Off Peak Tariff

sebtomato

JonathanAspro said:

I have a 7 hour "off peak" tariff which gives me cheaper electric from (Sumer) between 1.00 am and 8,00 am each day. BUT the switch (contactor) which switches off the "off peak" devices (Night store heater and hot water ect..) does not switch at the same time as my tariff changes. It over runs by 9 minutes, so, for 9 minutes, I am paying the high price for things that should be disconnected. 
OK its only 9 minutes, but in these times of "every Penny counts"  it's adding to the problems. The electricity company would not even listen to my complaint. 
Is yours doing the same?

Sounds very unlikely. The smart meter controls directly the off-peak contactor, so both are going to be based on exactly the same time, for peak and off peak hours. When the smart meter thinks it's time to switch to off peak hours, it will power the contactor and start recording energy used against R02.

Zandoni

[Deleted User] said:

JonathanAspro said:

oI have a 7 hour "off peak" tariff which gives me cheaper electric from (Sumer) between 1.00 am and 8,00 am each day. BUT the switch (contactor) which switches off the "off peak" devices (Night store heater and hot water ect..) des not switch at the same time as my tariff changes
OK its only 9 minutes, but in these times of "every Penny counts"  it's adding to the problems. The electricity company would not even listen to my complaint. 
Is yours doing the same?

Hi,

so, what about the 9 minutes of cheap rate you get at the other end of switch over?

If you've got a problem with a 9 minute delay, then, heh Jo, you've got problems.

I guess it matters when the storage heaters are charging.

[Deleted User]

sebtomato said:

JonathanAspro said:

I have a 7 hour "off peak" tariff which gives me cheaper electric from (Sumer) between 1.00 am and 8,00 am each day. BUT the switch (contactor) which switches off the "off peak" devices (Night store heater and hot water ect..) does not switch at the same time as my tariff changes. It over runs by 9 minutes, so, for 9 minutes, I am paying the high price for things that should be disconnected. 
OK its only 9 minutes, but in these times of "every Penny counts"  it's adding to the problems. The electricity company would not even listen to my complaint. 
Is yours doing the same?

Sounds very unlikely. The smart meter controls directly the off-peak contactor, so both are going to be based on exactly the same time, for peak and off peak hours. When the smart meter thinks it's time to switch to off peak hours, it will power the contactor and start recording energy used against R02.

Not necessarily. Octopus has been using just the single R1 register for its smart time-of-use tariffs now for some years now. The charges that are raised are based on the  30 minute usage XML data file that is pulled from the meter each day.

sebtomato

[Deleted User] said:

sebtomato said:

JonathanAspro said:

I have a 7 hour "off peak" tariff which gives me cheaper electric from (Sumer) between 1.00 am and 8,00 am each day. BUT the switch (contactor) which switches off the "off peak" devices (Night store heater and hot water ect..) does not switch at the same time as my tariff changes. It over runs by 9 minutes, so, for 9 minutes, I am paying the high price for things that should be disconnected. 
OK its only 9 minutes, but in these times of "every Penny counts"  it's adding to the problems. The electricity company would not even listen to my complaint. 
Is yours doing the same?

Sounds very unlikely. The smart meter controls directly the off-peak contactor, so both are going to be based on exactly the same time, for peak and off peak hours. When the smart meter thinks it's time to switch to off peak hours, it will power the contactor and start recording energy used against R02.

Not necessarily. Octopus has been using just the single R1 register for its smart time-of-use tariffs now for some years now. The charges that are raised are based on the  30 minute usage XML data file that is pulled from the meter each day.

He is with EDF, not Octopus. EDF would use R1 and R2 for Economy 7 tariffs...

Scrounger

@Sebtomato I wish you were right. 

Sadly, the smart meter billing schedule and the ALCS (E7 100A Contactor) schedule can be different.  In my case there is a 30-minute offset.



The chart above shows at 08:00 the billing changes from off-peak (£0.14) to peak rate (£0.29) but the ACLS contactor is not switching off until 08:30

Hence the spike in cost for the final 30 minutes (right chart).

Scrounger

Mstty

@Scrounger

Question is why is the heating on at all overnight on April 14th😳

How many kWh!!!!!

