Help with storage heaters, faulty meter - do I need a revised bill?

penfold777

Hi hope to receive some advise here.

Moved into a large Victorian house last September, which has older style storage heaters on economy 7 tariff with SSE which we are slowly renovating, have removed about half of the storage heaters now, put in a stove, topped up loft insulation, insulated under the ground floor and are looking to get solar panels etc

So anway -

First quartely bill arrived November just over £1k, second quarterly bill arrived in February for £2.5k at the same time we asked an electrician to inspect the board and he identified a faulty meter where the motor had burnt out, which after contacting SSE they replaced the same day.

Do these bills need to be revised? My understanding the clock being broken would have meant the storage heaters would have constantly be drawing input power even if I had set the input to low/medium - which would result in my usage being far too high that it should have been...

Gerry1

Presumably you are referring to a rotary mechanical timeswitch rather than the meter itself?

If the motor fails then all your usage will be at the rate that applied when it stopped turning.  However, the usual arrangement is that the NSHs are wired to an E7 circuit that's switched by the meter.  This suggests that the fault had been in your favour because you would have had the cheap rate 24/7.  This should not have made much difference to your NSH usage because the thermostats would have switched off the NSHs when they had charged sufficiently.  They wouldn't have become red hot simply by being on an 'Economy 24' circuit, and you'd have noticed if they had.

What were the day and night usage figures on the bill, assuming you sent meter readings?  If there was little or no day rate usage then that would confirm what had happened.

However, the big question is what is to replace the NSHs?  If it's on demand electric heating (panel heaters, oil filled radiators, electric boiler etc) then you're making a big mistake because nothing else is more expensive to run.

pochase

How many KWh have you been charged at day rate and how many on night rate?

Do you have figures from the year before?

DE_612183

If the electricity has been used, then no the bill will not get revised - SSE are not responsible for the internal electrical wiring of your property ( unless they installed it themselves and it's still under guarantee )

Alnat1

Checked my heating usage (gas in my case) and it was in the same proportions as yours, Dec/Jan/Feb usage was 2.5 times Sep/Oct/Nov. A mild autumn and not too bad winter, Feb being the coldest.

It would appear that whatever was wrong with the meter happened before you moved in, so if any adjustments are made, they need to be backdated to when you took over the account.

Alnat1

As bad as this advice is for the environment, gas central heating is probably your cheapest option right now.

A large Victorian house is unlikely to be ideal for an ASHP due to insulation issues. Maybe a heat only boiler with a hot water tank that can be heated by both gas and electric (from your future solar panels) You could get the heating installer to future proof the system ready for when ASHP are the only allowed option when the boiler needs replacing in years to come.

Mstty

Alnat1 said:

As bad as this advice is for the environment, gas central heating is probably your cheapest option right now.

A large Victorian house is unlikely to be ideal for an ASHP due to insulation issues. Maybe a heat only boiler with a hot water tank that can be heated by both gas and electric (from your future solar panels) You could get the heating installer to future proof the system ready for when ASHP are the only allowed option when the boiler needs replacing in years to come.

Are you sure that advice stands up now the price ratio of gas to electricity is about to becoming potentially 3.6 (based on elec 40p and gas 11p guesstimates for October price cap) and furthermore if they do change the way electricity is calculated away from its reliance on gas price it could reduce further.

Even now at 29.24p for electricity verses 7.334 which is a ratio of 4 we are heating, hot water and running this 4 bedroom admittedly modern house for 6200 kWh a year or in another way basically the £1971 price cap which is supposed to be a dual fuel 3 bed house with 2-3 people.

Just a thought for consideration as I think the tide is turning even for retro fitted ASHP come October.

pochase

Yep, the ratio is getting worse. My last fix up to February was 6.3, 2.31p gas to 14.56p electricity. The advantage is going away.

penfold777

The way the property is wired there are 2 offpeak meters with some NSH connected to each, represented here as offpeak A and B.

So if the timer was stuck on offpeak, the NSH would still have drawn power outside of the set time (according to the INPUT setting) but that is still using energy when I didn't want to use them (or pay for). Difficult to judge without a benchmark, but seems way over would it should be.

To install any wet system, rads, pipes, boiler etc is quite a costly thing, when the future is uncertain about gas boilers and waiting for HPs market to establish itself.

QrizB

penfold777 said:

The way the property is wired there are 2 offpeak meters with some NSH connected to each, represented here as offpeak A and B.

So if the timer was stuck on offpeak, the NSH would still have drawn power outside of the set time (according to the INPUT setting) but that is still using energy when I didn't want to use them (or pay for). Difficult to judge without a benchmark, but seems way over would it should be.

I can't see any "smoking gun" evidence of a stuck timeswitch there.

Exactly what date did the electrician spot the fault, and when did SSE replace it?

MWT

penfold777 said:

The way the property is wired there are 2 offpeak meters with some NSH connected to each, represented here as offpeak A and B.

So if the timer was stuck on offpeak, the NSH would still have drawn power outside of the set time (according to the INPUT setting) but that is still using energy when I didn't want to use them (or pay for). Difficult to judge without a benchmark, but seems way over would it should be.

Your bar chart looks entirely normal for the coldest months of the year, and no sign that the clock was stuck during that period as your 'standard' use should have fallen dramatically if that has been the case...