Economy 7 Smart Meters British Gas off peak times

prccbc

Just had smart meters installed and read that dual rate economy 7 times change but cannot find anywhere that tells me what they are in ME9 postcode area with British Gas. this seems to be a regular question over the years of the forum.

Swipe

The easiest way is to set your IHD's menu to show the current tariff price from 7am onwards and watch for the time the rate switches back to peak rate and then subtract 7 hours to get the off peak switch time. If you have storage heaters that have a neon light on the wall spur you can also use that as a reference. Some IHDs pop up a message saying the rate is about to change prior to the switch time but mine doesn't do it every day. However, I must also caveat that some regions don't have a contiguous 7 hour window. Sometimes they are split with a couple of hours peak rate but I'm sure you would be aware of this already if that were the case.

Ildhund

What are the numbers in the three boxes on the top line of your MPAN? You should be able to find it on a recent bill - Mine are 02 | 808 | 3 . These codes should give an idea of the timings.

Gerry1

Ildhund said:

What are the numbers in the three boxes on the top line of your MPAN? You should be able to find it on a recent bill - Mine are 02 | 808 | 3 . These codes should give an idea of the timings.

The codes may give an idea of what the timings ought to be, but the only thing that matters is what your meter is actually doing.  Anyone relying on local timers could find that any variance could prove to be very expensive.

dunstonh

 just how accurate and reasonable are the "Average Daily Usage" figures quoted by all the utility companies and, indeed, Ofgem?

Avearge means that the majority of people will be either side of that.    Its woefully unreliable to base your own use on.

For example, on paper we are a four bedroom detached with 2 people but use 17,700 kWh of electricity.   Ofgem suggests typical average for 4+ bedrooms to be 4100kWh.    So, we are 4x their average.  

They all say that the average use for a 2/3 bed house with 2/3 people living in it is 2700kwh per year - equating to 7.4kwh a day.

But then again, taking our high use average of 48.5kWh per day, we are actually more energy efficient than the ofgem example.   Take the electric AGA and EV out our use and we are about 5kWh per day.

I know with averages it means some are higher and some are lower etc  but just how accurate is that daily rate in real life? 

I don't take the slightest bit of notice of averages.   It is more important to know where your own energy use is.

I'm one person living in a 2/3 bed semi and my usage last year was nearly 9000kwh - over three times the national average!

That is high.  An average of 24kWh per day.  Note my 5kWh per day.  We used to get into the 20kWh per day (excluding AGA & EV).    But identifying the usage across devices were made changes and brought it down significantly.

For info - as I say, I'm just one person. Slimline dishwasher on maybe 3 times a week (so not so much water to heat up) 30 degree wash on once a week. 

Eco wash or standard? 30c wash is very low.  50c is where most Eco washes sit.    65c-70c is most default.  If you have dishes sitting for days before being washed, then 30c doesnt seem to be enough.
Eco washes take much longer but use around 1/4 of the energy.    
Moving from standard to eco was a big saver for us.

Under counter fridge and freezer (so no big American jobby).

Chances are my big American jobby is more efficient than your under counter FF.   0.65kWh a day for mine.  What is yours?

And it fluctuates wildly from day to day sometimes even though my days are akin to Groundhog day. 

Lighting?  have you moved to LED? - and by that I mean efficient LED and not expensive LED.  Yes, that is the thing now.   early LEDs often use 15-20kWh whereas modern equivalents giving the same lumens can be 2-4kWh.

Spotlights in kitchen or bathroom?   Many modern kitchen/bathrooms have spotlight arrays which use 15-25kWh per bulb (older ones could be 64kWh per bulb).

Washing machines and tumble driers are frequent high users.  Toasters, Kettle, hairdryer, microwave are all high users but short blasts.   Playstations and computer gaming can be a big user.

Oh, and just to reassure you (as I genuinely had to reassure the B gas person) - no, my neighbour is NOT feeding off my supply. And no, I do NOT have a cannabis factory in my loft! 

Your use is not high enough to suggest those.  Your use is more in the basic inefficient ballpark.

Sorry for the rant but would appreciate people's views on if 7.4kwh per day is a realistic figure. 

It is if you have energy efficient devices and are not lazy with your energy use.
However, your use is in the ballpark of less efficient devices and a bit lazy with use.

You need to get yourself a couple of TAPO energy monitoring plugs and run them on devices for a couple of days to see what their typical daily energy use is.  You will soon see what the devices are using.

Scot_39

Be wary of course of average vs quartile based TDCVs - the median used for the likes of the £1717 cap.

They only ever exist to provide one metric - and not a particularly useful one at times - across an often widely varying range of data - without an idea of the true underlying distribution and any assymetry - they can be very misleading.

And in Ofgems case at least - these remove the low and high outliers - there was iirc a post recently defining the exact filtering used.

And then there's several weaknesses around dual fuel homes vs all electric homes with profile class 2 meters (most commonly E7 multirate meter homes - those traditionally het by electric)

They are based on data sets for different properties - not the same in most cases.

As the median all electric TDCV is now 3900 kWh total - but the median duel fuel is 11500 kWh gas, 2700 kWh normal electric - total 14200 kWh.  

They are just not comparible - if they were gas (11500) vs extra for heating (3900-2700 =1200kWh) would have to be about 10% efficient.

It irks me frequently when Ofgem table the two together.

And even more so - when try to link to aply same rational for any changes - like in the recent initial report into possible SC revisions - when they try and apply the same rational - to simple SC shifting to unit rates - and cost all electric homes potentially £100s - whilst above the median - but still in reality using less total energy.