of system should have been installed with a central controller, so you can turn them all on and off if there are regular periods when you will not be at home.

For weekends or longer away, you could always turn them off at the consumer unit (most probably the one with the opaque cover, not the transparent one which looks more like it controls the always-on items, but do check).

saqqar

MWT said:

Even if you get it changed to E7 you are only going to be saving 3 hours a day and will not have the boost to the heating in the afternoon or evening so you may find things getting a bit cold later on in the day.

So the storage heaters will not store the heat for that long you're saying, that is an important thing, which, unfortunately, cannot be proved without testing. 
Still the question, can they switch to E7 by programming the current meter only?

MWT said:

The usual problem is that if the system was installed as E10 then the storage heaters have been sized for that as well, so will not be able to keep the place warm if you you switch to E7...

This is a very fair point, to be honest, thank you for bringing it up to my attention, it may be worth asking for professional advice in that regard.

MWT said:

Your bills are high in general, not just in winter with the heating on, I'd want to understand how you are using so much power in July and August for example?

It might be that high because there is no gas supplying the flat so cooking is boosting that up somehow? or because of the number of occupants (family of six)?

MWT

saqqar said:

MWT said:

Even if you get it changed to E7 you are only going to be saving 3 hours a day and will not have the boost to the heating in the afternoon or evening so you may find things getting a bit cold later on in the day.

So the storage heaters will not store the heat for that long you're saying, that is an important thing, which, unfortunately, cannot be proved without testing. 
Still the question, can they switch to E7 by programming the current meter only?

Yes, it could be done but to be honest they are more likely to simply swap out the meter...

saqqar said:

MWT said:

The usual problem is that if the system was installed as E10 then the storage heaters have been sized for that as well, so will not be able to keep the place warm if you you switch to E7...

This is a very fair point, to be honest, thank you for bringing it up to my attention, it may be worth asking for professional advice in that regard.

Always good to get professional advice, but you can do a quick check for yourself, if these are all the smaller 1-1.5kW models then they have quite limited storage and would end up pulling more peak rate power to keep up with demand if they didn't get the afternoon and evening boost from E10.

saqqar said:

MWT said:

Your bills are high in general, not just in winter with the heating on, I'd want to understand how you are using so much power in July and August for example?

It might be that high because there is no gas supplying the flat so cooking is boosting that up somehow? or because of the number of occupants (family of six)?

Cooking is unlikely to be the cause as although it uses a lot while heating up an oven for example, it doesn't maintain that level of usage once up to temperature.

More likely to be down to the number of people using computers, game consoles TV etc. but do look into other obvious high use items like halogen lighting for example...

Gerry1

Your existing heaters seem about halfway between the infamous Fischer non-storage heaters and the original 'box of bricks' storage heaters that were under dimensioned by modern standards and had to rely on the afternoon and evening boosts offered by E10.

Your best bet might be to change over to correctly dimensioned Dimplex Quantum or suchlike on E7.  That would mean you have a much wider choice of competitive suppliers when some sort of normality returns.  If in any doubt, go for a larger size to make sure they don't top up at peak rate.  They can operate on a single 24h supply but it's extremely important to make sure that they're programmed to follow your meter's actual E7 times.

saqqar

I am living in Scotland if that justifies something..

Most likely I will stick with the current installation but with a central controller to be added, of course after having the professional advice and the meter being checked or tuned by E.ON 

I will update you with the ultimate results once everything is settled and I can provide some stats so it might help someone in the future.

Thank you all for the valuable information. Keep safe and worm )

QrizB

saqqar said:

I am living in Scotland if that justifies something..

It's colder in Scotland, so the reckoning was that E7 wouldn't be enough to keep you warm. Hence you get 10 hours not 7.