Octopus Energy - Smart Meter Economy 7 times

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Ryan_Holden said:

What the heck? I didn't realise these times changed. I have SMET2 recently installed, how would I check if the times had changed?

This is a reasonably big deal for me as I time my appliances around it, particularly around getting an hour in the tumble drier 06:30 - 07:30 GMT where it's only 16p rather than 44p.

The E7 times don't change they are always GMT but you obviously need to change your scheduled appliance timers +1 when the time changes to BST.

Officer_Dibble

You can still use your tumble drier from 0630-0730 if you wish, or move it to 0730-0830 during BST if you wish. Win-win! It does seem strange that E7 sticks with GMT but Flux (for example) goes with whatever the local time is, but that's what their documentation clearly says. I suppose the actual clock change is within the 7 hour period which might lead to some confusion (it would be E6 one night of the year and E8 another night)

Ryan_Holden

Ahhh that's ok then, relief. I always use my washing machine overnight, finishing when I wake up, so I can then tumble dry what I need to in the last hour before 07:30 GMT. 

Thanks all, mild panic over.

Raxiel

Historically, mechanical timer meters (and even unconnected digital ones) couldn't reliably account for GMT/BST (and the last thing the electric board would want is consumers being able to adjust the clocks themselves) so they were just GMT all year round.

Presumably smart meters kept that convention for economy seven specifically, simply for the purposes of consistency. Other ToU tariffs, free of any legacy requirements can make use of the meters actual time.

The odd one out is E7 controlled by Radio switch. My understanding was they'd typically keep the same hours, but could actually be varied depending on the needs of the grid operator for load shedding, With odd on-peak periods at 2am sometimes.

Oscarmax

I am glad i was not the only one confused, ayway thank for all the help