Storage Heater Meter

Gerry1

gld73 said:

(No point in telling the OP they were wrong to get rid of the storage heaters; if they were as ancient and poorly performing as mine, it doesn't matter how cheap they are to run if they don't actually heat the house!)

It's always worth pointing out that replacing storage heaters with panel heaters, convectors etc is usually a massive mistake because although it may not help the OP it will alert others to the same pitfall.

Your old NSHs may well just have had a failed element or two (simple and cheap to replace), and you could have obtained a one or more High Heat Retention NSHs to add to or replace one or more of the old ones.

Sadly you may find that the house is still cold if the running costs of the new heaters are prohibitive next winter.

Northern_Wanderer

Gerry1 said:

I'm genuinely confused by your reference about having to re-wire to get single rate with RHT meters.  The info to which I linked suggests that suppliers only need to add up the readings from all the registers and bill the total at the single rate: I haven't seen any references to moving meter tails etc.  (I doubt that there are many suppliers with fewer than 50,00 customers now.)

@Gerry1 I have edited my post accordingly. That is excellent that restricted meter changes are no longer required. I bet SSE didn't like that guidance being introduced! Presumably the meter tails was only an issue if having the THTC meter removed so that you could get everything on a single rate in the past. i.e. my shower was still wired into the THTC meter even although the storage heaters were gone. We all need a Gerry knowledge brain chip

Northern_Wanderer

gld73 said:

(No point in telling the OP they were wrong to get rid of the storage heaters; if they were as ancient and poorly performing as mine, it doesn't matter how cheap they are to run if they don't actually heat the house!)

I had three SH's from about the 1970's it looked like, and some wall panel heaters I never used. Back then I used to burn £150 a month throughout the whole year and I was still freezing. I got GCH in 2019. I hate to think what that Total Heating Total Control bill would be now. 10 hours of boosting your storage heaters that you can't control unless they are off.

Northern_Wanderer

gld73 said:

I've tried to change to a smart meter several times as SSE kept sending me the info with my bills - but whenever I tried, they saw I had 2 meters and said they couldn't do it. The same thing happened when I tried switching to other suppliers, they didn't want to deal with the 2 meters (apparently it's not a normal Economy 7 or Economy 10 set up). I asked the electrician who did the work for the heaters if it could just all be done to 1 meter and he said it needed the provider (SSE) to deal with it. 

Did you see this link that Gerry posted?

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/Global/CitizensAdvice/Energy/Energy%20Consultation%20responses/Restricted%20Meter%20Good%20Practice%20Guide.pdf

I see it says from 2017, but I had similar problems to you in 2019. So perhaps the energy companies are not acting accordingly still?