Has anyone found an off-peak Eco7 rate that gets close to Utility Warehouse?

lohr500

dunstonh said:

With an EV and the 30amp, over 70% of our use is off peak.   At 5p for offpeak, I wasnt too concerned about there not being a fix.   I just hope they don't do what EDF did.  I couldn't find anyone else that would give the required number of hours off peak at a similar price.

That's what worries me.

We also had a very low off-peak price relative to peak when we were on EDF Eco 7 and then ECO20:20. But like you the gap narrowed. So when Tomato Energy appeared with their 5p off peak &13.3p/23.3p peak rates it seemed like a no brainer to switch. My TE rates are fixed until September next year, but only if they last that long!

The dilemma now is either to jump ship now to UW and take a hit on the peak rate until the battery is installed, or stick with TE until I have the battery in the hope that they won't collapse before it is installed. The Powerwall installer told me yesterday that the biggest delay would be in getting the required G99/G100 approval from the DNO. Could be 45 days or more, but they have got them back quicker.

And also, do I ringfence the UW 5p off-peak on a one year fix by taking out a SIM card with them at £13 a month, or not.
If they bump the 5p to 10p or thereabouts which seems to be the norm right now for Eco 7 off peak, it would cost me a lot more to "feed" the Aga than the extra £13 a month for the SIM.

dunstonh

EssexHebridean said:

Having been with UW previously, I personally wouldn't touch them with someone else's bargepole now. Their billing is horrible (even the Ombudsman wasn't convinced of the legalities of some of their approach) and their customer service is worse. Also, don't make the mistake of trying to make any ad-hoc payments to your account unless you are happy for those to disappear into a black hole never to be seen again! 

I can see why that 5p rate is attractive though! 

I agree that their billing is peculiar.  They charge 5% VAT on your monthly payment (£155.24+£7.76 VAT = £163 d/d).   Not the energy use.    I am hoping that is just because energy use was zero on that months 1 bill.

Their online site is getting the smart readings but their monthly pdf has yet to showing any readings.  I am waiting until month 2 before I raise that.   

However, I am giving them some tolerance as 5p is very good.
I didn't bother with a second option as we have no gas or fibre and sims are through our business.  I took the risk of variable.

lohr500

@dunstonh

Out of interest did UW set up your Smart meter as a traditional type Eco 7 meter with two registers and a means to switch on and off a separate off-peak consumer unit? Either a 5 wire meter, or 4 wire with a low current switching signal wire to an external contactor?

When we moved from traditional Eco 7 to EDF's ECO20:20 I did away with the off-peak switching signal for the Aga and installed a time clock instead. I didn't want the Aga cutting in too early on the 10 hours of off-peak energy and then starting to cool down too early the following day. If I do switch to UW and they enable the meter for traditional 7 hour off peak circuit switching, I'll reconfigure the Aga to do away with the seperate timer. One timer less to keep in sync with the off peak timings!!

MWT

lohr500 said:

Expensive but should be capable of providing 100% of our average 10kWh peak load on all but the heaviest usage days. And apparently capable of a continuous 11kW output if needed, not that we would ever need that sort of output. I think a smaller 3.6kW output inverter would be restrictive to cover all our simultaneous loads on some occasions.

If your typical use is under 10kWh a day outside the low-rate period then that is a great choice.

The relatively high continuous power output is also a nice feature of the newer Powerwall 3 product.

EssexHebridean

dunstonh said:y

EssexHebridean said:

Having been with UW previously, I personally wouldn't touch them with someone else's bargepole now. Their billing is horrible (even the Ombudsman wasn't convinced of the legalities of some of their approach) and their customer service is worse. Also, don't make the mistake of trying to make any ad-hoc payments to your account unless you are happy for those to disappear into a black hole never to be seen again! 

I can see why that 5p rate is attractive though! 

I agree that their billing is peculiar.  They charge 5% VAT on your monthly payment (£155.24+£7.76 VAT = £163 d/d).   Not the energy use.    I am hoping that is just because energy use was zero on that months 1 bill.

Their online site is getting the smart readings but their monthly pdf has yet to showing any readings.  I am waiting until month 2 before I raise that.   

However, I am giving them some tolerance as 5p is very good.
I didn't bother with a second option as we have no gas or fibre and sims are through our business.  I took the risk of variable.

That first paragraph is where the EO chap I spoke with said they were questioning - their view was firmly that VAT should be charged on the product, not applied to people’s payments to their accounts, but at the time they were also struggling to work out what if anything might be done about it. (And indeed even if it was within their remit to deal with it, although they were apparently dealing with a lot of complaints about it)

MWT

EssexHebridean said:

That first paragraph is where the EO chap I spoke with said they were questioning - their view was firmly that VAT should be charged on the product, not applied to people’s payments to their accounts, but at the time they were also struggling to work out what if anything might be done about it. (And indeed even if it was within their remit to deal with it, although they were apparently dealing with a lot of complaints about it)

This is not the first time I've seen an energy company doing this and HMRC seem perfectly happy with this approach as it just means that they account for the VAT at the tax-point when the payment is received and then accumulate the balance net of VAT and apply the balance to energy payments calculated net of VAT.

As a side benefit for the supplier it removes the need to apportion payments across VAT rates if there were to be a change at some point in the future.

It is also in line with Ofgem stance that these are actual payments made to the supplier for energy and hence not ignored when looking at back-billing implications.

 

dunstonh

Out of interest did UW set up your Smart meter as a traditional type Eco 7 meter with two registers and a means to switch on and off a separate off-peak consumer unit? Either a 5 wire meter, or 4 wire with a low current switching signal wire to an external contactor?

EDF installed my smart meter.  4 wire on a timer.  No switching signals.  The AGA has its own time clock.  I keep the AGA timer on GMT all year round so it doesn't need to muck around with BST.