Scrounger

Mstty said:

@Scrounger

Question is why is the heating on at all overnight on April 14th😳

How many kWh!!!!!

Not there to switch it off 

Scrounger

Phones4Chris

Scrounger said:

@Sebtomato I wish you were right. 

Sadly, the smart meter billing schedule and the ALCS (E7 100A Contactor) schedule can be different.  In my case there is a 30-minute offset.



The chart above shows at 08:00 the billing changes from off-peak (£0.14) to peak rate (£0.29) but the ACLS contactor is not switching off until 08:30

Hence the spike in cost for the final 30 minutes (right chart).

Scrounger

The information you can see there doesn't represent what you'll see on your bill. What the Bright App shows - which is usually the same as what the IHD shows - is the generic off-peak times for your area which are what you are seeing, which is what is being displayed on the Time of use rates chart. The actual switching time can vary from user to user (so there isn't a huge surge in the load). In my own case I discovered this when I happened to be awake and in, on the approach to switchover. The IHD was showing a countdown bar on the RHS of the display (10 min chunks). It got to 0030 and said the rate changed, however to my surprise the load did not jump up by the storage heater consumption. When I went to look at the meter, the ALCS had not yet switched and was not on R02 either. 9 minutes later it did. And instead of turning off at 0730 it was 0739.
I can assure you that the billing was correct and the usage was correctly charge to R02 for the storage heaters.

As I understand you aren't there, you can't watch your own meter to check the actual switching time etc.
Why there is this "disparity" between what the IHD & Bright App shows with the time the rate actually switches I have yet to discover. What I can say is it's not the ALCS switching incorrectly and billing you'll find is correct.
What the disparity does mean, is that those unaware of this situation may be switching on other high usage equipment eg. tumble driers, washing machines and the like, based on what their IHD is showing but end up being charged at peak rate for the start of usage.

Phones4Chris

sebtomato said:

JonathanAspro said:

I have a 7 hour "off peak" tariff which gives me cheaper electric from (Sumer) between 1.00 am and 8,00 am each day. BUT the switch (contactor) which switches off the "off peak" devices (Night store heater and hot water ect..) does not switch at the same time as my tariff changes. It over runs by 9 minutes, so, for 9 minutes, I am paying the high price for things that should be disconnected. 
OK its only 9 minutes, but in these times of "every Penny counts"  it's adding to the problems. The electricity company would not even listen to my complaint. 
Is yours doing the same?

Sounds very unlikely. The smart meter controls directly the off-peak contactor, so both are going to be based on exactly the same time, for peak and off peak hours. When the smart meter thinks it's time to switch to off peak hours, it will power the contactor and start recording energy used against R02.

@JonathanAspro, @sebtomato is correct - but it matters not whether you have a smart meter or standard E7 meter, my comments about the actual time it changes to off-peak are as I've just explained to @Scrounger
If you check your usage on your bill, you should find it correctly charged.

sebtomato

Phones4Chris said:

The information you can see there doesn't represent what you'll see on your bill. What the Bright App shows - which is usually the same as what the IHD shows - is the generic off-peak times for your area which are what you are seeing, which is what is being displayed on the Time of use rates chart. The actual switching time can vary from user to user (so there isn't a huge surge in the load).

I agree that the time to switch to off peak/peak time is different between individual meters. Some small variations are introduced to avoid power surges (lots of meters moving to off-peak at the same time). However, it should be by a few minutes maximum, not 30 minutes.

In my case, off peak currently finishes at 08:35 as opposed to 08:30 for instance. That's for both the IHD (rate displayed is changing at 08:35) and the contactor (off peak circuit is no longer powered), powered directly by the smart meter (5 poles).

However, I disagree that the Bright App shows some generic data in the area. I believe it shows data sent by your own meter, and rates applicable for each 30 minute period.

I believe the rate is what applies at the end of the 30 minute period.
For instance, period starts at 08:30. At 08:59, consumption for that period was x kWh and rate applicable at 08:59 was x pence.

When I download my 30 minutes data from the Bright API, the rate applied for the 08:30 time period is peak rather than off peak (or some average), which is mainly correct for the bulk of the period, but slightly over estimated.