Getting confused about night rate electricity

GDB2222

Our house doesn't have gas, just a large night storage heater and a large night storage hot water cylinder.  We have a smart meter.

We are presently on an economy 7 tariff, but I can see some EV tariffs that offer much lower charges per unit, but only for 5 hours a night. How do I find out whether that's long enough to store all the heat I'll need? 

EssexHebridean

Do you have an EV? Some of those tariffs do require to see proof that you have, I believe. 

What storage heaters do you have? The water will heat fine in the timeframe, but the room heating might be a different matter, particularly if your storage heaters aren’t high heat retention ones.

GDB2222

I don’t have an EV, although I can get an electric bike.

We have an ancient whole house storage heater. I think it is on a 16 amp circuit. 

Robin9

You could try switching it off after 5 hours and seeing how quickly it looses it's heat

EssexHebridean

I have to say it doesn’t *sound* like something that might work as well as needed with a 5 hour charge, particularly in the colder weather. CN you see a make and model on the system you have? 

Newbie_John

Two issues here, you do need an actual electric car for these tarrifs wit car charger etc. and also the house wiring.. you storage heater and water tank are wired so they're always charged between certain times like 23-6.
So even if you switch to tariff offering cheap rates 1-6am you may still end up paying for electricity in the expensive period - you would need to buy some extra automation to make it work with just specific times only.

GDB2222

Thanks, everyone. I’m not able to check this properly, but I can see that it makes sense to get a standard night rate tariff for the time being. 

EssexHebridean

Have you shopped around to make sure that the E7 deal you are on currently is competitive? 

GDB2222

EssexHebridean said:

Have you shopped around to make sure that the E7 deal you are on currently is competitive? 

That’s what I was doing when I came across these EV tariffs!

Reed_Richards

I tend to agree that EV tariffs seem to be unfairly cheap by comparison with Economy 7 tariffs.  Or Economy 7 tariffs are unfairly expensive by comparison with the EV ones.

Scot_39

They will be based on a different use distribution - one likely more consistent off-peak use across seasons.

I suspect the average EV driver will use more overnight in summer when demand is arguably that bit lower - so perhaps prices lower - and less in winter - when overnight demand is higher (when c2.5m+ on E7 - will potentially be using 10s kWh to charge their NSH, heat store boilers or Agas etc) - when perhaps overnight rates are that little bit higher.  

Other factors like wind power outputf availability increasingly disrupt rates from week to week - not just as simply demand driven anymore.

But there will likely be a marketing component in any new and fast growing market - that might be feeding into lower rates.

And not sure that many Ev tariffs actually designed for E7 users to swap onto - impact of reduced hours, potential meter tariff and ALCS changes etc - it's not a trivial thing to guarantee will always work - especially at the more optimised variable timing models.