Changing from Economy 7 to standard tariff.

Typhoon2000

My daughter has a small modern studio flat with Economy 7 and no gas. There is a single storage heater with boost function and an unvented hotwater tank with two immersion heaters. The bottom immersion is on the E7 rate and come comes on at night ( just on off switch which is left on all the time) and the top one is on a 1 hour timed booster button. She is out most of the day 6 days a week and in the winter found that the storage heater had leaked most of its heat during the day when no one is in, despite it being in the Off setting during the day and she had to used the convector booster in the evenings.

As the the storage heater also takes up a lot of room, she wants to change it to a modern panel heater which she can control on her phone and go to a regular electricity tariff. The meter is a dual rate analogue meter with a radio timeswitch next to it. If she changes to a single rate regular tariff, will the the bottom immersion heater  still come on at night, or will it come on on demand ( need to fit a timer) or will It not come on at all because the timed circuit is not being used? The panel heater is easy as it can just be plugged into a 3pin socket.

Thanks

Section62

Typhoon2000 said:

As the the storage heater also takes up a lot of room, she wants to change it to a modern panel heater which she can control on her phone and go to a regular electricity tariff.

The first step, if she hasn't already, is to look into the running costs of these heaters.

There are lots of threads on this forum about people who have made the change from storage heaters and then (too late) discovered the crippling cost of using them.

One approach is to turn off the storage heaters and use a cheap oil-filled radiator for a while to get a better idea of how many hours use of the heater would be needed to heat the space to a comfortable level and keep it there.

danrv

I have several of these in my all electric property.
https://www.toolstation.com/2kw-convector-heater/p98046

Only for occasional bedroom use but quicker to heat up than oil filled and has a 24 hr timer.
I bought them as an experiment to compare running costs with a warm air storage heater.
Worth a try to see if it suits the lifestyle better than the storage heater.
A WiFi device can be added if needed rather than paying for a smart electric radiator.

Typhoon2000

At the moment during winter she is having to use the convector on peak rate in the evening anyway. On her E7 tariff, ‘peak rate’ is 34p per KWh and the 7 hour off peak is 20p. On a standard tariff  it’s 29p all the time. A 1.5KW panel heater is what was recommended for the size of the room. The bedroom area already has a small non E7 panel heater.

QrizB

Typhoon2000 said:

As the the storage heater also takes up a lot of room, she wants to change it to a modern panel heater which she can control on her phone and go to a regular electricity tariff. The meter is a dual rate analogue meter with a radio timeswitch next to it. If she changes to a single rate regular tariff, will the the bottom immersion heater  still come on at night, or will it come on on demand ( need to fit a timer) or will It not come on at all because the timed circuit is not being used? The panel heater is easy as it can just be plugged into a 3pin socket.

She can switch to a single-rate tariff without removing the storage heater.

She can use the convector element of the existing storage heater; this will heat her flat as effectively as any "modern panel heater" and, as @danrv says, a wifi device could be added to give smart functions.

When she comes to sell the flat in a few years she won't put buyers off by not having a storage heater.

The timeswitch will continue to switch the E7 circuits as it currently does.

DE_612183

I thought with E7 - all electricity during the off peak period would be at the cheaper rate ( not just the storage heater )....

twopenny

What type of storage heater is it?
How old?
A friend had all new ones installed and is thrilled with the reduction in cost.